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That’s not exactly true. The first undersea transatlantic cable was laid in 1854, well before petrochemical coatings. Admittedly, it didn’t last long. But the third cable in 1866 did last quite a while.
The cables were coated in gutta-percha.
This is undersea cabling, not underground, but saying we used to coat them in waxy paper is what I would disagree with.
That's interesting, but also a special case. Those were specifically underwater cables, they needed to be kept wet
And even after we created rubber, we definitely did not coat normal cables in rubber, ever since the properties of latex were discovered we've basically never had enough to fully meet the demand. Rubber is really useful for all sorts of things, and latex trees take a decade to start producing and only produce for another couple decades. Discovering alternatives using petrochemicals was a really big deal because of that
My point stands... The wires we used for early electricity and telephone transmission had minimal insulation, if any at all. Definitely nothing suitable to use underground until much later. Here's a breakdown of the time frames for insulation (and note that cost was a significant part of the decision, even today we don't use weather proof insulation unless the situation calls for it)