History of the Atlantic Telegraph

In one sentence: This isn't a recommended read so much as a primary source written the same year the story ended — author Henry Field was Cyrus Field's own brother, and his account is where the episode's most vivid moments come from: the library globe, the storm that nearly capsized the Agamemnon, the locked cabin door where Cyrus finally let himself cry.

Overview

Henry Field wrote this account in 1866, the same year the fourth and finally successful transatlantic cable expedition reached shore. He wasn't a detached historian — he was Cyrus Field's own brother, with a vantage point no outside chronicler could match. The book reconstructs the story's actual starting point: a cold winter evening when engineer Frederic Gisborne showed up at Cyrus's door to pitch his plan for a telegraph line from Newfoundland to the mainland. Cyrus wasn't especially impressed — until after Gisborne left, when he found himself turning the standing globe in his library (now held by the Smithsonian) and the idea arrived: why not just take it all the way across the Atlantic? What follows is three failures. In 1857, the cable paid out faster than the ship could travel, the tension became unmanageable, and it snapped 350 miles off the coast of Ireland in water too deep to recover it. In 1858, a storm nearly capsized the Agamemnon — timbers creaking, coal shifting below deck, the cable tangling itself in the hold. The book's line "the strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in fear that both would break together" describes exactly this moment of pressure on Cyrus. That third 1858 attempt briefly succeeded, only to go silent weeks later, turning Cyrus overnight from "the embodiment of human genius" into an accused fraud. A fourth expedition in 1865 lost the cable again, 12,000 feet down. Finally, in July 1866, Cyrus's crew — on what the book counts as their fourth full laying attempt — brought an intact cable ashore in Newfoundland. The book records that Cyrus didn't celebrate publicly; he went to his cabin, locked the door, and, in his own words, "could no longer restrain my tears."

Why It's Recommended

The book's role in the episode isn't as suggested further reading — it's the raw material that carries nearly the entire narrative spine of the episode's second and third parts. Voice actors read directly from its pages throughout: Gisborne's pitch at the door, the moment with the globe, the storm-tossed line about the man's strain exceeding the cable's, and the final "I went to my cabin. I locked the door. I could no longer restrain my tears." These aren't paraphrases — they're the episode's primary evidence for reconstructing the 1850s expeditions. It earns a place in the library precisely because it isn't a later scholar's retrospective; it's a firsthand record, written the year the cable finally held, by the person closest to the man who built it — carrying an immediacy that later histories can't reproduce, which is exactly why the episode chose to read it aloud rather than summarize it.

Source

Henry Field, Cyrus Field's younger brother, wrote the account that is read from repeatedly throughout the 2025-10-23 episode "The Internet Under the Sea," hosted by Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah, with the book's passages voiced by actors. The episode identifies it directly: "This is from a book account, the story of the Atlantic telegraph that was written by Cyrus' younger brother, Henry Field." The details of Gisborne's visit, the globe epiphany, the two failed voyages, and the final tearful landing all come straight from readings of the book's text. It was first published in 1866, the same year the fourth (and finally successful) transatlantic cable was completed; Field later expanded it into a revised edition titled The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph (1892).