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July 27, 1866

The Atlantic Cable is successfully completed. The first working cable, completed in 1858, failed within a few weeks. Before it did, however, it prompted the biggest parade New York had ever seen and accolades that described the cable, as one newspaper said, as “next only in importance to the ‘Crucifixion.’”

Tom Standage quotes similar reactions in The Victorian Internet:

“The completion of the Atlantic Telegraph…has been the cause of the most exultant burst of popular enthusiasm that any even in modern times has ever elicited. The laying of the telegraph cable is regarded, and most justly, as the greatest event in the present century.”

And “Since the discovery of Columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast enlargement which has thus been given it the sphere of human activity.” Notes Standage:

A popular slogan suggested that the effect of the electric telegraph…