At the beginning of the nineteenth century a new industrial Europe was taking shape. Its capitalists knew that time is money and its politicians that time is power. During the Napoleonic wars the French and then the English set up systems of semaphores for transmitting military information but with this exception messages could travel no faster than a horse or ship. The invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s changed all this and within ten years a network of telegraph wires covered England, western Europe and the more settled part of the USA. (Telegraphs were particularly important for the efficient and safe control of the new railways.)

It was thus inevitable that attempts would be made to provide underwater links between the various separate systems. The first cable between Britain and France was laid in 1850. The operators found the greatest difficulty in transmitting even a few words. After 12 hours the enterprise was brought to an abrupt conclusion when a trawler accidentally caught and cut the cable. Undeterred the railway engineer Crampton put up money for a new attempt with a heavier armoured cable of his own design.

Crampton's cable was a complete success and a spurt of submarine cable laying began. On the whole, the short lines worked, but their operators found that signals could not be transmitted along submarine cables as fast as along land lines without becoming confused.