Porthcurno Telegraph Museum

Cable Testing Room

Porthcurno Telegraph Museum's Cable testing room houses a comprehensive collection of electrical test gear. This room also houses a local history display of objects and photographs describing life in past times in the parish of St Levan.

The equipment in the cabinet behind you (with a picture above of a man in a white coat using the apparatus ) was Porthcurno Telegraph Station's main test set. Still in working order, it was used to locate faults and breaks in submarine cables.

The pressure gauges that you can on the cables coming up through the floor into the cabinet by the door were used to record the carbon dioxide pressure in the land lines that ran between the tunnels where the instruments were and the cable house above the beach where the signals were initially received. The leather-bound ledgers in the display case to your left, were used at Company HQ to record the expenses of each individual cable station.