On November 24, 1959, the French Cable Station in Orleans, Massachusetts closed after sending the following message: "Have a happy Thanksgiving. Station closed."
The cable from France to North Eastham, via Newfoundland, had been laid in 1879, and the station then moved to Orleans in 1891. In 1898, a 3,200 mile direct cable ("Le Direct") from France to Orleans was installed. So by 1905, when the photo shown in the above postcard was taken, the French Cable Station was already a fixture on the Cape Cod scene. It later transmitted the news that Lindbergh had landed in Paris in 1927, and that the Germans had taken Paris in 1940. Today it serves as The French Cable Station Museum.
An 1892 Boston Globe article describes the operation of the station:
A good cable operator can keep up a steady pace of 25 words a minute, although of course on occasion and by spurts this rate is often exceeded; yet an operator who can do his 25 a minute is a skilled hand.
The French cable, after plunging into the Atlantic from the Cape Cod shore, makes straight off to sea for the island of St. Pierre, where there is another station, where the messages are repeated to Brest, on the French coast. The fact of the repetition, however, causes no delay worth consideration. . . .
Supposing operators at both ends are sending messages at the rate of 25 words per minute, that is to say, 50 words a minute both ways, each cable would have an hourly capacity of 3000 words, or 30,000 words per hour for the entire 10 - 72,000 for the entire 24 [hours] of each.
When it is understood that all these cables are kept pretty busy night and day, it will be possible to appreciate in a measure what the telegraphic communication between the United States and Europe has grown to be.
Illustration Credits and References
This article from Cape Cod Today describes the history of the station.
