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TAT-3

transatlantic telephone cable

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 17, 2025
Entity authorityQ7669418 ↗
Source-derived summary

TAT-3 was the third transatlantic telephone cable, in operation from 1963 to 1986. It had 414 kHz of bandwidth, allowing it to carry 138 telephone circuits (simultaneous calls). It was 3,518 nautical miles (6,515 km; 4,048 mi) long, connecting Widemouth Bay in Cornwall, England to Tuckerton, New Jersey in the United States. It was owned by AT&T and GPO (now BT). It cost £12m in 1960 equivalent to £240,454,824 in 2025.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “TAT-3” as transatlantic telephone cable. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around TAT-3, transatlantic and telephone.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1963, 1986, 1960, 2025—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1963. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with TAT-3, transatlantic and telephone providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “TAT-3”, the useful work is to connect “transatlantic telephone cable” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7669418. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1986, 1960 and 2025.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “TAT-3”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow TAT-3 primary sources, TAT-3 archive and TAT-3 research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “TAT-3” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.