Communication Technology

A photo from history

Below is a photo of a significant event. What clues can you see in it that hint towards what is happening?

1876 First cable connection from NZ to the world

On Monday 21 February, 1876, 30 years after colonisation, a sub-marine cable was opened between Botany Bay (Sydney) and Cable Bay/ Rotokura in Nelson. Laid, owned and managed by the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company Ltd, the cable was New Zealand’s only communication link with the rest of the world until 1902.

What would this have been used for?

It was used to get news in the form of a telegram (morse code), to and from NZ. A ‘press man’ had the job of deciphering the telegrams of world news and then passing that information on to newspapers. People used the telegram service to contact their families overseas. This was before telephones were in NZ.

The story behind telegrams

Below is a picture of a telegraph machine. We can see the button down the bottom right which the user would press to make dots or dashes. This message travelled along a wire (much like how a phone works) and was either listened to by a person and written out or printed straight onto a strip of paper. It then had to be decoded.