07/28/1866
The evening before, the Great Eastern, after a journey during which she laid almost 3,700 miles of telegraphic cable, arrived in the late afternoon hours in a foggy Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. The cable was quickly landed and connection made. At 8:43 a.m. on this next morning, an exchange of messages between Ireland and Canada, at a rate of 7.36 words a minute, proved that the transAtlantic cable was now in operation, and commercial and private use soon commenced. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation:
Chester G. Hearn, Circuits in the Sea: The Men, the Ships, and the Atlantic Cable (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 228-229.