Coiling the Cable in the Large Tanks at the Works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company of Greenwich, 1865 1865

Curator: So, here we have "Coiling the Cable in the Large Tanks at the Works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company of Greenwich, 1865," by Robert Charles Dudley. It’s a drawing and print currently residing here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: My immediate thought? Cold. An enormous, impersonal space despite the figures occupying it. There’s an isolating effect with those enormous tank-like structures. Curator: You pick up on something important there, I think. It depicts the factory floor where transatlantic telegraph cables were manufactured. What we see is, quite literally, the material infrastructure that shrinks the world through global communication. The labor involved is palpable. Editor: Precisely. Note the backbreaking work suggested in the men's postures, their overalls…they're participants in the industrial age. They’re literally winding themselves into this story of connectivity. It feels very much like the individual being subsumed. Curator: It makes one ponder about labor itself, doesn’t it? What do you think about the almost panoramic perspective used here? It almost feels stage-like and theatrical. Editor: I'm compelled to think about class implications too. We're presented with a detailed, almost objective depiction of a working-class environment during the Victorian era. Dudley meticulously portrays a space that, while contributing immensely to Britain's global power, remains stark and unforgiving for those within it. Curator: A world made smaller by a line, created within even larger enclosures, a landscape of labour with these quiet men caught up in a massive historical undertaking. The very nature of connection being forged seems almost oppressive here, doesn't it? Editor: Yes, and looking at the overall production through visual language here – the material is all. I am left reflecting on those early communications, and what those nascent exchanges across the Atlantic signified given the human effort expended. It gives them heft, literally and figuratively.