The bold effort in Siberia to complete the first global telegraphic circuit

Abstract

A century and a half after Peter the Great had created his window on the West at St Petersburg, a handful of future oriented Occidentals and Russians sought to use the opportunity offered by the Russian territorial expanse to globalise a new communications technology. Thwarted in its efforts to lay submarine cables in the Atlantic between North America and the Old World, the Western Union Telegraph Company arranged with Russia to circumvent the obstacle via an overland route joining the Okhotsk and Baltic seas. There were unexpected economic, political, and social consequences to this ambitious and complex technological venture.