Review: A Thread Across the Ocean (the story of the first transatlantic telegraphy cable)

Intro

From the door of my Internet cafe, I can see out the door to a perfect Thai beach. Palm trees partially block the view, but that’s o.k. as they also take some of the intensity out of the heat. Behind me there’s a wild jungle, containing all sorts of exotic creatures. The idle thought comes to me to remember to keep an eye out for the Komoda Dragon that has been roaming through the local beach bar. As I reflect on the idea I’m sitting on a beach that is only accessible by boat, with no wired electricity (all supplied via generators), I reflect that I also have Internet access, allowing me to write a blog post for my now early blog.

It's February 2007, and I'm on my (first....) year-long trip around the world.

However, the important part of this story (even though that whole period of my life is likely worth consolidating into some posts….).

Back to that Thai beach. Not only was I on the beach with a commitment to pursue my sport, I'd also made the commitment to put up at least one blog post per week. Blogging was looking interesting and I wanted to be part of the revolution! And so, paying $5/hour for connectivity (5-6 days per week.....I estimate I spent almost $1,000 on connectivity that year!) I was connected to the Internet reading and writing to the world's largest network, the Internet. And I was in awe, that I could connect to this community with a decent connection for anywhere on the planet there was WiFi. How had we got there? When did the telecoms industry start? Which brings me to this great book for anyone looking for some history on the background of Ireland’s involvement in the flattening of the world.

Of course, for us, it wasn't the inventions but the location: we were the closest landmass to the USA for connecting up the first transatlantic cable between Europe and the USA.

Imagine, prior to this stage, to send a message/letter between the two continents took several WEEKS. We can’t really imagine of course because in this era of connectivity, it’s possible to get a message to almost anywhere on the planet instantaneously.

Cyrus Far

I came across this wonderful book last year but am only getting around to posting a review now. Blame it on needing a re-charge from writing, life, etc etc.  

Written at a steady, fluid pace by John Steele Gordon, the story documents the first transatlantic telegraph cable linking Europe and the USA and all the challenges to succeed at what must have been an outrageous achievement at the time. Of course, the relevant link to my own nationality (Irish) being that all of the first transatlantic cables landed into west Ireland at Valencia (where there is also a small museum to celebrate the fact - for anyone touring the Wild Atlantic Way, it's on the route).

Envisioned by the pioneering American entrepreneur, Cyrus West Field, it has many analogies to out-there thinking by present-day visionaries (Elon Musk with SpaceX and low-cost space flight including a trip to Mars in the early 2020's comes to mind - both individuals that made their fortunes at the beginning of earlier industries: in the case of Mr. Field in paper manufacturing before taking his significant earnings to play in the burgeoning industry of telecoms) and their ability to push through a project that seems impossible to most.

Threading a weave through the early 1800's, the books describes in perfect fashion the living and capabilities of the time, before diving headlong into the technical challenges and state of affairs when it came to telecommunication at the time, starting out with their early designs and to the point where longer-distance cables were beginning to be laid (with all the equivalent challenges as of now with cost - also related to modern visionaries such as Musk and Bezos). Flowing through, it describes *&*(&'s work to gather the required number of investors on both sides of the Atlantic and the various logistics that came with this - numerous personal crossings of the Atlantic which was still by sail at the time! 

Describing the challenge of laying the cable, something that had never been considered before is fascinating, and it flows perfectly into our current era of a world layered in cables. The fact that I'm writing this on a device that will post to a website accessible from almost anywhere on the planet (at tiny cost nowadays also) owes a huge debt to the visionaries of the time. 

Without going into details, the analogies/concepts that can be taken are interesting. It's relevant to consider that in many ways telecoms started out with shared lines through the use of standard character-based messages: the first messages across the Atlantic being around ??10 words per minute???: but this was a shared resource so once this message was completed, the next 'user' (I.e. Customer) message was then pushed down the line. Over time, we moved to the stage were we laid cables to individual homes which were used for voice calls (but dedicated to that sole purpose), whereas the Internet has brought us full circle the point of pushing characters (at much higher speeds!!) - in many ways, this was the earliest 'Internet' and we started out with putting telecoms comes over the network, but when we went mobile to trying to put the Internet over telecoms and have now gone back to the path of telecoms back over the Internet. (Other items have changed, or are changing too, with the original 'smart pieces' of these cables, the human operators, being at each end with just a dumb cable in between and we're now reverting not to a similar setup). 

Through the book, our visionary deals with other insightful pieces with the arrival of the first steamships. By luck, the pinnacle of sailboats - now redundant - became available. I'll leave the epic stories of attempts to lay the cable to those who read the book! 

Well worth a read for anyone interested in a bit of history of Telecoms.