The main series consist of contracts including for the supply, laying and repair of cables (TCM/6), cable engineers' logbooks (TCM/8) and ships' logbooks (TCM/10). Other records include memorandum and articles of association 1964-1920, papers relating to the SS GREAT EASTERN and the first Atlantic cables, publicity material and books and pamphlets.
The collection also contains records of the Gutta Percha Company, H W Jewesbury and Company (indigo and colonial brokers) and personal papers of Willoughby Smith, the company's Managing Director who worked for the firm between the early 1850s and 1888.

Administrative / biographical background
The Gutta Percha Company was formed in 1845 by Thomas Bewley, who had obtained a license from Charles Hancock for his gutta percha bottle stoppers in the same year. The Gutta Percha Company made a variety of items using the material, and eventually developed it as an insulator for electrical cables, with a patent for a wire-insulating machine obtained in 1848. These cables were first tested for submarine use in the English Channel in 1850 with a 25 mile cable between Dover and Calais. In 1864 the Gutta Percha Company merged with one of its cable suppliers, Glass, Elliot and Company, to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon). Glass and Elliot had supplied the Atlantic Telegraph Company with the material for the cable laid between Ireland and Newfoundland in 1857-8: the insulation on the cable failed making the attempt unsuccessful. In 1864 Telcon was contracted by the Atlantic (later Anglo-American) Telegraph Company to lay a cable between England and America. One of the company's directors, Daniel Gooch, arranged for the SS GREAT EASTERN to be chartered for Telcon: the ship was particularly suited to this role as the ship's holds were large enough to store the enormous continuous runs of cable required for the task. An initial attempt in 1865 was unsuccessful, but a second attempt the following year was successful. The company then made and laid a transatlantic cable between France and America in 1868 and, in 1870, a cable between Bombay and Suez. Telcon went onto make a number of additional transatlantic cables and cables connecting the key ports of the British Empire in the late 19th century, and their customer base expanded to include a range of international clients in the twentieth century. The company was acquired by British Insulated Callenders Cables Ltd in 1959. Please see ‘The Telecon Story 1850-1950’ (PBC1178) for more information. Additional records of the company are held at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, the Cable & Wireless Archive and the Science Museum Library and Archives.