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Laying the Atlantic Cable

A number of years ago, a wealthy, retired merchant of New York City, named Cyrus W. Field, sat in the library of his home, studying a large globe of the world. He was thinking about the electric telegraph that Morse had invented, and was wondering how far it would carry a message.

He was also thinking that Commodore Maury had said to him a short while before that the ocean bottom was a table-land along a certain direction, and could easily hold an electric cable, if it were laid properly. "What an advantage it would be to civilization if the electric telegraph could be used between countries on opposite sides of the ocean," he said to himself. "To-morrow I will speak to my friend Peter Cooper about it."