Cyrus W. Field

Finally, on August 8, 1858, it appeared that the project had been successfully completed.

Cyrus Field went ashore and walked 15 miles to the nearest telegraph station.

There he wired his wife, the Associated Press, and President Buchanan.

He informed the President that Queen Victoria would telegraph her congratulations over the new cable.

And yet, the very next year, he sailed with the Great Eastern for one more try.

This time, every failure had been studied, every provision made.

On July 27, 1866, Cyrus Field landed at heart's content.

After personally cabling the unbelievable news, he immediately boarded the Great Eastern, retrieved the broken cable of the year before, spliced it, and laid the second Atlantic Cable.

Finally, on August 8, 1858, It appeared that the project had been successfully completed.

Cyrus Field went ashore and walked 15 miles to the nearest telegraph station.

There he wired his wife, the Associated Press, and President Buchanan.

He informed the president that Queen Victoria would telegraph her congratulations over the new cable.

And yet, the very next year, he sailed with the Great Eastern for one more try.

This time, every failure had been studied, every provision made.

On July 27, 1866, Cyrus Field landed at heart's content.

After personally cabling the unbelievable news, he immediately boarded the Great Eastern, retrieved the broken cable of the year before,

Finally, on August 8, 1858, it appeared that the project had been successfully completed.

Cyrus Field went ashore and walked 15 miles to the nearest telegraph station.

There he wired his wife, the Associated Press, and President Buchanan.

He informed the President that Queen Victoria would telegraph her congratulations over the new cable.

And yet, the very next year, he sailed with the Great Eastern for one more try.

This time, every failure had been studied, every provision made.

On July 27, 1866, Cyrus Field landed at heart's content.

After personally cabling the unbelievable news, he immediately boarded the Great Eastern, retrieved the broken cable of the year before, spliced it, and laid the second Atlantic cable.

Unseen by the thoughtless, unrecorded in the diaries of wiseacres, rarely mentioned in the speeches of statesmen, there was swiftly rising such a tide in the affairs of America as Jefferson and Hamilton never dreamed of in their little philosophies.

The Inventors Watt and Boulten experimenting with steam in England, Whitney combining wood and steel into a cotton gin, Fulton and Fitch applying the steam engine to navigation, Stevens and Peter Cooper trying out the iron horse on iron highways, Slater building spinning mills in Pawtucket, Howe attaching the needle to the flying wheel, Morse spanning a continent with a telegraph, Cyrus Field linking the markets of the New World with the old along the bed of the Atlantic, McCormick breaking the sickle under the reaper, these men and a thousand more were destroying in a mighty revolution of industry the world of the stagecoach and the tallow candle which Washington and Franklin had inherited little changed from the age of Caesar.

Whitney was to make cotton king.

Watt and Fulton were to make steel and steam masters of the world.

I mean, the earliest journey to South America that he takes, which is, you know, so interesting that he chooses Ecuador and Colombia, not to go to Europe, not to study in European art academies.

And he goes with a venture capitalist, Cyrus Field, who's exploring possibilities of, um, taking the telegraph through the Americas.

So he's engaged with all of these aspects of 19th century, you know, global capitalism and its developments, so he, he has a kind of access.

But it's also not just about what his works are intending to do, but also trying to think about what they're not showing or what they're, what they're showing that we might read differently now, as with, you know, his incredibly detailed attention to certain kinds of trees that are in New England, were very, um, important to indigenous peoples of the region, uh, the white oak, for instance.