A Thread Across the OceanA Thread Across the Ocean
Describes the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866, exploring the physical, financial, and technological challenges of the project and assessing the impact of the cable on the course of twentieth-century history.
Today, in a world in which news flashes around the globe in an instant, time lags are inconceivable. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, they were a fact of life. The United States was remote from Europe, the center of world affairs, and communication was only as quick as the fastest ship could cross the Atlantic. Instant contact seemed as unlikely then as walking on the moon did in the 1950s.
The Civil War had barely ended, however, when the Old and New Worlds had been united by the successful laying of a telegraph cable that spanned the Atlantic in 1866. A Thread Across the Ocean chronicles this extraordinary achievement, one of the greatest engineering feats of that century - and perhaps of all time.
A popularizer of economic and American history, Gordon tells the tale of connecting the Old World and the New by telegraph in 1866. His focus is on the people involved and their efforts to assemble the necessary technology, resources, and political and popular support. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The achievement Arthur C. Clarke called "the Victorian equivalent of the Apollo project"
Today, in a world in which news flashes around the globe in an instant, time lags are inconceivable. In the mid-nineteenth century, they were a fact of life. The United States was remote from Europe, the center of world affairs—communication was only as quick as the fastest ship could cross the Atlantic—and instant contact seemed as unlikely then as walking on the moon did in the 1950s.
The Civil War had barely ended, however, when the Old and New Worlds were united by the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic in 1866. John Steele Gordon's book chronicles this extraordinary achievement, one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth century and perhaps of all time. It was an epic struggle, requiring a decade of effort, numerous failed attempts, millions of dollars in capital, a near disaster at sea, the overcoming of seemingly insurmountable technological problems (many of them entirely unforeseen before work commenced), and uncommon physical, financial, and intellectual courage. In the end, their accomplishment literally changed the world.
The cable was the brainchild and consuming passion of American businessman Cyrus Field, only thirty-three when he first set out to raise the necessary capital, and it attracted a range of luminaries, among them William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) the greatest applied physicist of the century and scientific adviser to the project, and the great English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose ship, the Great Eastern—five times the size of any other ship afloat at the time—carried the entire cable on the final attempt in 1866.
Thirty-four years after the cable was laid, the "American century" began; while the cable did not make this inevitable, it did make it possible. By bringing to life an overlooked story in the annals of technology, John Steele Gordon sheds fascinating new light on the American saga.
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- New York : Walker & Co., 2002.
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