Cable station history, Cornwall.

[broadgage]

This site may be of interest.
https://atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/Porthcurno/

About long distance submarine cables for telegraphy.

Not strictly radio, I know, but it IS vintage and IS communications related.

[AC/HL]

Interesting to me. I spent a week at the Cable & Wireless Engineering School, now long gone it seems.

[Dave Moll]

The museum, now occupying the remaining buildings and tunnels, is worth a visit if you're in the area.

[Aub]

Originally Posted by AC/HL

Interesting to me. I spent a week at the Cable & Wireless Engineering School, now long gone it seems.

Yes, moved to Birmingham in the early nineties.

Aub

[Aub]

Sorry, I meant Coventry.

[Radio Wrangler]

One of the jobs I had to do was to design custom equalisers for the cables from the station equipment to the test racks at five cable termini. Rodilles to Penzance (presumably Porthcurno?), Alkmaar to Lowestoft, and Romo (Denmark) to Lowestoft.

So there may be a little bit of my work in that museum, connecting the SLMSs and switches to the real telecomms stuff.

David

[ms660]

An early map showing the station:

https://maps.nls.uk/view/105996808

A later map showing a later station building:

https://maps.nls.uk/view/105996811

My only claim to fame lies at Rospletha just South of the station, barrowing countless cubic yards of concrete for the building conversions to holiday lets etc... The summer of '89 was a hot one there, phew!

Lawrence.

[Radio Wrangler]

The concrete'll last longer than the equalisers did. They were for the old FDM over coax cables

David

[ms660]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

The concrete'll last longer than the equalisers did. They were for the old FDM over coax cables

David

It ought to, well over 1ft deep in places, amazingly I never slipped off the gangway planks shifting that lot.

Lawrence.

[AC/HL]

From memory, the museum tunnel entrance is shell proof steel!

Designing things like the valve repeaters for TAT1 (Transatlantic Telephone number 1) must have been a proper job, all 51 one of them. And with advances in technology the same cable almost trebled its capacity. And it was just one wire, power by constant current, return by the earth, marvellous.

[broadgage]

Regarding the old telegraph cables that are terminated at the cable station, does anyone know if any of these cables are still in working order ? Not much use in todays world I know, but COULD one still be used ?

Could one connect a suitable battery and telegraph key and mirror galvanometer or other receiving device and actually send messages to say Gibraltar or elsewhere.

Are these cables all corroded, or broken by storms and ships anchors, or are any still intact and merely out of use because telephony and digital data is needed these days rather than Morse telegraphy.

If a cable was still serviceable, it could be an interesting historical reenactment to send and receive messages as was done 100 years ago, perhaps with original equipment.

[mole42uk]

Last time I was there, the cables appeared to be 'terminated' on the beach!

[stitch1]

Originally Posted by Aub

Yes, moved to Birmingham in the early nineties.

Aub

Originally Posted by Aub

Sorry, I meant Coventry.

That’s correct but was closed (sold to Coventry Uni I think) before C&W were bought by Vodafone. I attended many courses there, nice place but had nothing on Porthcurno with its telegraph history and private beach, but it was a long drive.


I have this set of phone cards commemorating 125 years since the foundation of the Eastern Telegraph Company.

John

John

[PJL]

Similarly rusted cable ends here in Hope Gap, near Seaford. We did visit the termination building when it was open for a day, just rusty armoured cables emerging from a solid floor running to some similarly rusty connection boxes, it is now privately owned and used as a beach hut. There is some info here https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/Eastbourne/index.htm although no mention of the termination hut we visited though.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
I found this fascinating YouTube video about the undersea cables that come ashore in Cornwall. I didn't realise just what a network it was!
I visited Porthcurno and the cable hut as well as the telegraph museum in the early 2000s. BT were promoting their 'Connected Earth' at the time with visitor centres at Porthcurno, Goonhilly Down, and elsewhere.
Cheers, Pete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_nnUbX7uuQ

[peter_scott]

That is fascinating and a little surprising to be public domain.

Peter

[ms660]

Lots of familiar views for me.

It's all top secret in Cornwall.

Lawrence.

[Oldcodger]

Originally Posted by merlinmaxwell

Designing things like the valve repeaters for TAT1 (Transatlantic Telephone number 1) must have been a proper job, all 51 one of them. And with advances in technology the same cable almost trebled its capacity. And it was just one wire, power by constant current, return by the earth, marvellous.

Merlin- bit of a fallacy that TAT1 was a single cable. It was in fact two cables ( one for each direction of transmission) with repeaters in each and powerfed from both ends at circa 4.5kv. The original cable( actually it was a specialised type of coax tube0 carried conventional 3.4khz channels with a GRP OF 84.08khz ,but the channels were reduced to 3khz ( and GRP=84KHZ) to alow for more capacity. From memory ( wish I paid more attention now) additional space was found for more circuits ,and provision for telex etc and two channels were used in a multiplex arrangement for broadcast circuits.
TAT1 was contained in it's own subterranean chamber in a hillside at Gallenach bay, outside Oban. it used USA AT&T equipment , and if you are interested this site is dedicated to the project. https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/1956TAT-1/
TAT1 was built in the cold war period , with it's own air conditioning and standby power plant, but I never saw any provision for clean drinking water or any provisions for the human element who would have been behind the steel so called bomb proof doors although the redline between the west and RUSSIA passed through our circuits.
Cantat1 terminal was built as a surface building on the same site, with bi directional cable using GEC/STC? equipment. Again from memory, the bandwidth was 36 x 3.4khz circuits , later changed to 48x 3khz .

[Boulevardier]

Originally Posted by Tractorfan

Hi,
I found this fascinating YouTube video about the undersea cables that come ashore in Cornwall. I didn't realise just what a network it was!
I visited Porthcurno and the cable hut as well as the telegraph museum in the early 2000s. BT were promoting their 'Connected Earth' at the time with visitor centres at Porthcurno, Goonhilly Down, and elsewhere.
Cheers, Pete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_nnUbX7uuQ

Agreed, a fascinating bit of research. Thanks for posting, Pete.

Mike