History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

All America Cables

In 1867 James A. Scrymser's International Ocean Telegraph Company laid the first line from Florida to Cuba, 235 miles.   In 1878 Scrymser incorporated the Mexican Cable Company, and the following year the Central and South American Cable Company, the predecessors of All America Cables, Inc.   The names were changed shortly afterwards to the Mexican Telegraph Company and the Central and South American Telegraph Company.  The cable routes were expanded over the years to link the US to all of South America, and in 1917 the companies adopted the All America Cables name.  Scrymser died in 1918, but the company continued to expand its service, and in 1927 merged with the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT).

Click on each image for a full-size view

Modern transmitting and receiving circuits	1928 50th anniversary medal by Whitehead and Hoag. 212grams, 83mm diameter.
	ALL AMERICA CABLES, INC. A Half Century of Cable Service to the Three Americas 1878-1928 New York, 1928, All America Cables, Inc., 128pp.  A history of the company on its fiftieth anniversary

For two personal stories of life with All America Cables, see
George S. Watson's Remembrances of a Cable Operator
and Captain Frederick Hack and CS All America.

Research Material Needed

The Atlantic Cable website is non-commercial, and its mission is to make available on line as much information as possible.

You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

If you have any cable-related items that you could photograph, copy, scan, loan, or sell, please email me: billb@ftldesign.com

—Bill Burns, publisher and webmaster: Atlantic-Cable.com