History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

Atlantic Telegraph Company Stock

These shares were owned by Anne Isabella Noel Byron, widow of poet Lord Byron and mother of Augusta Ada Byron, assistant to Charles Babbage.  Lady Byron must have regretted buying the shares in May 1858 for £100, as the transfer certificate to Charles Follen in Boston (below) shows a selling price of £35 in November 1858, two months after the cable failed.  Not that he got a great deal, either, since the shares became worthless in the period between the failure of the 1858 cable and the formation of the new companies which laid the 1865 and 1866 cables. 

This prospectus for shares in the Atlantic Telegraph Company was issued in 1859, presumably to raise capital to replace the failed 1858 cable.

Images courtesy of Jim Kreuzer

Research Material Needed

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You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

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