The Otranto-Valona Cable and the Origins of Submarine Telegraphy in Italy

This work is born out of the accidental finding, in a repository of the ancient “Oliveriana Library” in the city of Pesaro (Italy), of a small mahogany box containing three specimens of a submarine telegraph cable built for the Italian government by the Henley Company of London. This cable was used to connect, by means of telegraph, in 1864, the Ports of Otranto and Avlona (today Valona, Albania). As a scientific relic, the Oliveriana memento perfectly fits in the scene of that rich chapter of the history of long distance electrical communications known as submarine telegraphy. It is known that, thanks to the English, the issue of submarine electric communication had an impressive development in Europe from the second half of the Nineteenth century on. Less known is the fact that, in this emerging technology field, Italy before unification was able to carve out a non-negligible role for itself, although primarily political. Particularly, two States took advantage of that: the House of Savoia in Piedmont and Sardinia and the House of Bourbon in Sicily and Puglia. Not having at the time the means, the know-how and the money, but aware of the strategic role of their own territories, the two dynamic Italian States were able to skilfully stipulate numerous agreements to lay out some underwater sections. The pacts were made mostly with France and England which had strong and driving needs to keep in contact, through the telegraph, with their colonial possessions. The House of Savoia was the first to use the new technology. Thanks to an agreement with France, in 1854 they began to lay out a submarine telegraph cable along the stretch connecting La Spezia to Corsica. After that, many more cables were laid with the active participation, besides the Sardinian States, also of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This work will consider mainly the decade 1854-1864, a period when the submarine telegraphy business began and developed in Italy.