Original subtitles

Decades before the telephone, a century before the Internet, long -distance

communication is done by telegraph. Telegraph allows a real integration of

communication. Unless there's an ocean in the way. Europe can integrate with

Asia because telegraphs can go across land, but they can't go across water.

America was cut off.

To become a superpower, the United States needs to connect.

And one man sees the answer.

What if messages from Europe didn't take weeks?

A telegraph cable across the ocean floor.

It was brilliant or insane.

The transatlantic cable is the precursor to the Internet that we know today.

And he's not the only one trying. I need Russia's blessing. Are you in?

The ambition to build a cable from the U .S. to Russia was just insane.

The two rivals risk millions.

You're thinking your fortune and your reputation into this almost impossible

project. Face one disaster after another.

They think it's a complete hoax.

You're fired.

All the work that they had done was completely lost.

And are forced to fight for their very survival.

The boat might even sink.

Any sign of the Agamemnon?

In hopes of achieving the impossible.

Whichever cable works first.

Win. And whichever cable doesn't take, loses everything.

In the mid -1800s, at a time when politics and business are starting to go

global, and an age of innovation is about to dawn, one thing hasn't changed

since the time of the Pilgrims. Getting a message to or from Europe still takes

weeks.

The United States in the 1850s is really on the cusp of a dramatic revolution.

Productivity is about to really boom.

But to sell stuff, you need information. And the Atlantic Ocean is cutting off

the United States from global markets.

In 1850, if we were going to communicate with Europe, information had to travel

by boat.

Domestically, the U .S. uses an American innovation to communicate long

distance, Samuel Morse's telegraph, which already covers the East with 20

miles of cable.

But communicating overseas?

is a problem. The telegraph allows a real integration of communication.

It allows markets to integrate, politics to integrate, people to integrate their

lives. Europe can integrate with Asia because telegraphs can go across land,

they can't go across water.

In New York, An entrepreneur who made his fortune from the last communication

boom, newspapers, is taking early retirement.

At just 34, he's one of the youngest members of a new class of American

called millionaires.

Are you going somewhere?

We are.

I think we could use a vacation.

Cyrus Field left his home in Massachusetts when he was very young

few bucks in his pocket.

Started off as a stock boy and in order of like 15 years became a millionaire.

He went from nothing to a lot of something.

Field had been very sickly as a child and as an adult he almost acted like he

was making up for lost time. He worked relentlessly hard.

He drove himself so hard that his doctors told him he needed to take a

Though Field is in forced retirement, he grants a meeting request with someone

who piques his curiosity, the grandnephew of Sir Isaac Newton,

Gisborne. Mr. Field, thank you for seeing me.

A telegraph engineer seeking investment to finish his pet project connecting New

York to easternmost Canada by underwater cable.

If they can wire their messages ahead to New York from Newfoundland.

That could cut three days off the transatlantic communication time.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be much more expensive than he had thought it

would be.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Gisborne.

I wish you luck.

Despite his rejection, Field finds himself fixated on Gisborne's idea.

He looks at the distance that Gisborne mentions from Newfoundland to New York,

and then he also looks at the distance between Newfoundland and the furthest

point from Europe, which is Valencia, Ireland, and he sees that it's about the

same distance.

He's like, well, instead of shaving off two days, why don't we just have instant

communication?

A storm in the Atlantic delayed the mail ship by a week.

Still mapping out our trip.

What if messages from Europe didn't take weeks?

What if you could get them in a single day?

Streaming a telegraph cable over 2 ,000 miles in between the United States and

Europe underwater at the bottom of the sea, that would greatly change the

political and economic climate and relationships between the United States

Europe. That 12 - or 15 -day gap with London was an infinity of time when

buying and selling securities.

And so if the cable was built, the New York and London prices would merge, and

they'd operate as one market, and that would be huge.

But at the time, using an electrical cable underwater across the width of the

Atlantic is considered impossible.

That was a little bit like somebody in the 1950s saying, well, hey, let's have

manned expedition to Mars.

You have to protect that precious cable from the ocean, which is basically

trying to eat it. In terms of corrosion, infiltration, shorting it out, it's an

inhospitable environment for that thin copper wire that conducts the telegraph

signal. But Field is already obsessed with the idea.

Cyrus Field is not an engineer.

He's a businessman, he's a visionary, but he doesn't necessarily have the best

grasp of the technical challenges.

So in his mind, this is a doable project.

It was fortunate that Cyrus Field had no idea what he was getting into because

he said later that had he known, he would never have started.

In January of 1854, Cyrus Field takes himself out of retirement, devoting his

life... and the equivalent of $100 million today, to developing a

telegraph cable.

Field buys out Gisborne's unfinished Canadian cable, inviting him to stay on

an engineer.

The project that Cyrus Field was undergoing was actually two -part. First

wire Newfoundland all the way down to New York. And the second part of the

project was the transatlantic cable.

After two years of trial and error, Field has 1 ,400 miles of telegraph wire

between New York and Newfoundland, 60 of them underwater, and now he's ready to

see if it works.

It worked.

The cable worked.

But unbeknownst to Field and Gisborne, halfway around the world, another

American is working on an international telegraph connection.

Only this one's almost entirely overland, through Russia.

His name, Perry Collins.

Collins, always looking for the next opportunity.

He's thinking about the same sorts of developments that are happening in the

western United States. Well, he sees those opportunities in Siberia and in

eastern Russia.

His vision, avoid what he sees as an impossible under -ocean route by

land -based telegraph cable from San Francisco that connects all the way to

Petersburg, Russia, and all of Europe.

At a time when people were contemplating a transatlantic cable, he said, no, no,

no, I've got a better idea.

A much longer route up through Canada, Alaska, and then a relatively

short underwater route across the Bering Strait.

If approved, Collins' plan to link the U .S. from the West could beat field to a

European connection and end his expensive cross -Atlantic dream.

as Perry Collins seeks Russia's buy -in.

In New York, Cyrus Field works to improve his cable design.

60 miles underwater to Newfoundland is one thing, but this time it's 2 ,000

miles to Ireland.

To help, Field brings in the father of the telegraph himself, Samuel Morse.

and pioneering electrical engineer Michael Faraday.

With the support of other elite investors, they develop a state -of -the

cable design to withstand the forces of the Atlantic.

Mother Nature is uniquely good at consuming man -made materials.

The telegraph cable has to be protected from the environment, the intense

pressure. If seawater gets in, shorts out the line, it's it, game over.

A layered design is the key to its success.

So you have copper in the middle, you have gutta percha, which is an

and then you have steel wires, which provide mechanical protection.

With his wire design complete, Field rush orders 2 ,500 miles of it.

Cyrus Field is so excited. He's pushing everything as fast as he can because he

wants this to happen.

But at over a ton per mile...

His cable weighs over 6 million pounds.

There was not a ship in the world capable of carrying that much cable.

Cyrus Field will soon be in possession of a state -of -the -art telegraph

long enough to stretch from North America to Europe with no way to deploy

But if Perry Collins connects his land route to Russia, it won't matter,

that would make Field's undersea cable obsolete.

before it even hits the water.

In 1856, Cyrus Field has put into motion a communications project

like the world has never seen.

A plan to connect two continents telegraph systems by stringing a 2 ,000

cable across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

If successful, the undersea telegraph cable will reduce communication time

Europe from weeks to just minutes.

But the biggest problem?

is getting it to sea.

Laying cable out of a boat in 1857 was not an easy challenge.

The cable had a copper core.

It was surrounded by a resin -y insulating layer. And then that was

by iron wire.

So it was quite heavy. They simply didn't have one boat big enough to carry

,000 miles worth of cable. So they were forced to use two boats.

Field needs to find two state -of -the -art ships sturdy enough to handle the

job. He sets his sights on battleships from both sides of the Atlantic.

From Britain, the 91 -gun, battle -hardened HMS Agamemnon, fresh from

the Crimean War.

And from the United States, the newly commissioned 162 -ton frigate.

the USS Niagara.

Cyrus Field had that American drive, so he went straight to the government of

the U .K. and he's like, I need a boat. And he went to the government of the

United States and he's like, I need a boat.

And so he was able to get some of the biggest warships that were repurposed so

that they could store the cable and then move the cable across the Atlantic.

With the combined strength of the U .S. and British navies, Field's mission to

conquer the Atlantic is underway.

In August 1857, a crew of 120 men painstakingly coil over a thousand miles

of cable onto each ship.

The USS Niagara's cable is connected to the Irish mainland, where its chief

engineer will monitor the signal strength throughout the voyage.

All good here, Dr. Whitehouse?

Assuming everyone's followed my instructions, once we read each other,

free to set sail.

Dr. Edward Whitehouse is a physician.

And in those days, if you are a doctor, you have all the esteem to be considered

to be a man of science. And the differentiation between opening up a

doing electrical experiments, there's not too much of a difference to the

everyday person.

Both ships sailed to the middle of the North Atlantic, where the USS Niagara

drops its cable first, as deep as two miles below, to the ocean floor.

Once the ship's thousand miles are laid, the plan is to splice the two cables

together and continue on to Newfoundland, as the second ship lays

miles of cable.

Cyrus Fields got the weight of the world on him. He has gotten all these

investors involved and two international governments wondering if he's going to

be able to do this, because if he succeeds, this will change the world.

Back in Ireland, White House monitors the signal of the line as it's laid

the ocean floor.

The cable is extremely heavy, so it goes through this payout machine, which

allows it to monitor how fast it's going into the water. Because if you go too

slow, then you have too much coiling at the bottom, and you're wasting cable.

And it could kink, and you'll have other problems. And if it's going too fast,

well, you can possibly break it.

250 miles laid, all well.

Until only 400 miles into their journey.

The North Atlantic changes her mood.

On August 11, 1857, as they are unfurling this telegraph wire into

the water, a gigantic wave hits the ship.

The engineer thought it was going off too quickly, and so they put on the

brakes.

There's just too much strain on the cable, and it snaps.

To the horror of everyone on board, all the work that they had done was

completely lost.

Nearly 1 ,000 miles of state -of -the -art telegraph cable are now lost, two

miles below the sea.

And Cyrus Field returns to New York empty -handed.

While 4 ,000 miles away, Perry Collins learns of the failure.

When Field failed in his attempt at laying a transatlantic cable, this

encourages Collins. His concept seems perhaps even more achievable than the

transatlantic cable because you just have to place it across 50 miles of the

Bering Strait. But without the approval of the Russian governor, his plan is at

a standstill.

So he sets sail for Russia to try to strike a deal.

But Cyrus Field isn't ready to throw in the towel.

With his initial investors becoming less generous, Field throws in today's

equivalent of another $150 million to replace the cable and try again.

He soon discovers that the bad weather was only part of the problem.

Field and his team realized that they weren't able to manage the tension and

speed of deploying this cable with enough subtlety. At any given time, that

cable hanging off the back of the ship might have been 8 ,000 pounds worth of

cable just dangling there. And if they got it wrong, they had a risk of all

weight just snapping the cable.

And so they designed a payout machine that doesn't just clamp down and hold it

in place, but that it would slow it down, sort of like anti -lock brakes. It

an auto -release, so you don't have to worry about breaking the cable at the

payout machine.

But it's another change to their original plan that could have the most

To reduce their exposure to the storm -prone North Atlantic.

Rather than sailing together, and dropping their cables one after the

ships will separate and both lay cable simultaneously.

Cyrus Field intends to have two ships go out basically to the middle of the

Atlantic. From there, they fuse the cable together, and then the two ships

in opposite directions.

One goes to Newfoundland, the other's going to Ireland.

And once they get to their respective sides, we'll have a transatlantic cable.

The new plan to connect the lines mid -ocean should cut the cable laying time

half.

The most important step to all of this is being able to connect these two

wires at this particular spot before it finally was sent down to the ocean.

The weakest part of the cable, if it is not strong, it's just going to snap

again.

While Field gets ready for another shot.

Collins lands a meeting with the governor of East Siberia and looks to

deal. Only 55 miles across the Barents Strait. The rest is overland.

I need Russia's blessing.

This all makes far more sense for a lot of people than trying to run an electric

cable across an ocean submerged in more than two miles deep of water.

Perry Collins finally has a green light to build the longest telegraph cable the

world has ever seen.

His plan will trace the Pacific Rim from San Francisco, north to Alaska, across

the Bering Strait, and through the tundra of Siberia. But he's running out

time.

Because off the coast of Ireland, Field is back in the game and setting sail.

We won't make the same mistakes.

Providence. Fate, God, are on our side.

But ten days into the voyage, approaching their meeting point in the

the Atlantic, Mother Nature intervenes again.

On the way, there is an awful storm. It had to be ranked as one of the worst

Atlantic storms in history.

The Agamemnon gets blown 200 miles off course.

They are absolutely out of sight of each other. With two top -heavy ships, each

carrying 3 million pounds of cable, finding each other takes a backseat to

simply surviving.

Cyrus Field and two warships are on a mission.

Meet in the middle of the Atlantic.

splice together 2 ,000 miles of telegraph cable, and sail in opposite

directions, dropping the cable to the ocean floor.

It's a risky bid to connect the U .S. telegraph network to Europe and on to

Asia.

The telegraph revolutionized the way people can get and receive information.

There's a fundamental problem for Americans, however. There was no way to

communicate across the Atlantic except the same way you've been doing it for

centuries, which is by ship.

With thousands of tons of cable on board, the two top -heavy ships face one

the biggest Atlantic storms in history.

Many thought that they might have to, like, throw the cable overboard or that

the boat might even sink.

When you have a storm like that, you can't see to the horizon.

All they can do is go to their rendezvous point and both hope that the

there. For eight long days, neither ship knows the other's fate.

Any sign of the Agamemnon?

But on the ninth day,

Cyrus Field and the crew of the Niagara spot the Agamemnon, 30 miles

from their mid -Atlantic meeting point.

And so it is kind of extraordinary that the ships are able to finally meet each

other, kind of unbelieving that they even survived it.

The most important part of everything is how to join these two cables from these

two ships.

This is mid -19th century. We don't have modern tools.

It is the weakest point of the entire wire.

With the two cables fused, the ships separate from their mid -Atlantic

point, now tethered by a single 2 ,000 -mile telegraph cable, and head for

opposite coasts. The two ships would actually be connected as they were

it down in the ocean.

This required, of course, just absolute...

precise navigation.

While they're laying out the cable, they're sending signals back and forth.

And the signals were basically like, is this thing on?

Is this still working? Do we still have a connection?

Because they knew if they lost a connection, that would mean the cable

failed at some point.

The transatlantic cable project was like a pressure cooker of stress.

You can only imagine what that meant for someone whose health wasn't that good

to begin with. You're thinking your fortune and your reputation into this

impossible project.

Cyrus Field, though, was obsessed with his project at this point. He couldn't

just say, okay, I've left it in good hands, you know, send me a message over

cable when you're finished. That wasn't the way he worked.

Is that land?

Is that land?

We made it.

When Cyrus Fields sees land, I mean, he must feel euphoric. All these

sacrifices, being away from home, all this money, the failed attempts.

Here's his moment. This is huge.

At 1 .54 a .m. on August 5th. 1858.

After four and a half years of failure and frustration, Cyrus Field makes land.

One can only imagine what Cyrus Field felt when the ship pulls into

Newfoundland and there have been no problems.

At roughly the same time, the Agamemnon approaches the shores of Ireland with

the other end of the cable.

Once linked to the telegraph network, for the first time in history, the

States and Europe are connected.

It means that America is officially on the world stage.

Now it had a direct line to the hub of the world, which was London. So this was

a huge day for America.

For Perry Collins, the news isn't so welcome.

With a working cable now running between New York and Europe, his plan to

connect the U .S. to Russia could be worthless.

Now, this is really concerning for Collins because this is a zero -sum

-take -all scenario.

Whichever cable works first wins, and whichever cable doesn't take loses

everything. But as Collins regroups and the nation celebrates, there's a

problem.

They realize something's amiss. The signals aren't clear. They're almost

indecipherable. The signal strength is low. There is something wrong with the

system. Cyrus Field is facing another disaster, and it could be the lucky

Perry Collins needs.

On August 16, 1858, Cyrus Field...

successfully connects a 2 ,000 -mile telegraph cable from Europe to North

America. For the first time, words are carried across the Atlantic, not by ship

taking weeks, but along the ocean floor at the speed of an electric current.

When the cable was finally done in the second attempt in 1858, it was a

worldwide event, one of the great moments in the 19th century.

At last, a successful message is sent from England to the United States from

Queen Victoria herself.

But unfortunately for Field, the message takes longer than expected.

That message that comes from Queen Victoria, that was only 98 words. It

about 16 and a half hours for it to get to the United States.

The reason that this took so long is that the signal was pretty weak. So the

Morse code that was coming through, they needed to confirm that everything that

was being said was what the queen intended.

They would write to the other side and say, can you resend that? Cyrus Field is

not too happy about this.

Despite the lag in communication, the very next day, the wire opens to

commercial messages at an exorbitant fee.

It was very expensive. It was $10 a word with a 10 -word minimum.

I mean, so it was $100 to send a cable. And $100 was a comfortable monthly

income for a family.

But money, not the only problem.

The message gets a little weaker and weaker with each thing that's being

And then eventually, the messages stop coming entirely.

Cyrus Fields' faith in his chief electrician, Edward Whitehouse, is

So he enlists the talents of another member of the team, physicist William

Thompson. Thompson is part Einstein, part Edison because he was theoretical,

he also did a lot of hands -on experiments.

Thompson will go on to determine the temperature absolute zero and be

Lord Kelvin by Queen Victoria.

But for now, he's trying to fix Fields' connection.

Thompson makes something that's so important for determining the health of

cable.

The mirror galvanometer is a very, very clever device. It relies on the fact

that electricity and magnetism are always present with each other. And so

makes this little device. It's a little magnet hanging on a piece of mirror. And

when the coil has electricity going around it, that piece of glass moves a

little bit.

So if they shined a light on that mirror, they could...

see from how the light moved when the current was on and when it was off.

That meant that instead of requiring a lot of power to run a traditional

telegraph system that buzzes at you, you could have a visual system with much

lower levels of power.

You see anything, Thompson?

I'm coming through.

Even more voltage.

You'll fry the cable.

What's your solution? Not burning out the cable would be a start.

Look. Enough.

He's right.

In the mid -1800s, the notion of electricity and magnetism is still

magical. It's not very well understood. So from White House's perspective, the

obvious solution is just to increase the voltage, basically forcing a stronger

signal through the cable.

Refusing to give in, White House pushes the cable to its limit.

I'm going to try 2 ,000 volts.

When you pass electricity through a wire, if you push too much energy

it, you essentially burn it out. When White House increases the voltage to 2

,000 volts, it essentially consumes the wire itself because it just gets too

hot.

So the cable died about 25 days after it was initially installed.

After four and a half years of tireless work, the modern equivalent of $250

million invested personally, and a transatlantic cable that's worked less

month,

Cyrus Field's dream of connecting two continents is once again dead in the

water.

In the fall of 1858, Cyrus Field has gone from American hero

to having absolutely no credibility in the public's eye.

When the cable died,

Cyrus Field, being the man of the hour to mud, took no time at all. It was like

just in a day.

They think it's a complete hoax. They think he had put this thing in place and

was going to buy the stock and then sell the stock at a certain time and make a

whole lot of money.

But instead of focusing on the scandal, Field turns to the cause.

I told you not to turn up the voltage.

The cable was faulty.

It should have handled the voltage easily.

Thompson is taking over as chief electrician.

I'm telling you, if it had been manufactured correctly... I don't care.

You're fired.

Without me, you'll never get that cable to work.

It's now up to physicist William Thompson to build a new underwater

Cyrus cannot believe that he has to do this again. He figures it did work for a

very short period of time, so all we need to do is just, you know, make

everything better and stronger.

While Field gears up for another mission across the sea, on the other

side of the country, Perry Collins pitches his Russian -American cable to a

powerful prospective investor, the head of one of the country's largest

telegraph companies.

Cyrus Peele was single -minded, single -focused, and Perry Collins had the same

determination but didn't really care how it happened.

He starts talking to Hiram Sibley, who's the boss of Western Union.

I'm telling you, Mr. Sibley,

Alaska is the gateway to Asia.

And I get 10 % of whatever Western Union makes.

They're perfect for each other.

Collins brings a knowledge of Russia. He has already laid the groundwork.

Sibley, meanwhile, has the gravita. He has the company that can actually...

build all this stuff and the deep pockets to do it.

With Western Union's backing and an upfront payment from them equal to $3

million today, Collins is pushing to make his Russian -American cable a

before Cyrus Field gets back on the water.

Then suddenly, the entire country stops.

as fighting breaks out between Southern Confederates and Northern Unionists.

The start of a four -year civil war.

The Civil War delayed everything. Basically, this was an impossibility

war was over. I mean, for one thing, the United States needed all the ships it

had.

And also, there were Confederate raiders out in the Atlantic.

But soon, the telegraph becomes a strategic tool for Abraham Lincoln.

It's no exaggeration to say Lincoln is our first wired -in president.

He knows within hours of the victory, sometimes within minutes of the victory

defeat. Previous commanders could only have found out within weeks. And

consequently, Lincoln winds up spending a whole lot of time in the War

Department's telegraph office.

As the war progresses, Western Union convinces Lincoln to extend the reach of

the telegraph all the way west to the Pacific Ocean, playing right in to Perry

Collins' plan.

And as the Civil War ends in April 1865, Collins has the men he needs to build

his cable to Alaska and on to Siberia.

The news lights a fire under Field, and he ups the ante.

For his next attempt, he has a secret weapon in the race to connect the

continents, the biggest steamship.

ever built great eastern which was by orders of magnitude the biggest ship in

the world no ship would be bigger than the great eastern which was launched in

1858 until the lusitania was launched in 1907.

with a single ship big enough to lay the entire line across the sea cyrus field

is ready to take on the atlantic one more time and win

It's the spring of 1865.

As Perry Collins and Western Union race to install their telegraph cable,

connecting the Pacific coast of North America and Russia,

Cyrus Field launches his third attempt to bridge the Atlantic after losing the

modern equivalent of an astronomical quarter billion dollars personally on

first two tries.

William Thompson designed the new cable, and it was just much more robust, much

better designed, and it had been fully tested underwater over its whole length

to make sure that it worked.

In test, Thompson's redesigned cable not only works, it's 80 times faster

than the previous line.

The cable that William Thompson designed was the standard cable up until fiber

optics replaced it in the late 20th century.

Out of money.

Field secures new investors from Britain and retrofits a massive 19 ,000 -ton

passenger ship to lay the new cable.

The Great Eastern is the largest ship in the world.

Previously, there had been no vessel that was large enough, but finally, they

were able to store all of it on just that one ship. In its cargo hold are 18

million pounds of Thompson's new and improved telegraph cable.

It's now or never for Field.

And on July 13, 1866, the Great Eastern departs from Valentia, Ireland.

Meanwhile, 4 ,000 miles away, Collins' Western Union crews are moving at a

glacial pace, installing telegraph poles through the frozen Russian tundra. The

crew, they're breaking their shovels against the frozen ground.

Their supply ships are crushed by ice. This is a difficult endeavor. And the

element, it's nature that is fighting against them all the way.

As Collins and Western Union struggle,

Field is taking no chances with his fragile

cable. They're walking with it and making sure it coils out smoothly.

A whole gang of men is down in the cable tank, walking the cable around night

and day.

After 10 days at sea,

1 ,200 working miles of line have been laid. This entire process is terrifying

every single second because it doesn't matter how far you get. If something

wrong in the last five minutes, it's over. There's no partial completion.

is either 100 % perfect or it's a failure.

Finally, on July 27, 1866, after two weeks of calm seas and careful

cable laying, the Newfoundland coast is in sight.

The Great Eastern is too big to make port, so local fishermen help carry the

cable to shore.

And Field's 12 -year odyssey may have finally established a communication link

between the United States, Europe, and Asia.

All's well.

Thank God.

The cable is light.

But only if the line is carrying a clear signal.

With a working telegraph line in place, clear messages can be sent across the

Atlantic in minutes, not hours.

America and Europe have been in continuous communication ever since.

Now that there is a final, permanent, underwater telegraph cable that works,

things change for the United States, right? Now we can talk to our

allies. The men of Wall Street can now cheer because now they're connected to

all of those foreign markets.

Cyrus Field has been through the ringer.

And finally...

When this cable's connected, this is vindication.

It demonstrates that all of his crazy ideas weren't so crazy after all. He's

just thinking so much bigger than the rest of the world.

News of field success forces Western Union to pull the plug on Perry Collins'

cable dream.

When the Atlantic cable is completed, Perry Collins' adventure is over.

It's done.

In fact, the workers at the end of the line... even drape their last post in

black. They mourn the loss of their line. And with that, it more or less

Though unsuccessful with his telegraph line, Perry Collins lives well on the

advance money he earns from the partnership.

Western Union goes on to lay its own cables across the Atlantic before its

telegraph operations are bought out by the American Telephone and Telegraph

Company, better known as AT &T.

The transatlantic cable is the precursor to the Internet that we know today in

terms of a way to transmit information and knowledge.

The achievement of the transatlantic cable, it was the building block our

world is built upon. We have satellites above, but even they are tethered to a

system, a network that is built on cable.

Today, there are over 400 undersea cables crisscrossing the world's ocean.

And dozens more are being laid every year because despite handheld wireless

communication, 99 % of all international data traffic is still carried by

undersea cables.

Thanks to the successes and failures of two men who risked everything to link

the U .S. to the world, our planet is forever connected in a web of wires.

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