NOTE TO EDITORS:

Heart�s Content Cable Station site of province�s 
first "miraculous" transatlantic communications event

Kevin Aylward, Minister, Tourism, Culture and Recreation, and Lloyd Snow, Speaker of the House of Assembly, and invite the media to the opening reception celebrating the Heart�s Content Cable Station as a Receiving the World Communications site. The event begins at 2:00 p.m., Thursday, August 2, at the Heart�s Content Cable Station, Heart�s Content.

Newfoundland�s first "miraculous" transatlantic communications event occurred at the sheltered fishing village of Heart�s Content 35 years before Marconi flew his kite on Signal Hill. On July 27, 1866, the largest steamship in the world - the S. S. Great Eastern - anchored outside the little harbour, and her boats brought ashore the end of a submarine cable that stretched all the way back to Valentia, Ireland.

Heart�s Content was connected by overland wires and underwater cable to North America. From that moment forward, communication between the New World and the Old was no longer measured in days and weeks, but in seconds. The cable worked reliably and clearly, unlike earlier attempts during the 1850s. On both sides of the Atlantic, an amazed and jubilant world rejoiced.

In the years that followed, new cables continued to be laid - updating technology, speeding transmission times. A critical disseminator of news, correspondence and information, the Heart�s Content transatlantic cable station operated until 1965, right up until the twilight of the telegraph era.

Today, the red brick 1876 cable building is a provincial historic site, its authentic equipment still in place. In the spacious 1919 room, you�ll half believe the operators have just stepped out for a breath of air.

Media contact: Mary MacNab, Communications, Special Celebrations Corporation, (709) 729-3813.

2001 07 30                     10:55 a.m.