Ever since the French Cable was first connected between Brest, France, and North America in 1869, it’s been the source of many a milestone in the world of communications.
So it should really come as no surprise that the Orleans-based French Cable Station Museum, which was first connected to France in 1898, became the 191st recipient of the the Milestone Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) on Sept. 6.
Jim Jefferies, president of the Washington D.C.-based IEEE, presented the plaques, one in English and another in French, to Museum President Joe Manas following a one-hour ceremony at the Route 28 site. Matching plaques were also installed at the other end of the line in Brest, France.
The IEEE gives out the award for significant engineering achievement. Past awards have gone to NASA, MIT, and the Marconi Station. The Sept. 6 dedication was organized by the Providence Section of the IEEE and the Providence Chapter of the Oceanic Engineering Society.
According to the dedication plaque, LeDirect “provided communication between Europe and North America without intermediate relaying. In a remarkable feat of oceanic engineering, the cable was laid in the deepest waters of the Atlantic Ocean between Brest and Orleans. When completed in 1898, it spanned 3,174 nautical miles, making it the longest and heaviest cable in service.”
The first connection ran from France to St. Pierre (a French island just south of Newfoundland) to Duxbury, in 1869.
“That was a start of a new era,” noted Rene Garello, a past president of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. “The world started to shrink.”
However, Duxbury’s busy waterways weren’t ideal for the cable. The station was moved by the French Telegraph Cable Company, or Cie Francaise des Cables Telegraphiques, to North Eastham in 1879.
The Eastham site, located next to the former Three Sisters Lighthouses, proved to be inaccessible, and it was moved just over a decade later to Orleans. It was at the Orleans site that the news of Charles Lindbergh’s airplane crossing the Atlantic was first received in 1927.
The Orleans station drew many of its workers from St. Pierre. Some of their descendants have worked at the museum as volunteers in recent years.
When Nauset Beach was shelled by a German U-boat in July of 1918, the original target of the enemy sub was the cable.
“The German submarine had a cable-cutting device on it,” noted IEEE historian Ron Brown, also a French Cable Station worker descendant who spoke at the event. “They didn’t succeed, but they did shell the town.”
On occasion, the undersea cable would be severed, as it was once during an earthquake. That would result in the station employees being out of work for a week or so.
In 1940, the station was closed due to the security concerns of World War II. It reopened from 1952 to 1959. A local group bought the Orleans property from its French owners and opened it as a museum in 1969.
Other speakers for the event included Cathy Ann Clark and Michael Geselowitz of IEEE, and Rob Munier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Tours of the museum were offered throughout the afternoon.
“I accept this award for all the volunteers and the station, and all the supporters,” Manas said. “I’m just overwhelmed by the whole ceremony.”
Don Wilding, a writer and public speaker on Cape Cod lore, can be reached via email at firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow him on Twitter at @WildingsCapeCod and on Facebook at @donwildingscapecod.