Inside this locket is a slice of the world's first transatlantic telegraph cable. It ran underneath the Atlantic ocean, allowing for instant communication between America and England. The locket bears the dates 1865 (the year of the first failed attempt to lay the cable) and 1866 (the successful year of completion). Made of gutta percha, hemp, twisted copper and iron, this miracle of communication technology ran into many initial problems. Maybe the worst was when the two companies producing the cable failed to communicate about the direction the wires should twist. Miles of cable were made at great expense, only to prove they'd UNTWIST underwater. Oops. Eventually the cable worked. Queen Victoria's initial morse code message - 98 words - took 16 hours to send to president James Buchanan. It was met with an outburst of wild enthusiasm, and a short-lived trend of telegraph jewelry was born.