Telegraph message note

Zofia Wyszomirska-Noga

This is a Telegraph message dated 16th August 1858, that was sent from the Royal Institution of Great Britain to America: the first transatlantic telegram sent to the U.S. The fact that it took 16 hours to send this message puts our today’s very fast and liquid world in a different perspective! On August 16, 1858, England’s Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic telegram to the U.S. President James Buchanan. George Peabody and partner Junius Morgan, J. Pierpont Morgan’s father, were prominent investors in the cable project. The message took 16 hours to send by Morse code through 2,500 miles of cable. The queen’s telegram read as follows:

The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the two places whose friendship is founded upon their common interests and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus directly communicating with the President, and in renewing to him her best wishes for the prosperity of the United States;

I was assessing the condition of this rare and unique object. The longest preserved piece is 10 metres long! The custom made storage was designed to avoid further damage of the object and it was finally safely rehoused into its new box. Rehousing was necessary because the previous mounting method resulted in a lot of tension in areas of fold, and subsequently caused them to become very fragile.

Zofia Wyszomirska-Noga
Conservator of Art and Books

2020-08-04

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