6. Improved communications
Electric telegraph wires were set up linking Osborne with the mainland in 1852, using a special submarine cable. Six years later, this technology took communications even further afield. The first electronic message to cross the Atlantic was sent from Queen Victoria at Osborne to the American President James Buchanan on 16 August 1858. Today you can see a section of the original cable that was used to send it on display in the Swiss Cottage museum at Osborne.
The message, transcribed into Morse code, was sent first to Ireland by telegraph. From there, it was sent via the first transatlantic cable to Newfoundland in Canada, and then on to the President. It took three days to be received because of a fault on the cable – but this was still much faster than taking 10 to 12 days for a message sent by ship.
News of the breakthrough was celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic and it was hailed as the start of a new era. By the 1870s, underwater cables had been laid between Europe and America, Africa, India, Asia, and Australia, almost all by British companies, and it was widely recognised as crucial to British commercial and imperial success.
Alexander Grahame Bell demonstrated the newly invented telephone to Queen Victoria at Osborne, in January 1878 –just two years after he patented the device. A telephone was installed in post-room in 1885, and by 1898 there were several wall-mounted hand-sets around the house.
