While in Newfoundland last week I stumbled upon this cable station and learned the story of a man who’s dream it was to run a cable clear across the Atlantic.

The Heart’s Content Cable Station is a provincial historic site, where, after a few mishaps, Cyrus Field’s telegraph cable reached out to Valencia, Ireland. Cables were already in place across America, which allowed for messages to be spelled out in Morse code (a series of dots and dashes) by telegraph, but before 1866 you would have had to wait patiently for weeks for messages to travel to Europe and back by sea (gasp!).

Learn more about the transatlantic cable and the mammoth ship that carried it, the Great Eastern, from PBS or Wikipedia.

Image by April Colosimo