PK Timeline

1870 A telegraph cable was laid from Porthcurno to Carcavellos in Portugal by the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company. This linked up with other undersea cables which connected Britain with India.

1872 The companies which had laid the India cable were merged to form one large company, the Eastern Telegraph Company.

1873 A telegraph cable was laid from Vigo in Spain to Porthcurno. Staff cottages were built in the valley.

1877 The trials and tribulations of living and working in such a remote place were highlighted by the letters from the Superintendent at Porthcurno to the Company's Managing Director in London. 'we are in a very awkward fix being without a cook... it is very difficult to get any to come here at all. They won't leave Penzance as this place is too dull for them.'

1878 A telegraph cable was laid linking Porthcurno with the Scilly Isles.

1880 A telegraph cable was laid from Porthcurno to Brest in France.

1891 The Great Blizzard broke telegraph landlines linking Porthcurno with Penzance and bent the telegraph poles so staff volunteered to walk into Penzance with the telegrams. When they got there they sent a telegram back to say they had arrived safely but because the landline between Porthcurno and Penzance had been pulled down by the snow, this message was sent on a cable from Penzance via Malta, New York and Brest.

1895 Land in the valley was purchased and many new staff houses built.

1898 Another cable was laid from Porthcurno to Gibraltar.

1900 By the close of the nineteenth century, Porthcurno was well established in the world of telecommunications as an important working cable station. At this time, submarine telegraph cables were still the only means of long-distance telecommunication as radio was still in its experimental stages.

1901 THE TURN OF A NEW CENTURY...
A cable was laid from Porthcurno to Madeira

1902 Marconi carried out radio experiments from his station at Poldhu on the Lizard and succeeded in sending a 'wireless' signal across the Atlantic.

1906 A cable was laid to Fayal in the Azores via the island of St Helena.

1921 The cable from Bilbao in Spain which had previously landed at the Lizard was diverted into Porthcurno.

1925 In this year, a new system of operating was in place at Porthcurno. Known as 'regeneration' it was designed to enable telegraphic messages on long cable chains to be automatically received, 'cleaned up' and re-transmitted on to the next station, without the need for human intervention. Marconi's radio telegraph network was by this time highly successful and the profits of the Eastern Telegraph Company were falling.

1928 The Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference was held in London. The outcome was the merger of the Eastern Telegraph Company with the telegraph network of Marconi to form a new company, Imperial and International Communications Limited. The immediate effect of the merger at Porthcurno was the addition of two cables which were bought from the British Post Office. They were diverted from their original landing place at Mousehole; one was an old cable which had been laid in 1874 and went to Harbour Grace in Newfoundland. The other had once been a German cable and went to Fayal in the Azores. This left Porthcurno with 14 working telegraph cables and made it undeniably the most important cable station on the British Empire's communications network. In 1934 the name of Imperial and International Communications Limited was changed to Cable & Wireless Limited.

1940 WORLD WAR II BEGAN IN 1939...
Underground tunnels built to house the telegraph station and protect it from attack.

1947 In this year, Cable & Wireless was nationalised by the post-war Labour government. As a result, the British Post Office took over the UK assets of the company with the exception of Porthcurno.

1950 The training facilities at Porthcurno were expanded and the Cable & Wireless Telegraph Engineering College for staff who were headed overseas was officially opened.

1952 A new telegraph cable was laid to Harbour Grace in Newfoundland. This was the last major telegraph cable to be laid by Cable & Wireless due to the development of new telephone cables which took over from the telegraph during the 1960's.

1954 All Cable & Wireless training was transferred to Porthcurno.

1970 After exactly a century as a working cable station, the last telegraph circuit closed at Porthcurno, ending the village's life as a telegraph station. However, Cable & Wireless continued to expand its training facilities with students attending from all over the world.

1993 The Cable & Wireless college at Porthcurno closed.

1997 28 March - The Cable & Wireless Museum of Submarine Telegraphy web site opened.

1998 18 May - The Cable & Wireless Museum of Submarine Telegraphy opened to the public after a major refurbishment.

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