Porthcurno is a little known place on the coast of the UK. It is located about four miles away from Lands End in Cornwall.  Although this seemingly insignificant place is rarely  talked about in history books it had a world wide impact that still affects us today. Porthcurno was originally a traditional fishing village with never more than a couple of hundred people living there for centuries.  However, this changed in 1870 when the first submarine telegraph cable  was landed there.This was part of an early international link stretching all the way from the UK to India.

Submarine telegraph cables were a world wide revolution at the time. This was  because of the lack of communication technology at the time. For example, it could take weeks to months to send a message from the UK to India, which caused a major disconnect between colonies and their overlords.  It also caused disconnects on a the smaller scale stopping families from knowing whats happened to each other.  The first successful trial of this technology was in 1839 however it was not commercially viable until the 1850s-1860s. When this started happening messages were sent thousands of times faster. For example, this revelation allowed a message to be sent from the UK to India in only took nine minutes.