Indo-European Telegraph Department
The Indo-European Telegraph Department was a division of the British Indian Government . The department was responsible for the transmission of telegraphic messages between Britain and India. To this end, a submarine cable was laid between Fao in what is now Iraq and Karachi . The submarine cable was connected to the line going out of London , which led via Paris and Vienna to Baghdad and on to Fao. On the Indian side, it was linked to an overland connection to Calcutta.
The operating license for the communications link through Persia was granted to the Indo-European Telegraph Department by Naser ad-Din Shah on February 6, 1863. The connection was opened for commercial communications on March 1, 1865 and remained in operation until the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. After the interruption caused by the war, the connection could not be resumed until March 1923. It operated until March 1931.
When the line went into operation, the transmission of messages was initially quite slow. One reason was that the messages in the individual stations could first be recorded in writing and then forwarded. The transmission time for the first message from London to Calcutta was 6 days, 8 hours and 44 minutes.
In competition with the telegraph connection leading through the Ottoman Empire , the Siemens brothers set up a second communication connection from London via Berlin , Warsaw , Odessa and Tbilisi to Tehran , which was then carried on to Bushehr and connected to Karachi with the submarine cable. The connection was put into operation on April 12, 1870. Siemens had specially developed its own telegraph apparatus that considerably simplified and accelerated the transmission of messages. General William Baker, a member of the Indian government in London, sent the first telegram over the line to Calcutta and had the answer in hand after an hour. To build and operate the communications link, the Indo-European Telegraph Company was founded as a stock corporation in London with the participation of Siemens.