to the International Exchange at Faraday Building in London. At the cable landing point in Newfoundland the cable joined at Clarenville, then crossed the Cabot Strait by another submarine cable to Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. From there the communications traffic was routed to the US border by a microwave radio relay link, and in Brunswick, Maine the route joined the main US network and branched to Montreal to connect with the Canadian network. Opened on September 25, 1956, TAT-1 carried 588 London-US calls and 119 London-Canada calls in the first 24 hours of public service. The original 36 channels were 4 kHz. The increase to 48 channels was accomplished by narrowing the bandwidth to 3 kHz. Later, an additional three channels were added by use of C Carrier equipment. Time-assignment speech interpolation (TASI) was implemented on the TAT-1 cable in June 1960 and effectively increased the cable's capacity from 37 (out of 51 available channels) to 72 speech circuits. TAT-1 carried the Moscow-Washington hotline between the American and Soviet heads of state, although using a teleprinter rather than voice calls as written communications were regarded as less likely to be misinterpreted. The link became operational on 13 July 1963 and was principally motivated as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis where it took the US, for example, nearly 12 hours to receive and decode the initial settlement message that contained approx. 3,000 words. By the time the message was decoded and interpreted, and an answer had been prepared, another – more aggressive – message had been received. In May 1957, TAT-1 was used to transmit a concert by the singer and civil rights activist, Paul Robeson performing in New York to St Pancras Town Hall in London. Due to McCarthyism, Robeson's passport had been withdrawn by the United States authorities in 1950. Unable to accept numerous invitations to perform abroad, he stated "We have to learn the hard way that there is another way to sing". The 15 minute connection, which required a music quality circuit, cost £300 (~£6,500 as of 2015). Robeson performed this way again in October 1957 when he linked up to the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl, Wales, fulfilling an invitation to the eistedfodd there. A 10-inch record featuring selections from the event entitled Transatlantic Exchange was issued by South Wales area of the National Union of Mineworkers as a fundraiser and protest at Robeson's treatment. After