[MB][BT] Still Closer Together

Queen Elizabeth II speaking to Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker from Buckingham Palace (CTO). Image TCB 417/E 68997 courtesy of BT Archives.

BT is the world’s oldest communications company, with a direct line of descent from the first commercial telecommunications undertaking anywhere. The below essay is one of seven, the result of a collaboration with Teal Triggs and Brigitte Lardinois from the University of the Arts London and their students in the Design Writing Criticism program.

“Are you there Mr. Prime Minister?” asks Queen Elizabeth II. Perched upon a plush upholstered chair inside her Buckingham Palace office, she is poised with the telephone receiver daintily pressed to her ear.

“Yes, your Majesty,” responds Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker from Ottawa, “And very honoured to be speaking to you.”

Static crackles provide subtle background melodies to the stilted conversation, but the voices of both dignitaries ring clear and strong while separated by thousands of miles of ocean and land. After years of faulty connections between Britain and Canada, the ceremonial exchange between the Queen and the Prime Minister marked the successful inception of the CANTAT transatlantic telephone cable. This new line simultaneously strengthened the Empire’s reach while symbolically bringing countries closer together.

Long distance calling has altered our perception of space and size. “How the Atlantic has shrunk!” exclaimed a Montreal Herald headline on initial overseas telephone calling to the UK. A phone conversation from across the world can bring the voice on the other end of the line nearer, if only for a brief chat between two world leaders. The inauguration of long distance cables has enabled an ocean away to feel closer with every call, a sentiment reflected in the discourse surrounding the telephone.

Built in 1961, the CANTAT established telecommunications links between the United Kingdom, Canada, and the rest of the world. The British and Canadian governments set out to create the cable in attempts to capitalize on the growing demand for overseas access. The 2,150-mile project successfully connected the two nations, and it served as the first link in the Commonwealth Round-the-World cable. Though it hosted just 72 calls at one time, the line allowed for improved sound and increased intimacy through conversations as “technology put an end to distance” (Collins 1977).

“A skillful and highly imaginative enterprise,” notes the Queen. Diefenbaker stutters his response across the cable, clearly nervous as he addresses his nation’s monarch while 150 politicians huddle around him to eavesdrop in the Château Laurier grand hall. Their calculated dialogue and perfect posture calls attention to the grandeur of the event, both parties carefully choosing words that embody a sense of unity within the Commonwealth. However formal the conversation may have intended to sound, neither ends of the line can hide their amazement over such a close connection. Diefenbaker’s apprehensive “Hello?” is eased when the network succeeds and the Queen’s voice arrives in Ottawa, eager to get in touch with her subjects.

The Round-the-World cable was restricted to Commonwealth nations. It was threaded across Canada and into the Pacific Ocean, proceeded to Australia, through New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and back to England. Maps of long distance cables produced during these early years by the General Post Office artfully demonstrate this unifying network. Illustrators chose not to draw to scale but instead to visually represent the perceived distance between different nations through their connecting lines. The strength of Britain within the telecommunications industry was implied through these interpretive maps. The UK was often drawn at the centre, connected to its dominions by thick, black inked cable lines that moved them closer together on the page and in the minds of viewers. Although Canada and the United Kingdom remained the same distance apart, the realization of a way to converse quickly and easily across the Atlantic changed the emotive mileage between them. The expanse of the Commonwealth, and the rest of the world, was brought within reach by long distance calling — it was only a phone call away.

Calls between the two countries rapidly increased upon the opening of the CANTAT, jumping 35% each year for the next decade. The cable enabled the British government to fluently connect with its Commonwealth nations. The broadcast conversation between Queen Elizabeth and the Prime Minister drew a solid line between Britain and its Empire, tightly tying together nations that were physically distant but symbolically close: “for many years the oceans have separated the younger households of the British Empire from the Motherland,” said Canadian Premier Mackenzie King during a radio broadcast from Canada to the UK, “their waters no longer divide us.”

Queen Elizabeth II observed this removal of distance and the resulting sense of closeness in regard to Britain’s connection to its dominions. During the inaugural call across the CANTAT, Her Majesty notes that the cable lines “bring the people of Canada and the United Kingdom still closer together.” Bringing people closer together, keeping in touch and contacting from afar — these commonly used phrases describing telephony demonstrate the changed understandings of proximity that result from long distance calling. While the notion of decreased space was articulated so many years ago at the establishment of these cables, it is still valid in more contemporary communications vernacular. A 1980 BT pamphlet urges customers traveling in Canada to “Get Closer, Make a Call” by phoning home to the UK. There are no longer oceans fracturing the Empire — there is merely the time it takes to dial a number.

The ways by which people contact each other have changed through the elimination of supposed boundaries of distance; the concept of community has been broadened to embrace a global perspective. As the Queen recognized on that opening day, transatlantic cable operations bring the United Kingdom and Canada still closer together. Along with the other Round-the-World cable destinations, the CANTAT was “a splendid example of cooperation between the Commonwealth,” continuing to support England as the crux of the union and its communications. Long distance calling has offered contact between the entire world within a keypad; the Queen, and everyone else, can make a call, get in touch and get closer.