History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

Souvenirs made from the 1858 Atlantic cable are by far the most common, but later cables were also made into a variety of decorative items - watch fobs, charms, brooches, pendants, and mounted sections. This page shows a variety of these later items; all are to the same scale.

The two examples above each have a seven-strand (six around one) copper conductor, typical of most cables from the 1850s and 1860s (and quite a few later ones). The pendant on the left has larger diameter wires than the brooch on the right, although both have 17 steel armoring wires and the overall cable diameter is the same in each case, at 17mm.

Pendant: 33mm diameter Silver cable-twist mount

This pendant includes a deep-sea section of the 1865 Atlantic cable, with a seven-strand (six around one) conductor. This was the first cable to use widely separated armoring wires; this design was also used for the 1866 Atlantic cable and one or two others.

These three examples all include a cable section of similar construction: a large center conductor with ten smaller wires around it, and 24 steel armoring wires, overall cable diameter about 11mm.
This ten-around-one design is typical of cables first made in the 1870s by Siemens Brothers in London.

Pendant: Probably gutta percha mount Same conductor design as the three examples above, but with 15 armouring wires. Overall cable diameter about 11mm. Image courtesy of Lesley Garbutt, whose grandfather Samuel Sellers worked at W.T. Henley's from 1896 until 1947

Copyright © 2013 FTL Design

Last revised: 9 March, 2023

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