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The 'Commercial Cable Company' was founded in the United States in 1884 by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, Jr.. Their motivation was to break the then virtual monopoly of Jay Gould on transatlantic telegraphy and bring down prices (particularly for Bennett's newspaper empire).
The technology was well established by this time and they were able to lay cables from Waterville in Ireland to Canso, Nova Scotia without the major technical problems of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable. Onward connections to New York etc were initially overland and later submarine. Connections from Waterville to Weston-super-Mare in England and Le Havre in France were soon established by the submarine route after initial use of landlines from Waterville onward to mainland Britain.
The company flourished and remained as a trading name even though subsumed by ITT until the 1970s at least. The undersea cables remained in use carrying telegraph traffic until 1962. In 1998 cables were briefly visible going out to sea at Waterville and are probably still there.

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External links

External links

★ The Commercial Cable Company

★ Mackay History

★ Atlantic Cable

★ Photographs of Commercial Cable Company Telegraph Office Hazel Hill, Nova Scotia