In short
Throughline Podcast Episode Summary: The Internet Under the Sea
Episode Overview Title: The Internet Under the Sea Hosts: Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei Description: This episode explores the crucial infrastructure that supports the global internet: the undersea cables running along the ocean floor. The discussion centers around the story of Cyrus Field, who believed in the potential of these cables and fought to connect the world through this fragile technology.
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Key Themes
The Importance of Undersea Cables
- Critical Infrastructure: The episode highlights how undersea cables, rather than satellites, are the backbone of international internet connectivity.
- Fragility of Cables: These cables are thin and fragile, yet critical for transmitting vast amounts of global internet traffic. Roughly two to four cables break each week due to various causes including accidental severing by ships.
Historical Context
- Cyrus Field's Vision: The narrative centers on Cyrus Field, who in the 1850s envisioned a transatlantic telegraph cable that could revolutionize communication between the United States and Europe.
- Challenges Faced: Field faced immense skepticism about the feasibility of such a project and battled numerous technical and financial challenges.
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Key Figures
- Cyrus Field IV: Great-great-grandson of Cyrus Field, providing personal anecdotes and reflections on his ancestor's legacy.
- Bill Burns: Former BBC engineer and founder of Atlantic-Cable.com, offers insights into the historical significance of undersea cables.
- Allison Marsh: Technology historian who contextualizes the 1850s industrial age and its communication landscape.
- Ben Roberts: Expert on subsea cable economics, shares his experiences building cable networks in Africa.
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Major Discussions
The Saga of the Transatlantic Cable
- Initial Setbacks:
- First Attempts (1858): The first cable attempt faced several technical failures and public skepticism, resulting in widespread criticism and questioning of its legitimacy.
- Cyrus Field's Persistence: Despite setbacks, Field's determination led to renewed efforts to establish a reliable communication line.
- Technological Innovations:
- The Great Eastern Ship: In the 1860s, Field utilized the massive Great Eastern ship, capable of carrying the necessary equipment for laying the cable.
- Improved Cable Design: The subsequent cable was designed to be stronger and more durable, addressing previous failures.
- Success and Legacy:
- Final Success (1866): The successful laying of the cable marked a significant milestone in communication history, drastically reducing message delivery time from weeks to mere hours.
- Long-term Impact: The episode concludes with reflections on how Field's vision paved the way for the global interconnectedness we experience today.
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Key Takeaways
- Invisible Infrastructure: The cables that make up the internet are largely unseen but are crucial for global communication.
- Historical Significance: The development of undersea cables was a groundbreaking technological advancement, akin to modern achievements like space exploration.
- Continued Relevance: The challenges of laying and maintaining these cables remain pertinent in today's increasingly connected world.
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Conclusion This episode of *Throughline* effectively conveys the history and significance of undersea cables, intertwining personal narratives with technological insights. The story of Cyrus Field exemplifies the impact of vision and perseverance in overcoming skepticism and technical challenges. The legacy of this technology continues to shape global communication in the modern era.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:18On the evening of February 18th, 2024, two ballistic missiles were fired at the Rubimar, a massive cargo ship that's longer than the Washington Monument. It was just the latest series of attacks by the Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group operating in Yemen that's been firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis were trying to disrupt trade in the Red Sea, one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. It's a passage between continents that reduces the time that it takes a ship to travel from Europe to Asia considerably. So for the Red Sea, a huge amount of freight is traveling that way.
0:59Dozens of ships pass through these waters daily, along with billions of dollars worth of cargo. And the Rubimar was one of those ships.
1:25And the crew abandoned ship, dropped anchor because they were abandoning ship, and then the ship drifted around on its own. Being pushed around aimlessly by sea currents and wind.
1:54Then, less than a week later, at the bottom of the Red Sea, something broke.
2:09Internet traffic that is going from Europe to Asia. Cut. I'm sorry, the W-NAP dial is not in service at this time. And then also the other place that was impacted was Europe to Africa, to the east coast of Africa. In this presentation, I dug into the numbers and as you can see here. Joey, it looks like you've frozen.
2:35In the span of minutes, millions of people from Kenya and Uganda all the way to Vietnam and Singapore had their internet disrupted. Close to three quarters of the internet data flow was interrupted between Europe and Asia. It was unclear as to what had happened straight away. But after a few days, it did become clear.
3:07Three physical cables. They were all cut around the same time very shortly afterwards, within minutes of each other.
3:18The undersea cables that carry all that internet traffic had been cut. It seems that the anchor that had been dropped must have cut the cables. You know, the way to the ship would just cause that anchor to plow through the cable. It would drift along, find another cable, cut that, and then cut another one. Okay, right now you might be thinking, wait a minute, I thought internet connections happen over satellites. In fact, almost all intercontinental internet traffic, the overseas connections that let us do things like make payments, watch movies or FaceTime our friends, actually go through cables that run along the ocean floor.
4:00The internet relies upon these subsea cables ultimately. So the whole thing to work is a global network, global system.
4:10if you were to look at a world map overlaid with these cables it looks kind of like a messy connect the dots picture with cables crossing every major ocean and if you took all the cables in the world and connected them it could wrap around the earth 36 times but these cables go largely unnoticed because we can't see most of them those fiber optic cables are actually extremely fragile. My name is Ben Roberts. Ben has been building cable networks in Africa for the past two decades. They're about the thickness, just slightly more than a human hair. So they're very, very small. In the deep ocean, it can be maybe the diameter of a dime coin, you know.
4:55Out of the 600-some cables that exist, two to four of them break every week. And it doesn't take much to break them. It could be as simple as a fisherman's boat anchor accidentally severing one, or it could be an intentional sabotage. Either way, it's hard to tell, especially when these cuts happen in the depths of the ocean.
5:20A cargo ship lingered off Taiwan's coast for days, ignoring repeated calls from the Coast Guard. Then a vital undersea cable went dark. Weeks ago, two data cables were also cut, one between Finland and Germany and another between Lithuania and Sweden. The European Union says the suspected culprit vessel is part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet of oil tanks. The prosecutors charge the ship's captain, a Chinese national, with damaging critical infrastructure near Taiwan's southwestern coast. NATO's mission, Baltic Sentry, is a rapid response to an escalating new threat. Multiple cables cut in recent months.
5:59It's part of what I would just call the invisible infrastructure. These cables are an absolute essential technology that are also incredibly fragile. So fragile that in the beginning, not many people thought it would actually ever work. I'm Ramtin Adabloui. Coming up, the story of a man who did think they could work and the lengths he went to to try to connect the world.
6:35This is Giselle from Portland, Oregon, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR. I only recently discovered the show, but it has quickly become my favorite podcast. In these difficult political times, I'm just so grateful for the show and the context that it gives to really complex contemporary issues. It's a good reminder that nothing exists in a vacuum. So thanks.
7:03Part one, the cable cabinet.
7:10January 1854, New York City.
7:35In the 1850s, you're really getting into sort of peak industrial age. Trains and steamboats transformed how people traveled, did business, and communicated.
7:50We start having, you know, telegraph. Your messages can get places further as long as they are already connected. This is Allison Marsh. She's a professor at the University of South Carolina and a historian of technology. So everything's changing right before your eyes. However, to get a message across the ocean, it would still be by chip. That would be the fastest. So that's not exactly speed mail in any way. Let's say you wanted to send a letter across the Atlantic Ocean, say from London. So if you wanted to get a message to New York, you put it on the mail ship. This is Bill Burns. I'm a former BBC broadcast engineer.
8:36And he's the founder of the website Atlantic-Cable.com, which is a deep dive, so to speak, on the first transatlantic cable. And usually about two weeks to New York and then two weeks back again. It's like if you texted a friend. Hey, you want to get dinner? And then had to wait a whole month for their reply. One month just for one exchange. But that would all change because of one bored and wealthy man, Cyrus Field. I gather he was about 5 '9", which may have been on the slightly tall side. Also estimated 140 pounds or so. My name is Cyrus W. Field IV. Yes, Cyrus Field IV. He is the great-great-grandson of the first Cyrus Field that we're talking about.
9:31He was described as wiry, and he apparently talked super fast as well. President Lincoln apparently couldn't understand him in person very well and told him, I don't understand you, send me a telegram. Sarasville was born in 1819 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and he was the son of a clergyman, a minister. Apparently, fire and brimstone, kind of no fun, part of that puritanical work ethic. and that had a big influence on him. He's one of many, many children. He was extremely squirmy and always running around, very high energy. He was bright. He was good at math. At age 12, he started keeping the family books, running the finances for the family.
10:23And he was the only boy in that family that didn't go to college. And then he's trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
10:39So he left home at age 15, and I think he moved to New York with$8 in his pocket, which you could live on for a little bit in Manhattan at that time, but not an awful lot. And becomes an apprentice in a mercantile shop. And initially an errand boy, and worked his way up. Cyrus would later move on to work at a paper company. And he became a partner in that company and unfortunately went bankrupt and he ended up in charge of things. He negotiated on the debt to get it cancelled or paid off as far as possible. And then he started his own paper business. And the timing was great. Stationery had just become a big deal and people were mailing letters and envelopes.
11:24Companies were issuing bonds and wanted to do it on fine paper. And his business just absolutely took off.
11:37He makes a fortune. He makes a quarter of a million dollars by the time he's 34. I still think a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money today. Imagine what that is, you know, 150 years ago. It's the equivalent of about$10 million today. He is limited. And just to give you an idea of his character, when he was successful, he went back to all those creditors who had no claim on him personally. And he paid them in full with interest. And that really helped cement his reputation. And that helped him greatly going forward. And during this time, he married, started a family, and apparently he worked all the time except on Sundays.
12:22But it took a toll on his health. And after something like 14 years, I guess, in the paper business, his doctor told him he needed to retire. Which he did. And was apparently kind of bored. Until the day a stranger came knocking at his door. Mr. Gisborne left Halifax and came to New York in January 1854. On a cold winter evening, Cyrus opens the door to find a man named Frederick Gisborne, who came all the way from Canada looking for help. Gisborne was an engineer who was leading a project to build a telegraph cable line from the island of Newfoundland in the most eastern part of Canada to the North American mainland.
13:11The hope was that this cable would move messages more quickly than a ship making the same trip. But his investors abandoned him and he was left holding the bag along with a debt that would have been about$2 million today. So Gisborne runs out of money, comes down to New York looking for investors. And so it happens that Cyrus's brother, who is also an engineer living in New York, bumps into Gisborne in a hotel lobby. hears his sad story and tells Gisborne to go see Cyrus. Finds Cyrus, goes to his house, talks to Cyrus, tells him his plan. Accordingly, he came and spent an evening describing the route of his proposed telegraph and the points it was to connect.
14:00And the story goes that he wasn't terribly impressed with that idea. But there was something about it that got Cyrus' wheels turning. After he left, Mr. Field took the globe which was standing in the library and began to turn it over. And he had a big floor globe, which is now in the Smithsonian. And Sarah says, well, you know, if we're going to have a connection to Newfoundland, why couldn't we just extend it across the Atlantic? It was while dust-studying the globe that the idea first occurred to him, that the telegraph might be carried further still and be made to span the Atlantic Ocean. And so Cy looks at his globe and says, why don't we do a cable?
14:44Let's take it all the way. Cyrus wasn't meant for the couch potato life. And this project could not have gotten him out of that retirement slump faster because this transatlantic cable idea was bigger than big. Over 2 ,000 miles long, in fact. It had never been done before. and nobody had ever even attempted to. But if this idea was possible, it would be weeks faster than having a mail ship cross the Atlantic. Also, the U.S. could have closer ties to foreign governments. Business overseas could be conducted at a much greater speed. In Cyrus's eyes, the possibilities were incredible. He really thought this would help prevent wars from breaking out.
15:31You know, taking two weeks to get a message back and forth from the old world to the new world and how that delay could cause misunderstandings, mistakes, that sort of thing. It also didn't hurt that it had money-making potential. Depending on if you could get information faster about anything from a crop failure or a shipwreck, a loss of a market, a famine somewhere or a drought elsewhere, there's always the more information you have as a merchant, as someone who's trading, the better equipped you are to make better decisions faster. And the faster you are, the more likely you are to be able to make more money.
16:17But Cyrus might have underestimated the scope of the project. And I think that's one of the characteristics of someone that takes on a project like this. They're a little naive in terms of what's actually involved. And right from the start, the odds were stacked against Cyrus.
16:41Could a cable be stretched across the ocean? The first was a question of mechanical difficulties. The second problem was purely scientific, involving questions as to the laws of electricity, not then fully understood, and on which the boldest might feel that he was venturing on uncertain ground. This is from a book account, the story of the Atlantic Telegraph, that was written by Cyrus's younger brother, Henry Field. We don't really entirely know how all of electricity works yet. There are not yet colleges of electrical engineering. That's not going to exist for another couple of decades. And so we don't even have the terminology that we use, like those calling something a volt or an amp.
17:31Those terms aren't even in use yet. So we don't have the formulas or the theorems to know what's happening. So there are different ideas and they basically have to be tested. The idea was to have a cable line that would connect from the west coast of Ireland all the way to Newfoundland in Canada. From there, telegraph landlines would carry messages onto major cities like New York and London. There were a handful of undersea cable lines that existed at this time, but they were at a much smaller scale. None of them were crossing entire ocean spans. And of course, Cyrus, who has decided to embark on this impossible project, has zero experience with cables.
18:18Now, Cyrus is not technical. He's in the paper business. manufacturing and distribution and sales, but he's not technical at all. But he has friends who are, like Samuel Morse, for example. No big deal. Just the inventor of the revolutionary telegraph and the Morse code. And he talked to Samuel Morse to find out, hey, do you think an electric wire would work over 1 ,700 miles? And he came back in the affirmative. and with that, with his energy and time and money, he went all in on this. Cyrus would go on and stake a big part of his own fortune into the project, but he was still going to need a lot more money.
19:04So now Cyrus, having done quite well in New York, he'd met all the rich people, you know, industrialists in New York. So he rounds up his friends and says, who wants to come into this amazing new scheme? And Cyrus got his buddies together and known as the cable cabinet. The cable cabinet. And Cyrus also made trips to England and got some investors there as well. So Cyrus is raising money. He's recruiting experts on his team, figuring out the cable tech side of things. And now he has to sell his plan to both the U.S. and the British governments. He is talking about creating a direct line of communications between the two continents.
19:43I mean, think about it as like the red phone in the Oval Office today. Pick it up and talk to other world leaders. I mean, this is the same idea just 150 years earlier. The Brits were all in on this plan. Because let's not forget, this was during the ascendance of the British Empire, where they had colonies all over the world. So, of course, they would want to have faster lines of communication. And then they went to the American government and they said, well, you know, the British government is supporting us and that will mean they have priority on the cable when it's laid. And of course, the American government somewhat reluctantly said, all right, well, I suppose we better pony up two.
20:24Both governments gave Field some money for the plan, along with two massive warships, the Agamemnon from the British and the Niagara from the U.S. This would be a crucial part of the plan, as no single ship could carry the weight of 2 ,000 miles worth of cables. Okay, so imagine spools of thread that are taller than you, and wound not with string, but with 2 ,000 miles of cables that could fill entire rooms. It would take at least 30 men to coil cables onto a ship at any given moment. And it's a copper wire with seven strands that is surrounded by gutter percha, which is a tree resin, and then surrounding that is iron wire stranded around it for strength and protection.
21:09The whole thing was around five-eighths of an inch in diameter. That's smaller than a dime, and the plan is to drop it all 12 ,000 feet down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And that's it. That's how cables lay exactly the same today. How much would this have cost? Oh, the equivalent of 100 million today, perhaps. Other historians have compared it to the Apollo missions of going to the moon. I mean, that's the same idea of doing something that is in some way so far-fetched, so unbelievable. Which only added to the hype. The grandest work which has ever been attempted by the genius and enterprise of man, the New York Herald.
21:54Newspapers all around the country and in England were covering the project. and a lot of people were hopeful about it. If you wished to communicate some piece of intelligence straight away to your relatives across the wide world of waters, if you wished to tell those whom you know it would interest in their heart of hearts of a birth or a marriage or, alas, a death among you, the little cord which we have now hauled up to the shore will impact that tidings quicker than the flash of the lightning. It was hard to believe that this little cord was even possible. But Cyrus Field was going to try to stretch this cable and bring the world into a new reality.
22:46Cyrus and his cable cabinet make all the necessary preparations. Crew members, machinery, food, and water for the journey. So they make the cable, they've got the two ships, and they're ready to lit. But with a project like this at this scale, disaster can come as quickly as the wind changes direction. Such were the two elements or forces of nature to be encountered. The ocean and the electric current. Could they be controlled by any power of man? Was it possible to combat the fierceness of the winds and waves and to stretch one long line from continent to continent? And then, after the work was achieved, would the lightning run along the ocean bed from shore to shore?
23:37Such were the questions which had puzzled many an anxious brain and which now troubled the one who was to undertake the work.
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23:50coming up all hands on deck
24:03hey this is nile segundo i messed up let's do it from the south hey this is nile segundo from philadelphia you're listening to through line from npr and go birds
24:23Part 2. The Strain on the Cable, The Strain on the Man
24:37On the evening of the seventh instant, paying out of the cable from the Niagara progressed satisfactorily. So here we are in the summer of 1857. By the noon of the 8th, we had paid out 40 miles of cable. They say, OK, we're going to start in Ireland and just go straight across. The plan was for the Niagara to lay its 1 ,000 miles, then meet the Agamemnon in the middle of the ocean, splice the cables together, and let the second ship finish laying the rest. At noon on the 10th, we had paid out 255 miles of cable. This is an account from an engineer who worked on the project and was on board that first ship.
25:19At this time, we experienced an increasing swell, followed later in the day by a strong breeze. And let's not forget, they're not laying down a cable in some lake. We're talking about the Atlantic Ocean. It can be very rough water, which is why you lay it in the middle of the summer, around July and August, when you hope that it's temperate, so you're not going to get hit by an iceberg, and there aren't too many storms coming through. You could have a hurricane come through, of course. Remember, this is the 19th century. We don't have satellite weather telling us where the hurricane is going to go.
26:01Shortly after this, the speed of the cable gained considerably on that of the ship.
26:09As the cable was unspooling, the wind was picking up and the sea was getting rougher, which pulled at the cable, causing it to unwind faster. The cable was running out freely at the rate of six miles an hour, while the ship was advancing but about four.
26:30In proceeding to the fore part of the ship, I heard the machine stop. I immediately called out to relieve the brakes. The stern of the ship was down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the tension was too great.
26:53When I reached the spot, the cable was broken. And the cable parted. One who was present wrote,
27:24They ran into problems with their machinery. They got about 350 miles out from Ireland, and they lost the end of the cable in much deeper water, and they could not recover the cable. And the problem was then, they really had very little slack on the cable, not enough to replace 350 miles that was lost. So they gave up for the year. They have to turn around and go back and say, yeah, sorry guys, we lost all your cable and all of your money and all of your investment. Let's do it again. And so, you know, luckily Fields is a very, very persuasive person. Do not think that I feel discouraged or am in low spirits, for I am not.
28:07All the officers and men on board of the telegraph fleet seem to take the greatest interest in our enterprise and are very desirous to go out in the ships the next time. Cyrus and his team basically go back to the drawing board. They say to the cable company, can you make us another cable? And they said, sure thing, have you got the cash? Cyrus does have the cash, but that's only because he and his team had to go back out and raise money again. And they made them another cable. A new and improved cable. They also came up with a different game plan for laying it. This time they decided to start in the middle of the ocean with both ships.
28:47So they both sailed out from Ireland and met in the middle of the ocean and spliced the two ends of the cable together. Then the two ships would both sail away from each other, one heading towards Newfoundland and the other to Ireland. And they could talk to each other over the cable by Morse code on the way. So a year after the first try, they make a second one, and the pressure was on, especially for Cyrus. The strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in fear that both would break together. the cable had to work.
29:31It was the 10th day of June that the expedition left England with fair skies and bright prospects. Beautiful weather, looks great. Yeah, not too soon after that. On Sunday, it began to blow. A massive storm falls upon the two warships. Up to this time, the Niagara and the Agamemnon had managed to keep in sight of each other. And now, from the deck of the former, the latter was seen a mile and a half distant, rolling heavily in the sea. Three or four gigantic waves were seen approaching the ship, coming slowly on through the mist, nearer and nearer. The Agamemnon rose heavily to the first, and then went down quickly into the deep trough of the sea.
30:33It doesn't quite capsize. Timbers are creaking, planks are opening up, the coals are shifting in the hole, the cable is uncoiling itself and getting tangled. But all things have an end, and this long gale at last blew itself out, and the weary ocean rocked itself to rest.
30:59Everybody survives miraculously. And they actually tried to pick up where they left off, but they can't do it. The cables have suffered too much damage. There's no one who's going to be communicating on this and so they finally give up, turn around and head home and they have to regroup again.
31:20and no one probably had a heavier heart than Cyrus. When I thought of all that we had passed through, of the hopes thus far disappointed, of the friends saddened by our reverses, of the few that remained to sustain us, I felt a load at my heart almost too heavy to bear. He kept a bold face on board because he sailed the expeditions, but people that knew him well said he was really upset about it. but he just would not give up. I mean, I think we've all met those people who have those egos and those ideas and they're like, yeah, nothing is going to stop me. You have to have that absolute utter belief in yourself and in the technology that this is going to succeed.
32:17There are literally hundreds of newspaper stories about it in Britain and all over the USA. And so, the great cable on which the hopes of two worlds rested has broken for the second time. We trust the next attempt will achieve the grand object. And they're generally enthusiastic. They understand it's a new project of unknown complexity, and they're prepared to cut the cable company quite a lot of slack. Meanwhile, Cyrus appeals to his investors to give him one more chance. They still had the ships, they still had enough cable, and things had been going smoothly until that storm rolled through.
32:56And it was voted to make one more trial before the project was finally abandoned. Even though the chances were 100 to 1 against them, that 1 might bring them success.
33:11And just a month later, Cyrus and the two warships were back at sea. And they start again in the middle, and they sail out to both ends. They both reach the starting point and start laying down the cables. A day passes, then two. The line unreeled neatly, without incident, or at least not major incident.
33:40They both land at about the same time, the Agamemnon in Valencia in Ireland and the Niagara in Babel arm off Trinity Bay in Newfoundland. And they land the cables and they start sending signals.
34:04They had done it. The final attempt, the third attempt, yes. It succeeded. They got it. You know, third time the charm.
34:15The official inauguration happens between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan. And so that's like the official first message. The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work in which the Queen has taken the greatest... It's 102 words. And it takes almost 16 hours to send. But 16 hours is way better than two weeks. And when Cyrus gets back to NYC, he gets a hero's welcome. They have a big celebration in Manhattan with fireworks and parades and everything. The church bells are ringing. They have a firework display that was so big and wonderful that it actually sets the dome of City Hall on fire.
35:06Same type of reactions are happening over in England. He was awarded all sorts of medals and prizes. And the cable starts to deliver on its promise. Hundreds of messages go back and forth.
35:23But during that month of the celebration, there were problems with the cable. And it wasn't working that great. and in the height of the celebrations. After only a few weeks, the cable just stops working altogether. And they try and send out repair ships from Ireland and they can't find the location of the problem.
35:59that first cable was thenceforth to sleep forever silent in its ocean grave years of labor and millions of capital were swept away in an hour into the bosom of the pitiless sea and the public and everyone turned against the project they claimed it was all a stock fraud that he had just done this to to make money and that it was all a house of cards and now the angry letters to the new york times start appearing was the atlantic cable a humbug it was the term at the time a humbug, you know, fake news. And they're saying, well, did the cable ever work? And lots of people just began to think that this is a big hoax.
36:50And Cyrus Field is roundly condemned. At that point, the public attitude, as well as the government, turned against him. So now we're in an unfortunate position where they've spent all the money. Investors are not particularly interested at this point. But Cyrus isn't finished yet. That's coming up.
37:21This is Kendra from Cleveland. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.
37:28Part 3. The Eighth Wonder of the World. Come, listen all unto my song. It is no silly fable. Tis all about the mighty chord they call the Atlantic Cable. Bold Cyrus Field, he said, says he, I have a pretty notion that I can run a telegraph across the Atlantic Ocean. It had been several years since the first transatlantic cable failed in 1858, And Cyrus Field wouldn't let it go. I can hardly keep the business of the Atlantic Telegraph Company out of my mind for a single moment. In the early 1860s, an investigation concluded that it was possible to lay a new cable. And this new cable was going to be stronger and more durable than the last one.
38:21Meanwhile, other cables were being laid around the world, but none of them crossed the Atlantic. It was just too big of a challenge. But when Cyrus went looking for investors to redeem himself, he had trouble finding them in the U.S. because of the Civil War. The whole country is in such a state of excitement in regard to the war that it is almost impossible to get anyone to talk for a single moment about telegraph matters. So Cyrus turned to the British, who were interested in how the cable could help them power their colonies. He found a sympathetic ear from British businessmen, and by 1865, Cyrus had again found his investors.
39:01He had the technology. And they also have the ship. The Great Eastern.
39:10And it was apparently five times bigger than any other ship that floated at that time. That was the largest ship ever built, and it was intended to be a major passenger ship, launched on the Thames in London. They had to launch it sideways. It was so big it would have run into the bank on the other side if they'd launched it in the traditional way. All sorts of problems building it. It was a commercial failure. It had been mothball. It was sold at auction for£25 ,000 when it had cost£100 ,000 to build. But Cyrus Field saw the Great Eastern and said, That's my boat.
39:54114 sheep, 20 pigs, 29 geese, 14 turkeys, a milk cow, and 500 other fowl. This is what the 500-man crew brought on board the ship for food in July of 1865, when Cyrus Field launched another expedition to lay a new cable. Cyrus, remember, wasn't an engineer. He didn't know much about sailing. But he was nothing if not persistent. and once again he put everything he had into this.
40:33Grace Easton then sails out of the Thames around the south coast of England, around the south coast of Ireland. As the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows towards their bows as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of heaven. They let one reporter aboard the ship, William Howard Russell of the Times of London. They sail up to Valencia up the west coast of Ireland. Now we're ready to lay the cable. Again, the men laid cable westward across the Atlantic, testing the signal every half hour to make sure it was working. When they found problems, they spent hours pulling up the cable and fixing it.
41:21And again, the cable snapped.
41:33And they lose the end of the cable at that point in 12 ,000 feet of water. Cyrus's lip quivered and his cheek blanched. The cable has parted and gone overboard. There around us lay the placid Atlantic, smiling in the sun, and not a dimple to show where lay so many hopes buried. They spend more than a week trying to pull up the cable, and they get close. They get it almost to the surface. But the rope they're using to reel it up breaks.
42:12They have nothing else they can do at this point. in the middle of the deepest part of the ocean. They have no other way of recovering it. So they mark the position on their chart and they put a buoy there in case it's there when they come back. Because of course, they were coming back. By now, you know that Cyrus Field wasn't the kind of guy who gave up. We have learned a great deal. And next summer, we shall lay the cable without doubt. Apparently, when he traveled internationally, Actually, the first word he'd learned was faster in every foreign language. And that was kind of his mantra. So in 1866, the next year, in July, Cyrus and his crew set out again.
43:04No problems. Nothing happens on the way. They arrive in Newfoundland, they land the cable in Trinity Bay at Hart's Content, and they send a message back.
43:20And on July 27, 1866, the Great Eastern had successfully reached Newfoundland, with the cable intact.
43:37And for Cyrus Field? They said when they landed the cave that he wept. I went to my cabin. I locked the door. I could no longer restrain my tears.
43:58The Queen of England and President Andrew Johnson congratulated each other in dispatches published in newspapers, along with a note from Johnson to Cyrus saying, may the cable under the sea tend to promote harmony between the Republic of the West and the governments of the Eastern Hemisphere. Under the cable agreement, the British and American governments had dibs on using them. And with this new transatlantic cable being 80 times faster than the first one, messages and money soon started flying. So for$100 in gold, In 1866, you could send a 20-word message across the cable. Bring that into modern money, it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a single message.
44:43Which is phenomenally expensive, but it beats, you know, boating across the ocean ever.
44:56As for Cyrus Field, the project he spent over a decade on, invested his own fortune in, that he believed in with his whole being, was finally finished. He could finally give his mind and body some rest. Apparently, he crossed the Atlantic over 50 times dealing with this. And he got seasick every time. And apparently, he didn't sleep much. He considered laying a cable across the Pacific Ocean, but never ended up doing it. Eventually, he got into New York rail cars, but made some bad investments. Unfortunately, he got suckered in by the robber barons in New York, and they played him. He was embarrassed.
45:40His reputation had really taken a hit at that time. And it wasn't just that he lost money. Just a string of misfortune. His wife died, a child died. It's sort of the sad tale of what happens to Cyrus.
46:10Cyrus Field died in 1892 at the age of 72. And he did live to see a cable boom. By 1900, cables connected almost every continent. If you look at a present-day cable map of the world, and you look at the 1902 cable map of the world, you will see those cables are on exactly the same routes, okay, worldwide, with the exception of the Pacific, which is much more heavily cabled now. In the 1950s, the first telephone cables were laid in the ocean and fiber optic cables followed starting in the 1980s. Today, hundreds of undersea cables keep billions of people connected. The way this technology moved forward was through the persistence of a group of men who really, really, really wanted this big project to happen.
47:08Sometimes you just really need to have really big, outrageous, crazy thinkers and be like, yes, let's do that. Cyrus Field wasn't an engineer. He wasn't a sailor. But he was someone who had a vision. One of those people who feel that it's their duty to change the way we live, whether the rest of us believe in their vision or not. It's something his great-great-grandson thinks about a lot. There's certain personalities out there, and you can see them in the world today, and they can't help themselves. I just picture his family. He was just not there. He was not present. I realize I'm not that kind of guy.
47:56I mean, I want to make the world a better place, and I volunteer at the food bank, and I'm on the parks board and stuff like that. But I'm not willing to sacrifice it all personally for the greater good.
48:27And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. I'm Ramteen Arablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and. Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Miner. Christina Kim. Devin Kadiyama. Irene Noguchi. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. The episode was mixed by Gilly Moon. Thanks to Jason Devengracia, Louis Fisher, Christian Benford, Esteban Lopez, and Andy Su for their voiceover work. Thanks also to Doug Maduri, Julian Rall, Alan Malden, Jane Munga, Diana Gravely, and Al Jazeera. Thank you also to Johannes Dergi, Laura Schwartz, Tommy Evans, and Beth Donovan.
49:21Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. And ThruLine listeners, we love hearing from you. You've already shared a lot of your own love and respect for NPR's Gaza reporter, Anas Baba, who was recently featured in our episode, From the Front Lines. The episode looks at how war reporters work, and Anas talked to Ran from Gaza City about his work there. And here are some examples. Casey Wendt wrote, Thank you for this episode. I think about Anas a lot and worry about him, so it was nice to hear his reporting.
50:03And Aaron McNeil wrote, Anas Baba, thank you, thank you, thank you. So please take a minute and leave us a review and a rating on Spotify or Apple. It actually really does help more people find out about the show and it lets us know how we're doing. And if you do it, you might just hear your review right here on the show. Thanks for listening.
50:44Thank you.
From the publisher
Guests:
Bill Burns, former BBC broadcast engineer and founder of atlantic-cable.com
Cyrus Field IV, great-great-grandson of Cyrus Field
Allison Marsh, professor at the University of South Carolina and historian of technology
Ben Roberts, strategic advisor on Subsea Cable Economics for Connectivity at UNICEF who has been building cable network in Africa for the past two decades
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