American Inventions and Inventors

by William A. Mowry; Arthur May Mowry

THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

The growth of the telegraph was very much like that of the railroad. In 1844, the first line was opened, as we have seen, between Baltimore and Washington, a distance of forty miles. Within a few years lines were extended to the principal cities of the United States. In 1847, the Morse telegraph was introduced into Germany and rapidly spread over the entire continent of Europe. For the most part the wires were placed by the side of the railroad tracks,—wherever the railroad penetrated the telegraph went also.

Before many years had passed time was in a sense obliterated. Whatever happened in New York might be immediately known in Chicago. Incidents that took place in New Orleans might be narrated in Boston almost as soon as they occurred. London and Rome, Madrid and St. Petersburg, were united by the lightning rapidity of the telegraphic current. Meanwhile London and New York were as far apart as ever. News could be conveyed between the two hemispheres only by the comparatively slow-moving steamers. The next step in the development of communication must be the connecting of Europe with America by a telegraph wire.

The year before the passage of the act by which Congress provided Professor Morse with the means for completing the first telegraph line, he had stretched a wire under the water from Castle Garden, New York City, to Governor's Island in the harbor. He had thus proved that telegraph messages could be sent under water. Ten years later a "submarine telegraph" was constructed, connecting England with the continent of Europe. Other short submarine cables were laid and successfully operated. To undertake, however, to lay a cable from Europe to America, thousands of miles long and hundreds of fathoms below the surface of the ocean, was an entirely different matter. A few enthusiastic men, among them Professor Morse, believed that it could be done, but the majority of people viewed it as an impossibility.

Was there any other way to connect the two worlds by an electric wire? Might it not be possible to build a telegraph line from Europe, starting from some point in Russia, across Northern Asia, to the Behring Straits? Might not a comparatively short cable be laid to Russian America (for Alaska had not then been sold to the United States), which could connect with a telegraph line to be erected across the continent to New York City?

Think of the magnitude of this proposition! In place of laying a submarine cable across the Atlantic Ocean it was proposed to traverse the entire circuit of the earth, except the Atlantic, by a telegraph line. It was proposed to construct across the wilds of Siberia, where no railroad had been built, a telegraph line thousands of miles in length; and, besides laying a cable, to build another line of great length from the Aleutian Islands to the Pacific coast of the United States, and thence across the Rockies, where at that time there was no railroad.

The undertaking was a great one, but a company was formed for the purpose of erecting a Russian-American telegraph. Experienced men were selected from English and American telegraphers and sent to Siberia to push the work. The prospects of success for the great enterprise were favorable when the news arrived that the long-talked-of Atlantic cable was at last laid and in complete working order. The Russian-American telegraph could not hope to compete with the cable, and the project was abandoned.

To Cyrus W. Field belongs the honor of pushing forward to successful completion the Atlantic cable. At the early age of fifteen Cyrus left the parsonage at Stockbridge, Connecticut, the home of his father, Rev. David Dudley Field, for New York. On arriving in the city he obtained employment as an errand boy in the dry-goods establishment of A. T. Stewart. Three years later, when he decided to give up his place as clerk in the store, the proprietor showed his appreciation of the boy's merits by urging him to remain, making him a liberal offer if he would do so. He decided to make a change, however, and was soon engaged with a brother in Lee, Massachusetts.

When young Field was twenty years of age he went into business for himself, and for the next thirteen years was known as one of New York's successful merchants. He then retired from active business, but found it a difficult task to do nothing. After a long voyage to South America, he returned to New York, where he gladly welcomed the opportunity that then came to busy himself.

The Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company had been engaged for a year in the work of erecting a line on that island, preparatory to connecting it with the mainland by a cable. The company was compelled to stop work, however, for lack of the necessary means to continue. The leading member of the company, Frederick N. Gisborne, appealed to Mr. Field for material assistance. After several interviews, in the course of which he became deeply interested in the scheme, Mr. Field came to the conclusion not only that the plan of connecting Newfoundland with the United States was feasible, but also that Newfoundland was the best starting point for a cable to Ireland.