The Atlantic Telegraph

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Auction dateClassic
16.06.2023 16:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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ID 965097
Lot 70 | The Atlantic Telegraph
The Atlantic Telegraph
W.H. Russell and R.C. Dudley, 1866
DUDLEY, Robert Charles (1826-1909), illustrator. RUSSELL, W.H. (1827-1907).The Atlantic Telegraph. London: Day & Son, [1866].

Deluxe issue of this lavishly illustrated commemoration of the successful laying of the Atlantic cable in 1866, with the plates hand-colored on card. Laying telegraphic cable beneath the Atlantic allowed messages to speed back and forth between North America and Europe in minutes, rather than the ten or twelve days it took to cross the ocean by steamer. It is among the very greatest of 19th-century technological achievements. The author of this book was William Howard Russell, a famous war correspondent with the London Times; Russell was the only journalist allowed to travel with Field's expedition. Several of Dudley's plates show the Great Eastern, then the largest steamship in the world, which Field engaged to lay the second and third Atlantic cables; other plates illustrate the laying of the first Atlantic cable, the geographic sites of the cable's endpoints, recovery of lost cables, etc. Origins of Cyberspace 189.

Folio (420 x 292mm). 26 hand-colored tinted lithographed plates each mounted to card, including the title-page; one lithographed chart (title and following text leaf detached and laid in, a little edge-chipping to card, marginal spots to title). Original purple and green cloth, elaborately gilt-stamped on front cover, paper onlay on front cover representing a cross-section of the Atlantic cable (well-rubbed, rebacked). Provenance: The Royal Cruising Club, bequest of Dunbar Kilburn (bookplate).W.H. Russell
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