Tiffany's transatlantic telegraphy doodad - [Past Forward_By Allison Marsh]

On 16 August 1858, Queen Victoria and U.S. president James Buchanan said hello. The conduit of their exchange of pleasantries was the first transatlantic telegraph cable, which connected Newfoundland with Ireland across some 3,200 kilometers. The jeweler Tiffany and Co. sought to celebrate (and cash in on) what was touted as the communications event of the century. And so it bought up surplus cable from the project and turned it into souvenirs. Each 4-inch segment retailed for 50 cents (about US $15 today). Sadly, though, the cable itself was a flop. The queen's 98-word message took almost 16 hours to transmit. The quality of the transmission quickly degraded, and the cable failed entirely after just a few weeks. Tiffany was left with unsellable stock commemorating a failure, and transatlantic communication would wait another eight years for a new, more robust cable to be laid.