All language subtitles for The Engineering That Built the World s01e06 Cable Across the Sea

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.