An contemporary artisi's impression of the Agamemnon, with the Atlantic cable on board, in the great storm on the 20th and 21st June, 1858.
Cyrus Field, Born 1819
builder of the first transatlantic cable
Cyrus West Field (November 30, 1819 – July 12, 1892) was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858. Profits from his paper business had enabled Field to partially retire at the age of 34 with a fortune of $250,000. He turned his attention to telegraphy after he was contacted in January 1854 by Frederick Newton Gisborne, a Canadian engineer. In 1857, after securing financing in England and backing from the American and British governments, the Atlantic Telegraph Company began laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, utilizing a shallow submarine plateau that ran between Ireland and Newfoundland. The cable was officially opened on August 16, 1858. Although the jubilation at the feat was widespread, the cable itself was short-lived: it broke down three weeks afterward, and was not reconnected until 1866. In 1866, Field laid a new, more durable trans-Atlantic cable using Brunel's SS Great Eastern which was, at the time, the largest ocean-going ship in the world.