View Looking Aft from the Port Paddle-box on the Deck of the Great Eastern: Showing the Trough for the Cable, etc. , 1865?66, Watercolor with touches of gouache, Sheet: 8 15/16 x 6 1/4 in. (22. 7 x 15. 9 cm), Drawings, Robert Charles Dudley (British, 1826?1909), One of the 19th century's great technological achievements was to lay a telegraphic cable beneath the Atlantic, allowing messages to speed back and forth between North America and Europe in minutes, rather than ten or twelve days by steamer