Brass handle

Brass handle

Eastern Telegraph Company brass handle from a piece of furniture at the Telegraph Station on Ascension Island

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Artwork The Cable and Wireless Archive contains a small collection of artwork. This includes large portraits of some of the telegraph companies’ Managing Directors, including Sir John Pender who created the company that laid the first telegraph cable from Porthcurno to Bombay in 1870. His portrait was painted by the British painter Hubert von Herkomer.…

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Cable & Wireless The Cable and Wireless Archive contains a wide range of historic material relating to the development of international communications business and technology, dating from the 1850s to the present day. The archive includes corporate, financial, and publicity records, promotional films, maritime records regarding cableships, and engineers reports for the laying and repair of telegraph…

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Cable Samples The museum holds a large collection of cable samples dating from the beginning of undersea telegraphy to modern day fibre optics. One of the earliest is a section of the first cable laid between England and France in 1850. The collection also contains samples of early telephone cables including the first Transatlantic telephone cable…

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Cableship models The museum holds a range of cableship models, both large and small. Many models were made by the ship yard prior to the building of the full sized cableship. Cableships were used to lay undersea cables and to repair cables when they became faulty. The largest cableship was the ‘Great Eastern’ designed by Isambard…

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