West end of the building
Photographed on 18 September 2003
Located on the north side of Highway 16
at the Tickle Road intersection
GPS location: 45°19'38"N 61°01'44"W
Google map
Photographed on 18 September 2003
Photographed on 18 September 2003
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
Photographed on 8 November 2005
Photographed on 8 November 2005
Photographed on 8 November 2005
Photographed on 8 November 2005
Photographed on 29 November 2005
Photographed on 29 November 2005
Photographed on 29 November 2005
Photographed on 29 November 2005
Photographed on 29 November 2005
Photographed on 30 July 2005
The Commercial Cable Company was incorporated in New York in 1883 by two wealthy men, J.W. Mackay and J.G. Bennett.
James Gordon Bennett (1841-1918) (the younger) was the owner of the New York Herald newspaper, having inherited it from his father James Gordon Bennett (the elder).
John William Mackay (1831-1902) had made a fortune in mining after emigrating in 1840 to the United States from Ireland; in 1859 he joined the rush to Nevada, where silver had been discovered. Mackay and J.G. Fair, later joined by William Shoney O'Brien and J.C. Flood, acquired control of valuable silver mines, which yielded them great fortunes.
Bennett and Mackay both used telegrams extensively in their businesses. They decided to go into the electric telegraph business in competition with the Anglo-American Company and others, which at that time had formed a syndicate known as "The Pool" that had a near monopoly of transatlantic telegram traffic, thus being able to keep telegraph rates high and profits large.
Bennett and Mackay agreed to work together to found a new transatlantic telegraph company in 1883. The Commercial Cable Company quickly laid two submarine (underwater) telegraph cables from Europe, landing the North American ends at Hazel Hill, near Canso, Nova Scotia. To maintain these cables the company kept a specially-designed cable ship, the Mackay-Bennett, at Halifax, ready to go to sea at any time on short notice if a cable failed.
In the 1890s, and continuing into the 1920s, the newspapers of the day often referred to the Commercial Cable Company's telegraph system as the "Mackay and Bennett Cable." This was a convenient way to identify with clarity – for the general public that might not be fully conversant with the intricate details of the ownership of the various and numerous telecommunications companies – which telegraph system was meant.
Beginning in 1885, the "Mackay and Bennett Cable" was the main transatlantic competitor of the "Field Cable", the owner and operator of the original transatlantic telegraph cables beginning in 1866.
...Oscar Lewis, of San Francisco and author of a good book (The Big Four) on the builders of the Central Pacific Railroad, has written a thoughtful history of the men who exploited Comstock's richest ore... The men who made and kept the great Comstock fortunes were good gamblers with a certain kind of brains. Two of them, John William Mackay and James Graham Fair, had been pick-&-shovel men in their time... A big man with a hot temper and a soft heart, Mackay became a miner for love of the exercise and a mine-owner for love of the game. In Virginia City he spent his evenings at a gymnasium taking on all comers for three bruising rounds each... By far the most generous as well as the ablest of the partners, Mackay emerges from Lewis' account as an archetype of all that was most attractive in U.S. rich men of the era. He had many charities and gave away $5,000,000 in personal gifts before he died...
— Source:
Gamblers' Millions Time, 27 October 1947
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Cablegram vs. Telegram
A "cablegram" is the same as a "telegram" — both terms
"Upon their arrival overseas (during World War Two), soldiers Here, "cable messages" simply means "telegrams".
"Her brother sent a cable." This line of dialog was spoken by Here, "cable" means "telegram".
The online
Free Dictionary defines "cablegram" (noun) |
 Medium-size view 850 kilobytes |
 Full-size view 1790 kilobytes |
Source: History of the Atlantic Cable... (an excellent history)
Links to Relevant Websites
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Telegraph Technology
Telegraphy by Wikipedia
Underwater Telegraph Cables photographs of actual cables
1998 Diving Expedition to Recover Early Underwater Telegraph Cables
Telegraphic Codes and Message Practice, 1870-1945
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Perhaps some of our readers may remember having read in the newspapers of the result of last year's (4 June 1890) Derby (horse race) having been sent from Epsom (Epsom Downs Racecourse near London, England) to New York in fifteen seconds, and may be interested to know how it was done. A telegraph wire was laid from near the winning-post on the racecourse to the cable company's office in London, and a telegraph operator was at the instrument (telegraph key) ready to signal the two or three letters previously arranged upon for each horse immediately the winner had passed the post. When the race began, the cable company (Commercial Cable) suspended work on all the telegraph lines from London to New York and kept operators at the Irish and Nova Scotian Stations ready to transmit the letters representing the winning horse immediately, and without having the message written out in the usual way. When the race was finished, the operator at Epsom at once sent the letters representing the winner, and before he had finished the third letter, the operator in London had started the first one to Ireland. The clerk in Ireland immediately on hearing the first signal from London passed it on to (Hazel Hill) Nova Scotia, from whence it was again passed on to New York. The result being that the name of the winner was actually known in New York before the horses had pulled up after passing the judge. It seems almost incredible that such information could be transmitted such a great distance in fifteen seconds, but when we get behind the scenes and see exactly how it is accomplished, and see how the labour and time of signalling can be economised, we can easily realise the fact...
Source:— Project Gutenberg
Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891
Note: Electric telegraph technology of the 1890s was not able to carry a message all the way from London to New York along one continuous circuit. The distance was too great. The best they could do was to get a message through the cable under the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to Nova Scotia, and even this was a challenge. The normal way to transmit a telegram – anything from a couple of words to several hundred words (longer messages such as government documents and newspaper reports of major events would be split into several parts with each part transmitted as a separate telegram) – from London to New York was to key it in Morse code at London while a listening clerk at the eastern end of the transatlantic cable (in this case at Waterville, Ireland) copied it by writing it on paper. At Waterville, when the message was complete the paper copy was handed to a typist at a special machine with a keyboard similar to a typewriter keyboard (except that there were no lowercase letters because all telegrams used uppercase only). This machine recorded the entire message in the form of holes punched in a paper tape. When the paper tape was completed, it was taken to a transmitting machine, which read the tape and produced the series of electrical impulses (Morse code) that went directly into the Ireland end of the transatlantic telegraph cable. The advantage, of using the paper tape to produce the Morse signals for the transatlantic cable, was that the mechanical tape reader could be adjusted much more accurately than the most skilled operator could accomplish, to produce a high-quality signal with the best possible ratio between the duration of the electrical impulses and the duration of the intervals between them. This made the best possible use of the cable by transmitting Morse code as fast as the cable could handle it but not so fast that characters were lost or garbled in transmission. At any given time, several typists were kept busy preparing tapes to keep the cable working at its maximum capacity. At Hazel Hill in Nova Scotia (the North American end of the transatlantic cable used for this special event) a listening clerk copied it again on paper. When this copy was complete, it was handed to another operator who keyed it into the Commercial Cable Company's undersea cable between Hazel Hill and New York. This need, to keep the transmission distance for each stage within the limits of the available technology, introduced a series of delays that were cumulative because at each stage the telegram message had to be completed before the next stage could begin. In this special 1890 demonstration (described above) these cumulative delays were reduced to a minimum by four strategies: (1) by stopping all other message traffic along the system, they eliminated the need for the telegram to include a destination name and address (two or three dozen characters) because there would be only one message in the whole system and everyone in the Commercial Cable Company knew in advance exactly where that one message was to go, (2) by reducing the length of the message to only three characters, (3) by eliminating the written copies at London, Waterville and Hazel Hill – including the Waterville punched tape which for this very special event was bypassed by connecting a high-voltage telegraph key directly to the transatlantic cable, and (4) by starting the retransmission at each stage before the incoming message was completed. Of course, (3) and (4) were made possible by (1) and (2).
— ICS, 26 June 2009
Hazel Hill Historical Mistakes
As everyone knows, some of the information found on the Internet is wrong.
from North America to Europe connected and where the first distress message from the Titanic was received." — Source http://www.whitmania.com/pdpdpd/album/places/Cablehouse.htm There are two major mistakes in this single sentence. (1) "This is the place where the first transatlantic cable from North America to Europe connected..."
This is flat wrong, by 25 years and hundreds of kilometres.
(2) "...where the first distress message from the Titanic was received."
• The first distress message from the Titanic was not received at Hazel Hill.
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Commercial Cable Trans Atlantic Park Hazel Hill
Grassy Island historic site, 1744 Canso Harbour
Canso & Hazel Hill war memorial Canso
Captain Savalette plaque, 1565 Charlos Cove
Charlos Cove historical plaque, 1763 Charlos Cove
Charlos Cove war memorial Charlos Cove
Goldboro war memorial Goldboro
Country Harbour Loyalist Trail, Waterside Site Stormont
Country Harbour Loyalist Trail, Roadside Park Stormont
Cross Roads Country Harbour war memorial Cross Roads Country Harbour
New Harbour war memorial New Harbour
Presbyterian Church honour roll Sherbrooke
St. Mary's Municipality war memorial Sherbrooke
Spanish Ship Bay war memorial Spanish Ship Bay
D'Escousse war memorial D'Escousse
Memorial Field Antigonish
Colin Chisholm Park Antigonish
Sobeys Industrial Monument Stellarton
Workers Monument Trenton
Samsonville centennial plaque Sampsonville
Moose River Gold Mine collapse Moose River Gold Mines
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