History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network
1963 Western Electric Lightweight Cable
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History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications |
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1963 Western Electric Lightweight Cable |
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The Western Electric lightweight SD Ocean Cable shown here was made at the company's Baltimore Works, and used for the Florida - Kingston, Jamaica - Fort Sherman, Panama cables of 1963.
This lightweight undersea cable design was developed by the British Post Office in 1951, and was first used in service on the 1961 CANTAT 1 undersea telephone cable between Britain and Canada. Instead of using a central copper conductor and external armouring, as was the standard cable design from 1851 onwards, the lightweight cable had a stranded steel core for mechanical strength, surrounded by a copper conductor layer. The outer cable sheath could then be a plastic jacket instead of the traditional heavy steel armouring wires. Bill Glover notes that later lightweight cables of the US design, such as the 1972 Florida-Bahamas cable for AT&T, were made by Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd. in England. STC had two factories in Southampton, one for British design lightweight cables, the other for the US design. It would appear that Western Electric licensed the US lightweight cable technology to STC in order to focus its own efforts on repeater design and construction. |
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Last revised: 15 January, 2010 |
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