Marseilles, Algiers and Malta Telegraph Co
1870 The Marseilles, Algiers and Malta Telegraph Co laid a cable from Marseilles to Bona, Algeria, then on to Malta. The cable was manufactured and laid by Telcon, who sub-contracted part to W. T. Henley. It was one of four companies involved John Pender's scheme to build a telegraph link to India.
1870 The line to India was completed and celebration was held, in June, at Pender's house in London. The first messages were simply ‘How are you?’, to which came the reply ‘All well’. This exchange took less than five minutes, when communication with India had previously taken several months. Some 700 guests thronged Pender's house and the pavilion erected in his courtyard, ranging in status from the royalty of England and India through assorted European nobility and diplomats, naval officers, and other such people of note.
1872 It was agreed that the Company, together with The Falmouth, Gibraltar, and Malta Telegraph Company Limited, the Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Company Limited, and the British-Indian Submarine Telegraph Co Limited, be amalgamated into a new Company, to be called the Eastern Submarine Telegraph Company Limited, or some other name, and to be incorporated with a nominal share capital of £3,800,000, in 380,000 shares of £10 each, with the view of consolidating the several undertakings of the first-mentioned four Companies, and transferring or vesting the assets and property thereof respectively to or in such new Company[1]
1877 Telcon made and laid a duplicate cable on the same route.
Note:
- See: Eastern Telegraph Co for fuller version.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ London Gazette 8 Nov 1872
- [1] History of the Atlantic Cable and Submarine Telegraphy