Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Co
1868 John Pender gave up the Chairmanship of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co (Telcon) to enable him to set up his first submarine telegraph company, the Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Co, to link Italy, Malta and Egypt and also to be the first link in the cable to India.
The company took over the concessions awarded to the Levant Telegraph Company and the Mediterranean Extension Telegraph Co which had a cable running from Sardinia to Malta and one from Malta to Corfu.
1868 Paying out the Malta to Alexandria cable began in September 1868. A second cable was laid over this route in 1870. A number of cables were laid by Telcon in the Ionian and Aegean seas for themselves, the Greek and Turkish governments, and Anglo-Mediterranean
1870 Both these cables were duplicated. These enabled telegrams from Malta and Alexandria to be passed into the Italian and European telegraph networks and then via cross-Channel cables to England. In addition a cable laid by Glass, Elliot and Co, and owned by the British Government, running between Malta, Tripoli, Benghazi and Alexandria, was also taken over.
1870 The line to India was completed and celebration was held, in June, at Pender's house in London. The first messages were simply ‘How are you?’, to which came the reply ‘All well’. This exchange took less than five minutes, when communication with India had previously taken several months. Some 700 guests thronged Pender's house and the pavilion erected in his courtyard, ranging in status from the royalty of England and India through assorted European nobility and diplomats, naval officers, and other such people of note.
1871 A cable was laid from Cyprus to Turkey. These were all operated by Anglo-Mediterranean and those owned by Telcon were eventually taken over by Anglo-Mediterranean.
1872 It was agreed that the Company, together with The Falmouth, Gibraltar, and Malta Telegraph Company Limited, the British-Indian Submarine Telegraph Co Limited, and the Marseilles, Algiers, and Malta Telegraph Company Limited, be amalgamated into a new Company, to be called the Eastern Submarine Telegraph Company Limited, or some other name, and to be incorporated with a nominal share capital of £3,800,000, in 380,000 shares of £10 each, with the view of consolidating the several undertakings of the first-mentioned four Companies, and transferring or vesting the assets and property thereof respectively to or in such new Company[1]
Note:
- See: Eastern Telegraph Co for fuller version.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ London Gazette 8 Nov 1872
- [1] The History of the Atlantic Cable and Submarine Telegraph