This short industrial film was commissioned to celebrate the laying of the first transatlantic telephone cable -- TAT-1 -- between Oban in Scotland and Clarenville in Newfoundland. It was a massive operation, requiring the cooperation of the British and Canadian governments and AT&T.

John Sutherland's movie is more about the work of laying the cable than the technical details of the cable itself. There is some discussion of the technical details, but how they actually work -- the repeaters, for example -- is ignored.It remains the mysterious and scientific-sounding, but without discussion of how it works.

it's just the sort of movie that I would have seen as a child and thought I now understood how these things work. It doesn't, of course, but is fascinating nonetheless.

TAT-1 was retired in 1978.