
A lively, illustrated account traces the daring quest to stitch the Atlantic together with a slender thread of copper and gutta‑percha. By following the early experiments in land telegraphy and the first short‑range submarine links, the narrative shows how a handful of engineers turned an almost impossible idea into a tangible project, driven by curiosity and national ambition.
The book captures the painstaking work of designing, manufacturing, and deploying the cable— from testing core materials to battling storms on the deck of ships like the H.M.S. Agamemnon. Readers will meet the pioneers whose youthful vigor matched that of later wireless innovators, and see how their perseverance turned the ocean’s depth into a new highway for instant communication, reshaping how the world talked across continents.
Language
en
Duration
~4 hours (285K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
Release date
2014-06-26
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1863–1937
Best known as a leading telegraph engineer and writer, he helped explain the fast-changing world of submarine cables, wireless, and aviation to a wide audience. His work sits at the crossroads of Victorian engineering ambition and the modern communications age.
View all booksby Sir William Howard Russell

by Henry M. (Henry Martyn) Field