The Danish frigate, Tordenskjold, was used by the Great Nordic Telegraph Company when laying out cables in South-East Asia between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, and Vladivostok. On their return after 666 days of successful expedition the crew was celebrated in Copenhagen. Painting by Vilhelm Andersen, 1919. Belongs to GN Store Nord.
Photo: Jan Friis.
 

Then Post & Tele Museum's new special exhibition „ONLINE - 150 Years on the Net", gives you among other things the chance of getting acquainted with these phenomena when they were really new: When the electric telegraph embraced the world. As far as Denmark is concerned it began exactly 150 years ago.   

The Pioneer Age

When you enter the exhibition, you get acquainted with the telegraph in the making. Many exciting events took place during the decades until the mid 19^th century when discoveries and inventions laid the groundwork for the development of an electric telegraph consisting of electric signals, apparatuses, and cables. See for instance William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone's five needle telegraph and try it - digitally, of course. The exhibition continues with the story about Samuel Morse and the transmission of the first dots and dashes between Washington and Baltimore on 24^th May 1844. The opening was the beginning of the establishment of a large number of telegraph lines in North America and Europe. The first networks had been created. Only the waters separated them, but not for long.               

The Great Leap Forward

In 1851, the world's first submarine cable had been laid under the English Channel. This was the starting signal for the establishment of the first Danish line where the straits had to be crossed. Denmark had been linked to a fast increasing European network.   

Absolute risk-bearing capital and great visions contributed to a high extent to the realization of the dream of connecting Europe to North America by a submarine cable already in 1858. But the joy - and the functionality - lasted for only a month. .

The dream of crossing the Atlantic, however, was not shipwrecked due to the failure. In 1866, it was realized once again and strengthened the financial string-pullers and users in their beliefs in the future possibilities.                                                  

In 1869, the business tycoon, C.F. Tietgen, founded the Great Nordic Telegraph Company which during the following decades was in charge of establishment and operation of connections to Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia - and in the end all the way to Japan and China. In this way Denmark became a junction in a worldwide telegraph network which stretched all the way around the earth with the connection across the Pacific Ocean in 1906.

The many fantastic stories about the world's first internet can be experienced thanks to the museum's large collection of original objects as well as spectacular domestic and foreign loans. In addition there will be numerous pictures and a number of newly developed digital inputs.   

The exhibition „ONLINE - 150 Years on the Net" can be seen at Post & Tele Museum during the period 3^rd Februar - 19^th September 2004.