The fastest way across the Atlantic isn't a cable
The finding
In the cornfields near Chicago, antennas send tiny messages to Europe by bouncing them off the sky. No glass cable can match them. Behind them is a 168-year race, from the first wire across the Atlantic in 1858 to hollow-core fiber.
Sources 13
- thomson1855 · archiveW. Thomson, "On the Theory of the Electric Telegraph", Proc. Royal Society, 1855
- cookson2000 · pressG. Cookson, "The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable: Eighth Wonder of the World", History Today, 2000
- ieee-tat8 · archiveIEEE Milestone: TAT-8, 1988
- poletti2013 · paperPoletti et al., "Towards high-capacity fibre-optic communications at the speed of light in vacuum", Nature Photonics, 2013
- britannica-reuter · webEncyclopaedia Britannica, "Paul Julius, Baron von Reuter"
- laughlin2013 · paperLaughlin, Aguirre, Grundfest, "Information Transmission between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York", 2013
- hibernia · pressSubmarine Networks, "Hibernia Express connects New York to London in under 58.95 ms"
- spectrum2018 · pressD. Schneider, "Wall Street Tries Shortwave Radio to Make High-Frequency Trades Across the Atlantic", IEEE Spectrum, 2018
- stac2023 · dataSTAC Report: Latency & Throughput of RAFT Chi-Lon Links, 2023
- fcc-rm11953 · filingFCC RM-11953 (Shortwave Modernization Coalition petition, 2023): NTIA comments; ARRL Newsline, 2026
- sciencedirect2024 · paper"Potential of hollow-core fibers for submarine systems", Optical Fiber Technology, 2024
- petrovich2025 · paperPetrovich et al., "Broadband optical fibre with an attenuation lower than 0.1 decibel per kilometre", Nature Photonics, 2025
- microsoft2025 · webMicrosoft Azure Networking Blog, 2025-09-23
Terms 0
No new terms in this sheet.
Corrections
None so far. Spotted a mistake? Tell us in the comments under the video.