system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How did the western world lay underwater telegraph lines as early as 19th century with their level of technology?
gpt
The Victorians (as we call them this side of the pond) were actually pretty good at organising large scale engineering projects. These were the same people who built railways across the world too.

Without underwater cables it would take weeks or months to have a decent international conversation so given the importance of a telegraph link, and the fact that the technology existed (The first telegraph was about 100 years earlier, and the first transatlantic ship was about 300 years before that), the rest was a question of will.