The first telegraphic connection was established between Washington and Baltimore in the US in 1844. But the idea caught on very quickly. On this side of the Atlantic, a line was installed that same year to span the 19 miles from Paddington Station in London to the neighbouring town of Slough.
International networks followed, with the connection of Dover and Calais in 1851, and the opening of a submarine cable from Holyhead to Howth in June 1852. The big challenge was to join the two continents, and the first reliable connection was established 135 years ago today.
On July 27th, 1866, the steamship Great Eastern stood at anchor off the coast of Canada.
On its deck lay the end of a cable that stretched unbroken almost 2,000 miles across the Atlantic to Valentia Island. A smaller ship laid the final link in the connection from the quaintly-named village of Heart's Content on Newfoundland, and as the two ends of the cable were spliced together, the world looked on to see if it would work - and, yes, it did.
It was not the first attempt. Eight years previously an American financier called Cyrus West Field had staked everything on such a venture, and in August 1858 his dream became reality. But euphoria was all too brief on that occasion; a few weeks later the insulation on the cable failed, the link was broken, and Cyrus Field ended up a ruined man.
It was some time before sufficient confidence returned to try again. In 1864 Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ship was commissioned for the purpose, its fine fittings were ripped out and the floating palace was transformed into a factory whose holds were filled with great coils of steel-clad cable. The wire was paid out slowly, mile by mile, and not without mishap, until the effort culminated in the final connection on July 27th, 1866.
This time the line survived. Almost instantaneously the transatlantic telegraph system created a revolution in the transmission of news and business information.
This developing system of rapid communications, apart from all its other benefits, made forecasting the weather a realisable ambition.
It is only by analysing existing patterns of temperature and pressure over a wide area that the forecaster can identify weather systems and predict their ultimate arrival, and if this basic information takes too long to reach its destination, forecasts will be "history" even before they are prepared.
With the advent of the telegraph, observations from distant parts were almost instantaneously available, and anything seemed possible.