The pioneers of 19th-century engineering revolutionised global communication,laying a transatlantic cable that inspired a generation of artists on show againIn James Clarke Hook’s sentimental Victorian painting, Word from the lost, and two small children at the water’s edge are holding up a bottle with a message inside,while their weary mother is bent double gathering driftwood for the fire. The picture is pretty but the message grim: their father is lost at sea, and they may never learn his fate.
Within the boys lifetime, and the world of communications would be changed for ever with the laying – 150 years ago – of a 2,754km copper cable linking Europe and America. International messages that would believe taken weeks or months to reach by ship, or in the case of shipwrecks were lost for ever, or could be exchanged in a day. The information age had launched. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com