Cyrus Field

Cyrus West Field (1819 - 1892) is a business man and financial American which posed the first telegraphic cable transtlantic in 1858.

Field was born with Stockbridge in the Massachusetts, of a father, David Dudley Field, man of the church. He is the brother of David Dudley Field and Stephen Johnson Field, lawyers eminent and of Henry Martyn Field, man of the church and author famous for his books of voyage. At the 15 years age, Cyrus Field moves for the town of New York, there remains 3 years, goes back to Stockbridge then sets out again in New York about 1840. It makes fortune in paper and various deals which enable him to live of its revenues as of the 33 years age with a fortune estimated at $250,000. At the origin imagined by an English industrialist to connect Newfoundland and New York, Field will develop this idea of underwater cable for a transatlantic connection between the the United States and the Ireland. With the head of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, it succeeds, on August 5th 1858 after unfruitful tests, to establish the first telegraphic connection between America and Europe, with an underwater cable which connects Newfoundland to Ireland, then Newfoundland in New York. This connection will have transmitted only 250 messages, so much the cable was fragile and breaks after hardly 3 weeks of use. In 1866, Field unrolls of it a second who will resist to him and will be used during almost 100 years. That then makes it possible to reduce the time necessary of communication of information between Europe and the 12 day old the United States (the time of the crossing by steamer at the time) to an almost instantaneous communication. A little later, of return to Newfoundland, the ship of its company succeeds in hooking the broken cable, repairing it, thus providing a cable of help to the first connection.

This transatlantic project at the time was competed with by a " project; terrestre" Western Union, which had launched important work to connect Europe to the United States via Russia, Siberia and the Bering Strait what did not impose whereas 60 km of underwater cable.

In 1871, Cyrus Field carries out the junction between San Francisco and the islands Hawaii.

In December 1884, the Canadian Pacific Railway named the new town of Field in British Columbia in its honor.

The continuation of its business was less happy, of bad investments led it to the bankruptcy towards the end of its life.

Fiction

Stefan Zweig tells the installation the history of the transatlantic telegraphic cable in Sternstunden der Menschheit (" Very Rich Hours of Humanité").

See too

underwater Cable

External bonds

underwater telegraphy and the under-Atlantic cable in wonders of science of Louis Fig tree, T. 2, p. 185-284 (on gallica).

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