The museum holds a large collection of cable samples dating from the beginning of undersea telegraphy to modern day fibre optics. One of the earliest is a section of the first cable laid between England and France in 1850. The collection also contains samples of early telephone cables including the first Transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) which became operational in 1956 and carried 36 telephone channels. Fibre optic communications was first developed in the 1970s using pulses of light to send messages around the world. The collection includes samples of early fibre optic cables up to the present day.