Introduction: Nineteenth century price lists from cable manufacturers are uncommon. This list from Siemens Brothers, dated 187?, includes prices for gutta percha covered cable core containing one, three, and seven copper wires. The prices are in pounds, shillings, and pence (£. s. d.); 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound.
On the original document the second column in each table has an illustration of the section of each wire, but these did not reproduce well, so I have included only representative images here.
The seven-strand conductor was the one most commonly used for submarine cables; the core as supplied would then have to be armoured to make the finished cable. The prices shown for seven-strand core average about £50 per nautical mile, so the cost of 2,000 miles of core for a typical Atlantic cable would have been £100,000. The exchange rate in the 1870s was five dollars to the pound, so the US dollar cost would have been $500,000, the equivalent of about $8 million in 2006 (adjusted for inflation). To this would have to be added the cost of armouring and laying.
Original document copy courtesy of Special Collections, Smithsonian Institution Libraries. |