[.ca] A Thread Across The Ocean (ISBN 0802713645)

Persistence of vision:
The first transatlantic cable was a Victorian era triumph that enchanted the world with its glory. The story is one of the courage and persistence of its director-in-charge, Cyrus Field, born in 1819 to a prominent family of Massachusetts. Cyrus began the charge to span the ocean when he was only 33 years old, and after several attempts, finally managed to overcome all obstacles 14 years later. The story that unfolds is one that extolls the virtuous and honorable men who made it all happen, giants whose word was their bond. Mr. Gordon tells the story with all the enthusiasm of a child, unsullied by any trace of a fashionable cynicism or awareness of the betrayals to come. The book is nicely illustrated with lots of photos and diagrams that contribute mightily to the immediacy of reading it. I especially enjoyed the chapter in which the final triumph occurs, and, I kid you not, at one point actually had chills run along my spine. This is a story that will awe and inspire you. Cynics and phonies need not apply.

Heroic Efforts In An Age Of Heros:
This is a great story about the gutsy application of new technology in the pursuit of ideas considered laughable until they are proved doable. The conjunction of the development of steam ships, with the discovery of a substance called Gutta Percha, with the invention of telegraphy, reduced the time to get a message across the Atlantic from 8 weeks to near instantaneous. This book tells the gutsy story, complete with relevant as well as entertaining details.

Enjoyed the read, wished for more:
It was a lot of fun to read Gordon's narrative. My only complaint was the brevity of it all, but that's the problem with a page-turner, they are over too quickly. The story is retold in terms that might remind you of the 'moon program'. A non-techie evangelist's son gets caught up in an impossible dream, but find the people that can do the job and succeeds. It is a bit too simple, but works. Like JFK, our hero Cyrus Field refuses to give up. As in 'The Right Stuff', we wade through one disaster after another, all the while waiting for victory to yield her treasures. The biographical pictures of various inventors, quacks and robber-barons ought to fascinate any but the die hard soap-opera fan. Sorry, the only marital issues I noticed were questions about how our heroic men stayed married while obsessed with this project. In very un-politically correct style, there isn't a single woman mentioned in a non-supportive spousal role. Despite my enjoyment, I wish the book had been about 4 times longer. There was little real detail regarding the competition, science, inventions or economics. There is another page-turner available, 'Signal & Noise: A Novel by John Griesemer. It covers exactly the same territory, with more character development and female roles. Otherwise, there isn't much more than material published by the participants. The Atlantic telegraph (1865) by William Howard Russell; The story of the Atlantic Telegraph by Henry M. Field and Submarine Telegraphs: Their History, Construction and Working by Charles Bright. All three are long out of press.

Atlantic Cable 1866 in Historical Context:
Betty: Why is the Atlantic cable story worth while? Frank: We've forgotten how important the Atlantic cable was and what U.S. life was like in the 1850s and 60s. This book reminds us that Europe then dominated the world. Britain was its political and financial center. The U.S. was a far away backwater country separated from Europe by a wide and stormy North Atlantic. Betty: It took weeks for letters, goods, and people to cross the Atlantic on a fast ship. Then amazingly on July 27, 1866, on the fifth attempt over a 12 year period, the Atlantic cable, spearheaded by U.S. businessman Cyrus West Field, instantly connected New York with London. Frank: Author John Steele Gordon concluded that the Atlantic cable electrified people in 1866, changed history forever, helped make the U.S. a major player on the world scene, and created the beginning of the world as a global village. Betty: This great 19th century engineering feat was an epic struggle costing millions, involving British and U.S. politicians, financiers, ships, sailors, technicians, and scientists. Frank: The Atlantic cable was an early instance of international cooperation. It followed decades of U.S.-British angers over the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and frictionable Civil War incidents. The Atlantic cable had failures and disappointments but it finally ended in a history-changing victory. Betty: Historians have compared the successful completion of the transatlantic cable, July 27, 1866, to the U.S. landing on the moon, July 1969, 103 years later. Frank, tell us: What U.S. and British national factors hastened the laying of the cable? What technical developments, inventions, and economic factors made the Atlantic cable possible? Frank: Americans in the early 1800s were little better off than the ancient Greeks or Romans in travel time and in communications. Christopher Columbus took a month to reach the New World in 1492. The Mayflower took 23 days to cross the Atlantic in 1619. When the Atlantic cable was completed, the average ship using sail or steam still took several weeks to cross the Atlantic. Betty: A century earlier the Industrial Revolution changed life by making goods and services faster and cheaper. Frank: Weaving cloth, the basis of the British economy, was advanced by British inventor John Kay's flying shuttle and by the inventors of the spinning jenny and the water-driven power loom. Scotsman James Watt's steam engine increased textile factory output and improved the economy. Betty: George Stevenson's steam locomotive the Rocket on the Manchester to Liverpool railway spread railroads. Frank: The middle class grew. New wealthy factory owners, open to ideas, replaced landed gentry in influence. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, peace enabled Europe to turn its energies from war to commerce and industry. Betty: In the U.S., Eli Whitney's cotton gin, a rotating drum with spikes, efficiently pulled cotton fiber from its seed. It made cotton king in the South. New York City, which became the U.S. financial center partly by financing cotton sales abroad, grew in wealth and power. Frank: Understanding electricity, essential in developing the telegraph, was hastened by Benjamin Franklin's key hanging from a kite in a thunder storm. Betty: Lightning from clouds to earth was recognized as the release of built-up differences in potential. Chemical batteries were developed that gave carbon a positive charge and zinc a negative charge. Frank: A connecting copper wire caused an instant flow of electric current. England's Sir William Watson in 1747 proved that an electric current could travel a long distance along a wire. Betty: On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse used a sending key to make and break an electric circuit. This start and stop of electric flow at the receiving end, which had a highly coiled wire, made it an electromagnet which attracted and repelled a piece of metal, producing a click-clack sound. Frank: The Morse code: dot-dash (or dit-dahhh) for A; dahh, dit dit dit for B, dit dit dit dahh for V, and so on, made telegraph messages possible. Morse's first message on the telegraph wire between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., was: "What Hath God Wrought?" Betty: Another change: Canals replaced slow and costly hauling of mid-west farm products over the Allegheny Mountains to eastern markets. The Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson River at Albany gave cheaper, faster access along the Hudson River to New York City. Frank: Between 1800 and 1860 the amount of U.S. commerce passing through New York City rose from only 9% to 62%. New York City became the biggest boom city in the world. In 1835, on the upswing of that boom, 16-year-old Cyrus West Field left his native Stockbridge, Mass., to seek his fortune in New York City. Betty: Unlike his seven older brothers who attended Williams College, Cyrus Field persuaded his Congregational minister father to let him seek work in New York City. There a brother arranged his apprenticeship in A. T. Stewart's dry goods department store, the biggest in New York City, which later became John Wanamaker's. Frank: After his apprenticeship at A.T. Stewart's department store, Cyrus W. Field joined his brother Matthew Field, a partner in a Massachusetts paper mill. From bookkeeper, Cyrus became a leading salesman of paper supplies in New York state and throughout New England. Betty: Field then became a junior partner in E. Root & Co., a New York City paper wholesaler. That firm failed after the Panic of 1837. Field acquired its paper stock. Although not himself liable, he settled the firm's debts at 30 cents on the dollar. His own firm, Cyrus W. Field and Co., became the leading U.S. wholesaler of paper and printing supplies. Frank: Wealthy, living in New York City's fashionable Gramercy Park, Field soon paid all of E. Root & Co.'s debts, although not obligated to do so. The golden reputation he earned enabled him later to raise millions from investors for the Atlantic cable. Betty: Still in his 30s, Field gave the management of his own firm to others and looked for new worlds to conquer. In November 1853, his brother Matthew introduced him to a Canadian engineer Frederick Gisborne. That meeting changed Field's life. Frank: Canadian Frederick Gisborne, a self-taught engineer, headed the Nova Scotia Telegraph Co. Nova Scotia, with its main city of Halifax, is a Canadian peninsula in the Atlantic, northeast of Portland, Maine. To Nova Scotia's northeast is Newfoundland, fourth largest island in the world. Its main city, St. John's, is North America's nearest point to Ireland, England, and Europe. Betty: Gisborne was trying to build a telegraph line from St. John's, southwest to Cape Ray, Newfoundland, there to connect through a submerged cable under Cabot Strait in the Atlantic to Cape Breton Island; and continuing into Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was already connected by telegraph lines to Portland, Maine, Boston, and New York. Gisborne, out of money, his cable incomplete, was bankrupt. Frank: Field asked: Why are you trying to build your telegraph line from St. John's to Nova Scotia? Gisborne replied: So that ships carrying news from Europe landing at St. John's can telegraph that news to New York City, saving a day or two. Betty: Cyrus Field was not impressed. For European news to reach New York one or two days earlier was not worth his time or trouble. Later, at home, looking at his world globe, Field realized that to send an almost instant telegraph message by a cable submerged in the Atlantic Ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland and then to New York, would be worthwhile and could be profitable. Frank: November 9, 1853, the day after talking to Gisborne, Field wrote Samuel F. B. Morse to ask if an Atlantic cable was a practical possibility. Yes, answered Morse. He had experimented with an underwater telegraph line in New York harbor in 1843 and was confident it could be done. Morse offered to help. Betty: Field also wrote to Lt. Matthew F. Maury, head of the U.S. Navy Charts and Instruments and an expert on ocean winds and currents. Lt. Maury replied that the U.S. Navy had just completed a survey of winds and currents and made depth soundings in the most traveled U.S. to Europe shipping lanes. Maury ended: "_between Newfoundland_and Ireland the practicality of a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic is proved." Frank: Needing capital Cyrus Field turned to his Gramercy Park neighbor Peter Cooper. Cooper had made a fortune in a glue factory and then built the first locomotive for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Cooper was then organizing Cooper Union, a tuition-free night technical school for working adults. Field's cable plan stirred Cooper's yearning to serve mankind. Betty: To Cooper, Field's Atlantic cable idea fulfilled the prophecy that "knowledge shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the deep." Cooper told Field: you find other investors and I will support you. Frank: Field persuaded three wealthy men to become investors: 1-Moses Taylor, controller of New York City's gas lighting industry; 2-Chandler White, who made a fortune in the paper business; and 3-Marshall O. Roberts, a major ship owner. Betty: The investors, with Frederick Gisborne, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Cyrus Field's attorney brother, pored over maps and charts. They absorbed Gisborne's telegraph company into their newly formed New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Co. Frank: The Newfoundland government hoped for economic benefit. It granted the new company a 50 year charter and some financial aid. On May 8, 1854, Peter Cooper became president, Cyrus Field was chief operating officer, and other officers were named. They committed themselves to raise $1.5 million, a huge sum then, but as problems mounted, not nearly enough. Cyrus Field wrote 14 years later: "God knows that none of us were aware of what we had undertaken to accomplish." Betty: In early 1855 brother Matthew Field supervised 600 workers completing the telegraph line across southern Newfoundland. Cyrus Field went to England for advice about the cable. He spoke to John Watkins Brett, expert in submarine telegraphy who, with his brother Jacob Brett, had in 1851 successfully laid a 22 mile telegraph cable under the English Channel between Dover and Calais, France. Frank: John W. Brett suggested a cable of three twisted copper wires, each covered with a new insulator, called gutta-percha. Bundled together, the wires were wrapped in tarred hemp, covered with another layer of gutta-percha, and the whole sheathed in galvanized iron wire. Betty: Gutta-percha came from trees grown in Malaysia. Unlike rubber, gutta-percha did not break down in cold salt ocean water but hardened, yet was supple enough, a perfect insulator. Frank: The cable, made in England, was placed on the steamship Sarah L. Bryant. which headed across the Atlantic to lay the cable under the Cabot Strait, south of Newfoundland. Betty: In Canada Field chartered the James Adgar to tow the Sarah L. Bryant across the Cabot Strait as it laid the cable. Field entertained aboard the Sarah L. Bryant the Peter Coopers, the Samuel Morses, Field's two daughters, and two nationally known clergymen. Buffeted by storms and distracted by the partying guests, the towing ship's Captain Turner rammed the Bryant. Frank: The cable kinked and to prevent its weight already in the water from dragging the Bryant under, the cable was cut and lost. Betty: It was a painful lesson. The delicate maneuver to be learned was how to coordinate cable laying speed and braking mechanism with cable weight, ship's speed, wind gusts, weather changes, and shifts in currents. It had to be learned by experience again and again. Frank: Failure to lay a cable under the Cabot Strait in August 1855 was a $351,000 loss. The cable was finally laid under the Cabot Strait in late 1856 and the telegraph line completed from Newfoundland to New York City, about 1,000 miles. Total cost, $500,000, a third of the firm's capital. Field returned to London in 1856 to raise more money. Betty: The British government, wanting rapid communication with its far-flung empire, backed Field with cable laying ships and a _14,000 annual subsidy (that was $70,000 a year). Frank: This subsidy gave British government messages priority over private messages. The exception was--U.S. government priority over British government, if U.S. support matched Britain's support. Betty: Encouraged, Field, in London, formed the Atlantic Telegraph Co. (October 1856) and sold shares worth _350,000 (that was $l.75 million). Frank: The U.S. Congress hesitated to match Britain's offer. Some members doubted that the cable would work. Others said that the rich cable backers should pay their own way. Others were traditionally anti-British. The Senate passed the needed legislation by one vote, the House by a few more. Pres. Franklin Pierce signed the aid bill on March 3, 1857. Betty: Atlantic Ocean soundings made by a U.S. and a British ship determined the best cable route. Frank: Added to the team were British chief engineer Charles T. Bright, who chose Valentia Bay, Ireland, as the best cable connection port. Betty: Also added as advisor was Glasgow University Professor William Thomson. William Thomson, described by later historians as half Albert Einstein-half Thomas Edison, invented the galvanometer, which precisely measured electric current variations in the cable. Frank: No single ship at the time was big enough to carry the new, thicker, heavier 2,500 mile long cable. In July 1857 the cable was divided between the USS Niagara and the HMS Agamemnon. Samuel F.B. Morse's plan was followed: both ships to start from Ireland, one laying its cable, a splice made in mid-Atlantic, with the other ship laying its part of the cable to Newfoundland. Betty: Both ships set out from Ireland, each loaded with the 1,250 mile long carefully coiled cable. August 6, 1857: the cable was caught in the braking machinery. It broke. It was spliced. And the brake speed was adjusted. Frank: August 8, 1857: 85 miles of cable was laid. August 10: the electric signal in the cable faded, was revived, and the cable, after being laid 400 miles, broke and sank. The first Atlantic cable attempt of 1857 had failed. Betty; Cyrus Field returned to a New York City hard hit by the financial Panic of 1857. His own paper firm was in debt. Always optimistic, Field went to Washington, D.C., and got the U.S. Navy to lend him the USS Niagara and the USS Susquehanna. Frank: The Navy also assigned him the Niagara's engineer William Everett as the Atlantic Cable Co.'s chief engineer. Engineer Everett built more efficient cable laying and braking systems. Glasgow University's Professor Thomson built a more efficient marine galvanometer to measure cable electric currents more precisely. Betty: Spring and summer 1858: Second cable laying attempt. Engineer Charles Bright's plan was followed: one ship laid cable from Ireland, the other from Newfoundland. They were to meet and splice their ends of cable together. June 13, 1858: As the two ships approached each other, the worst North Atlantic storm in memory buffeted them mercilessly. Frank: Coal bins on deck broke loose. Coal dust, mist, fog, and mountainous waves caused a cable break; 45 seamen were in sick bay, some with broken bones. The second cable laying attempt of 1858 had failed. Betty: In London, gloomy and defeated, the Atlantic Cable Co. chairman and vice chairman resigned. They advised their fellow board members to sell all assets and liquidate the company. Staggered, Field used all of his persuasive powers to hold the remaining board members. True, he told them, 300 miles of cable had been lost. But there is still enough cable on the ships to complete the job. Let us try again. Frank: Try again they did in 1858, with short-lived success. The cable worked for two weeks. Some 400 messages were exchanged. The signal then disappeared. Elatio

A case study in industrial development:
Gordon has written an easily-read book about the laying of the first Transatlantic cable. He has done so by concentrating on the people involved and the times they lived in, rather than the technology - although that is well enough explained that as a reader you feel you "understand" what the determined group of men trying to lay the cable was up against. As an industrial project developer myself I found it a fascinating story. It would make a great case study of how NOT to go about a project. The first attempt to lay the cable was based on sheer enthusiasm and little else. Slowly, the approach became more professional until at the start of the final attempt I was thinking: "If they can't do it now, it could not be done." On the other hand, I had to admit that anybody trying a similar "leap of faith" commercialisation of a new technology in this day and age would in all likelihood not have been allowed a second try at it, let alone a third. I certainly recommend this book. Apart from the fact that it is well written and lucid, I think it is important that people understand the difficulties that developers face in bringing new technology to commercial use. If you think this was hard, just imagine what a poor so-and-so has to go through nowadays to get permission to, say, set up a renewable energy power plant - even though most of us want the product (but not made in our backyards...)