haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu (99700000) (02/20/91)
There used to be a magazine titled "Western Union Technical Review". WU's cable technology, including amplification, was published in there. With all due credit to WU, and they did some fine engineering, the AT&T effort was a lot more extensive. WU's undersea amplifier was a single amplifier located not too far offshore, primarily to get some gain over the noise from all the other cables passing nearby. AT&T had to provide a whole string of amplifiers the entire length of the cable.