by John Steele Gordon
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Product Description
Today, in a world in which news flashes around the globe in an instant, time lags are inconceivable. In the mid-nineteenth century, communication between the United States and Europe -- the center of world affairs -- was only as quick as the fastest ship could cross the Atlantic, making the United States isolated and vulnerable. But in 1866, the Old and New Worlds were united by the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic. John Steele Gordon's book chronicles this extraordinary achievement -- the brainchild of American businessman Cyrus Field and one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth century. An epic struggle, it required a decade of effort, numerous failed attempts, millions of dollars in capital, a near disaster at sea, the overcoming of seemingly insurmountable technological problems, and uncommon physical, financial, and intellectual courage. Bringing to life an overlooked story in the annals of technology, John Steele Gordon sheds fascinating new light on this American saga that literally changed the world.
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Deep Six , 2008-08-14
A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable
The Nineteenth Century saw massive growth in America's industrial infrastructure.
Railroads criss-crossed the nation, factories grew up in New England and the mid Atlantic manufacturing shoes, clocks, guns, furniture, steel and machinery for making more products. Communications were vastly better with the telegraph than with its predecessor, the Pony Express, but messages still took days and weeks to cross the Ocean.
Then, in the 1800's, along came Cyrus West Field, an original entrepreneur who made his fortune in the paper manufacturing business. An expert organizer and lobbyist, Field enlisted the support of other businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic in forming the organization that funded and designed the project.
It took twelve years of cajoling and massaging investors, several abortive attempts to lay the cable, and millions of wasted dollars before Field and his team of engineers finally succeeded. On July 27, 1866, when the wire was finally in place, Field sent back the first message to Europe: "Thank God," he wrote, "the Cable is Laid." Since that day, almost 140 years ago, nothing has broken his communications link with Europe -- not storms, earthquakes or world wars,It took a consortium of businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, Acts of Congress, persistent lobbying, and constant innovation with material and techniques. (The cable was insulated with Gutta Percha, a rubber-like substance from the Far East that required the harvesting of most of the world's Gutta Percha crop to build the cable)
The cable couldn't have been laid without The Great Eastern, at the time, and for many years afterward, the biggest ship in the world. At over 700 feet, she was enormous, requiring two separate power sources, a conventional marine engine and a paddlewheel. The Great Eastern had a rocky (literally) career: she was disabled by a boiler explosion and nearly sunk when she hit an uncharted rock in the entrance to New York Harbor. The only thing that saved her was the double hull. She carried troops and supplies during the Civil War.
But the Great Eastern came into her own when Field's company enlisted her to lay the three-thousand-miles of cable from Newfoundland to Great Britain. She later became a stationary museum in England.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 A little niche of history that changed the world, 2005-01-20
It's hard to imagine how different life was for people living in the 19th century after the successful laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable. This book tells the story of the laying of that cable and at the same time paints a portrait of Cyrus Field, the entreprenuer who laid the cable, and a period of time when so much about life was changing for inhabitants of the western world. Perhaps no other invention shrunk the world as quickly and as meaningfully as the trans-Atlantic cable.
John Steele Gordon always manages to imbue his writing of history with color and character that draws the reader into the story and keeps the pages turning quickly and easily; "Thread Across the Ocean" is no exception. This is a book for anyone who enjoys well-written history.
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
 Readable but Shallow History with a Bias, 2005-01-08
I found _A Thread Across the Ocean_ to be a perfectly readable account of the travails behind the laying of the first workable translatlantic cable, a breezy read without a lot of depth. If that's what you're looking for, this will do just fine.
What I found lacking, however, in this account was much in the way of depth or even a modern re-interpretation of the enterprise. Mr. Gordon writes with the bias of an economic reporter who was looking for some parallels to the great telecommunications ventures of our time -- the internet and cellular phone networks -- and not with the attention or insights of an historian. All of the sources used for the book are secondary, and two books written by the sons of "CEO" of the cable venture, Cyrus Field, and its chief engineer, Charles Bright, are heavily quoted throughout. There is little to no indication that the author delved more deeply into any of the numerous fascinating aspects of this epic undertaking -- the complicated business arrangements, the engineering details, the inner lives of most of the principals, and so forth. That the focus of the book remains squarely on Field, and not on the group, demonstrates the author's take on the subject as the story of a Great Man -- surely not a modern understanding of the technological and corporate complexity that emerged in the 19th century. There's certainly a wealth of untapped information in these areas that a more scholarly effort might make something more of.
This lack of attention to details gets a bit annoying. The example of the first sentence of the book, an 18th century American who dedicates a pew in the reign of George II because the news of his death hasn't reached the colonies, seems isolated and is left hanging with no real apparent purpose. Field's own lack of technical understanding of the enterprise which he headed is glossed over, as is the similar history concerning SFB Morse's own perfection of the telegraph itself. With the profusion of other telegraphic cables around the world, one gets little sense as to whether Field, et alia, were racing competitively to be the first, to establish a monopoly, or were regarded as daydreaming fools. Similarly, the almost randomized selection of anecdotal footnotes are often indistinghuishable from non sequiters wthin the text itself. It reads at times like Grandpa Simpson digressing around a story.
The overall effect is that one is reading an extended article in a business journal or an airline magazine, not a popular history.
The story is inherently fascinating, enough so that the faults of the book did not prevent me from reading voraciously throught to the end, but I was left wit the feeling that a better book on the subject is out there unwritten as yet. As it is, there's a decent retelling of parts of the story in the Kenneth Silverman book on Morse, _Lightning Man._
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Breezing across the Atlantic..., 2004-09-01
It's not often that you'll read historical non-fiction that grabs you and pulls you along, but this is one of those rare such books that would make great beach reading. There were a few times when I actually wished for a bit more technical detail, but Gordon does a wonderful job of telling his story without resorting to hyperbole.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Persistence of vision, 2004-01-24
The first transatlantic cable was a Victorian era triumph that enchanted the world with its glory. The story is one of the courage and persistence of its director-in-charge, Cyrus Field, born in 1819 to a prominent family of Massachusetts. Cyrus began the charge to span the ocean when he was only 33 years old, and after several attempts, finally managed to overcome all obstacles 14 years later. The story that unfolds is one that extolls the virtuous and honorable men who made it all happen, giants whose word was their bond.Mr. Gordon tells the story with all the enthusiasm of a child, unsullied by any trace of a fashionable cynicism or awareness of the betrayals to come. The book is nicely illustrated with lots of photos and diagrams that contribute mightily to the immediacy of reading it. I especially enjoyed the chapter in which the final triumph occurs, and, I kid you not, at one point actually had chills run along my spine. This is a story that will awe and inspire you. Cynics and phonies need not apply.
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