One hundred and fifty years ago

One hundred and fifty years ago on 23rd April, a team of merchant seamen began rigging the cable linking the One o’ Clock Gun with the time-ball on the Nelson Monument.

The cable which was over four thousand feet long was manufactured at Newalls’s engineering works.

Robert Stirling Newall who was born in Dundee patented a new type of wire rope in 1840.

Forming a partnership with Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, he set up an engineering works at Gateshead in the north of England where he made substantial improvements to submarine telegraph cables.

In addition to the Dover-Calais cable, laid across the Channel in 1851, approximately half of the Atlantic cable was also manufactured at Newall’s engineering works.

Robert Stirling Newall came to Edinburgh to supervise the rigging of the One o’ Clock Gun cable in April 1861.