Author’s Note
121 Words
Author’s NoteIn 1870 the British invented submarine cables and laid one via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Suez and Aden to Bombay.
Keeping them open and the safety and the privacy of these lines gave much anxiety. It was one of the great technical tasks of the British Empire.
It was a miracle that British could keep in touch with the homeland and with the opening of the Suez Canal it meant that India was not at the other end of the world, but only seventeen days by sea and four shillings a word standard rate by cable.
By 1890 the Empire was encompassed by cables and the Colonial Office telegraph bill had risen from eight hundred pounds a year to eight thousand.
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