FEATURE
Steam Tug Goliath laying the Dover to Calais Cable, 28 August 1850 (Illustrated London News)
WHAT HAVE THE BRITISH EVER DONE FOR US? PART 1 BILL BURNS AND STEWART ASH
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any of our readers will be aware of the recent decision by Nokia to sell 80% of its stake in Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to the French State, represented by the Agence des Participations de l’État (APE). Thanks to its Anglo-French connections, with manufacturing sites in both Calais and Greenwich, ASN can trace its history back to the very start of the submarine cable industry. For the first hundred years
58 SUBMARINE TELECOMS FORUM MAGAZINE
or so, submarine cables was very much a British story. The concept was invented in the UK, and the British dominated both the supply and network operations industries over that period. Along the way, British engineers invented a number of things that are fundamental to today’s optical fibre submarine systems, including submarine cables themselves, polyethylene, lightweight deep-water cables, rigid repeater housings, the linear cable engine, the optical-cable plough,