Today in 1851, the Submarine Telegraph Company opened its telegraph service between Paris and London.  In 1850 telegraphic engineer John Watkins Brett and his brother Jacob Brett had laid the first telegraph cable between England and France. After a French fisherman cut the cable, thinking it was a new kind of seaweed, in September 1851 the brothers installed an armoured cable that lasted for many years.  Messages were transmitted through the submarine cable from Calais to Dover, the narrowest point in the English Channel, from which they were passed to the South Eastern Railway for telegraphing to its London Bridge Station and then by messenger to the telegraph company’s office.