just tonights thoughts........

Hello. Yes I have been offline for a few days. First. thanks for all the emails. Sorry not replied to you all.. The winner of those GB stamps was from Italy. The answer was something like .........

On 26th September 1956 was the first day of commercial service of the Transoceanic Telephone Cables which were fitted with amplifiers installable 3 miles below the ocean surface. These amplifiers could boost the delicate voice signals with their higher frequencies across the ocean.

Built around an electron tube especially developed for this purpose, the amplifiers or repeaters, encased in flexible multi-metal housings, were spaced at 4-mile intervals along the cable. The cable also had an outer sheath of armor wires to provide strength and protection against abrasion and an extra copper sheath to keep out marine worms, which were known to plague telegraph cables. Laying each of the two cables that made up the systems (one for each direction of communication) took weeks and was carried out during two consecutive summers. The first day of commercial service, September 26, 1956, saw a 75 percent increase in transatlantic telephone traffic.

Now actually, that was not his reply, so you, from Germany, also get a runner up prize :-)

Lots of other emails mostly saying same, although there were some other interesting things that I found out also happened in 1956. :-)

No more on stamps... just this... I seem to have shown a few recently, but I hope you enjoy this and in memory of a truely wonderful man.