*EPF512 03/23/01
World Wide Web Began Underwater 150 Years Ago
(Smithsonian exhibition tracks history of global cable network) (580)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- It is commonly said that electronic communications and the Internet make the world a smaller place. But the world began shrinking long before the invention of the Internet, the computer or the microchip. Advances in communication began to diminish the size of the world in 1851 when the first undersea communications cable was laid between Britain and France.

"What the cable did in the beginning ... was create a psychological effect that the world is small," said Smithsonian guest curator Bernard S. Finn. By 1866, transoceanic telegraph cables were laid linking Europe to America. Just a few years later, undersea lines established the first instantaneous communication links to India, Australia, China and Japan. That 19th century communications infrastructure formed the original framework upon which the World Wide Web was built.

"Today, we use underwater cables more than ever," Finn said. Every time we reach overseas via the Internet of the telephone, we tap the underwater web."

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries commemorates the technological ancestors of the World Wide Web and other communications milestones in a Washington exhibition that opened March 23 entitled "The Underwater Web: Cabling the Seas."

The first underwater cable in 1851 created the capability to convey a telegraphed message, but another century passed before cables were laid to carry transoceanic telephone calls. The pace of expansion of the undersea network has accelerated considerably since then. The first trans-Atlantic telephone cable laid in 1956 could carry 48 phone calls at one time. Today the expansion of the fiber optic cable network across the Atlantic allows 200 million simultaneous phone calls, according to Tycom executive Gene Hunt. During an interview at the exhibition preview, he said the trans-Pacific system now being laid will have double that capacity.

Tycom, a U.S. based company, sponsored the "The Underwater Web" exhibition. The company manufactures cables, electronics, and other components for global fiber optic cable networks, and builds those networks.

The technological evolution from electric cables to fiber optic cables occurred in the late 20th century, with the first telephone line laid between two cities in California in 1977. By 2000, 500,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable carried voice and data across the ocean floors. With the pace at which Tycom and other companies are laying more cable, Hunt expects the undersea fiber optic network to encompass more than 600,000 kilometers of cable by the end of 2001.

Hunt says the next phase of development in the worldwide communications network will bring broadband capability into increasing numbers of homes. Broadband allows a greater data transmission flow, providing the opportunity for improved in-home access to media-rich products on the Web such as films and video.

While exhibition curator Finn draws many parallels between the underwater cable network of today and its 19th century predecessor, he says increased public access to global communications is the most significant difference. In the first decades, the cable network was a tool primarily for business and governments. But Finn emphasizes how today's ordinary citizens can use the World Wide Web to access the same communications capability once available only to elites.

Finn said, "It's just an incredible communications medium that has realized the promise" first envisioned in the 19th century.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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