‘Le Direct’ and the French Cable Station Museum: Joseph Manas

This lecture is virtual.

This year, the Marconi-RCA Wireless Museum features “Chatham on the Air”,
celebrating May 17, 1920 when RCA inaugurated service between Chatham
Port and Norway, finally realizing Marconi’s dream of sustainable trans-Atlantic
wireless communication. But Marconi’s competition, undersea cable, was
already well established by then, having been developed and made
commercially viable by the late 1800’s. From 1891 until 1959, the French
Cable Station was the American termination point for an undersea telegraph
cable that came directly to Orleans, Massachusetts from Brest, France. It was
called “Le Direct”, a point-to-point cable almost 3,200 miles long completed in
1898, and an engineering marvel.

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