TAT-1

[4] A radio-based transatlantic telephone service was started in 1927, charging £9[5] (about US$45, or roughly $550 in 2010 dollars) for three minutes and handling around 300,000 calls a year.

The developments that made TAT-1 possible were coaxial cable, polyethylene insulation (replacing gutta-percha), very reliable vacuum tubes for the submerged repeaters and a general improvement in carrier equipment.

The project was a joint one between the General Post Office of the UK, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation.

At the land-end in Gallanach Bay near Oban, Scotland, the cable was connected to coaxial (and then 24-circuit carrier lines) carrying the transatlantic circuits via Glasgow and Inverness to the International Exchange at Faraday Building in London.

[7] TAT-1 carried the Moscow-Washington hotline between the American and Soviet heads of state, although using a teleprinter rather than voice calls as written communications were regarded as less likely to be misinterpreted.

[8] The link became operational on 13 July 1963 and was principally motivated as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis where it took the US, for example, nearly 12 hours to receive and decode the initial settlement message that contained approx.

[9] In May 1957, TAT-1 was used to transmit a concert by the singer and civil rights activist, Paul Robeson performing in New York to St Pancras Town Hall in London.

A 10-inch record featuring selections from the event entitled Transatlantic Exchange was issued by South Wales area of the National Union of Mineworkers as a fundraiser and protest at Robeson's treatment.