The Cable: The Wire that Changed the World

This is the compelling story of how the first transatlantic cable was laid—the people who dared, the people who lost, and the people who profited. It tells of the dramatic attempts to cross the Atlantic during the 1850s and 1860s, from the first failed attempts to the project that finally succeeded. An inconceivably audacious attempt to overcome the forces of nature in the name of human progress and technology, the laying of the cable was to change forever our means of communication. The speed with which information could now be transmitted was unprecedented and revolutionized the face of news and the global economy.

An import from Britain, Cookson's account of the first transatlantic telegraph is more phlegmatic, and perhaps less dramatized, than historian John Steele Gordon's A Thread across the Ocean (2002). Whenever the cable laying goes awry, Cookson notes the fact, whereas Gordon shades the event with the heave of the ship or the snap of the parting cable. But in its quiet manner, Cookson's effort is just as appealing a saga. Assigning credit for the ultimate success in 1866 is one of her narrative's organizing principles; another is the financing of the endeavor. A chance encounter in a New York hotel lobby set it in motion in 1854, when a Newfoundlander telegraph engineer (Frederic Gisborne) was put in touch with a rich paper manufacturer (Cyrus Field) seeking a new world to conquer. Field persuaded fellow financiers to put up the cash, but they ran out of money by 1858 and yielded the project to British interests--though Field was an ever-present proselytizer. Handsome illustrations add value to Cookson's exposition on a popular topic. Gilbert Taylor
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