The Commercial Cable Company was founded by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett in 1884 to break the monopoly of Jay Gould in transatlantic communications. Their initial cable was laid from Waterville to Canso with later connections to Weston-super-Mare and Le Havre. In 1897 it acquired the Postal Telegraph Cable Company and by 1914 it owned five Atlantic cables. By 1928 it was controlled by International Telephone and Telegraph through a subsidiary which was reorganised in 1935 with Commercial Cable Company becoming part of the American Cable and Radio Corporation.