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In the middle of the 19th century,

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a team of pioneering scientists
and entrepreneurs, driven by courage,

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tenacity, and vision,
came together to realise an ambition

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that still defines our world today.

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The Atlantic cable, I think of it as
the Apollo project of the 19th century.

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Three, two, one, zero.

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Lift off, we have a lift off.

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It's something that everyone said
couldn't be done, and then it was done.

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Those who came before us, drove the
first waves of the industrial revolution,

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the first waves of modern invention.

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Before the telegraph,
no human being had ever experienced

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getting information from
the other side of the planet, more
or less as it happened.

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The pioneers of the Atlantic cable
imagined that one day people all over

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the world could share ideas,
emotions, news, and information by
electrical pulse.

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They were the first to take this
adventure and do it and show that, yes,

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you can transmit messages
and data across continents.

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Today, 99% of all internet and mobile
communications,

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is not relayed by satellite, but by
the undersea cables that traverse
the oceans of the world..

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They changed the world.

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They changed the world of the media,

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they changed the world of commerce,

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they changed how we communicate.

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so they were revolutionary.

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When it comes down to people looking
at their Netflix or looking at their

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Facebook or using WhatsApp, we still
rely heavily upon these submarine cables.

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And this story of the Internet
and international communication starts

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here at the edge of the
world on Valencia Island,

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with the first transatlantic cable.

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August the fourth, 1857.

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The world's attention is on a remote
island off Ireland island's
western coast,

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Valencia Island, County Kerry.

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This is ground zero for one of the
most ambitious scientific endeavours

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of the Victorian age.

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We're here on Valencia Island,
which is where the story of this

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transit Atlantic cable begins.

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And over here, people would have
gathered to see what was happening.

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They wanted to see where
they're going to achieve what they
set out to do.

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And these great ships,
the Niagara and the Agamemnon,

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came into this harbour because you'v
got the wild Atlantic Ocean here,

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but this is a nice, quiet, and
peaceful harbour.

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Recognising the immense geopolitical
significance of the project,

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the US and British governments
have loaned two great ships,

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the USS Niagara and the HMS
Agamemnon, to the team.

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Their mission is to lay 3, 200
kilometers of cable on the floor

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of the Atlantic Ocean, at depths
of up to three kilometers.

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If successful,
the transatlantic cable will relay

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electrical pulses between
Valencia Island and Newfoundland,

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which can then be transcoded
into data, letters, and numbers,

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enabling near instant communications
between Europe and North America

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for the first time ever.

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This mission is the the grandest work
which has ever been attempted

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by the genius and enterprise of man.

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Leading the project is 38-year-old
American entrepreneur, Cyrus W.
Field.

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Cyrus Field's greatest
invention is Cyrus Field.

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He's basically an entrepreneur,

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he's the Elon Musk of the 19th
century.

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He makes a lot of money
early on in life from paper,

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which is a medium of communication,
which had become suddenly

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cheaper through steam production.

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With his fortune made
by the age of 33, Cyrus Field had
been looking

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for a new opportunity.

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In 1854, Field recognizes
that the future lies in global
communications,

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and gathers a team of experts,
including the eminent
Belfast-born physicist,

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William Thompson.

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VOICEOVER: If one took half Einstein and
half the talents of Edison and succeeded

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infusing such incompletely,
compatible gifts into a single person,

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the result would be rather
like William Thompson.

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Thompson was one of
the most brilliant scientists of his
generation,

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and the second law
of thermodynamics comes from him.

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He talks about how heat can be
transferred between one body to another,

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if those two bodies are at different
temperatures.

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By the time Thompson joins Field
in Valentia Island, the
future Lord Kelvin

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has already defined the theoretical
concept of absolute zero,

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and identified many fundamental
scientific principles that underpin
our world today.

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VOICEOVER: When you are face to face
with a difficulty,

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you are up against a discovery.

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I think what's fascinating is,
here you have this figure who is

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a pre-eminent physicist of his time,
and he wants to spend time working
on how

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you send the most possible
messages through a telegraph cable.

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And it gives you a sense
of the scale of this.

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This is the moonshot of his time.

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For a remote community on
the western edge of Ireland,

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it must have been a source
of wonder that cutting edge science

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was happening on their doorstep.

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In this part of Ireland,
most people were speaking Irish.

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Most people didn't know
how to read and write.

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You have people all along that coast,
primarily subsisting off potatoes,

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in many cases in cabins made of mud,
struggling to survive.

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A medieval kind of life.

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The people of Ireland's west are not
alone in having their horizons limited

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by poverty and lack of literacy.

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In the middle of the 1800s,
few people anywhere in the world had

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the chance of a school education,
and most people would never travel
more

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than 20 miles from home
in their entire lives.

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I think people lived more intensely
in a particular place space,

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but with a much vaguer sense
of what was outside of it.

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So your sense of space,
of how far something is,

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the next parish and the parish beyond
the next parish was a long way away.

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Beyond that, the distance
was It was so vast that you almost
didn't imagine it.

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You suddenly then had
the arrival of very sophisticated,
very advanced technological

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technological characters from Europe
and America, using this crazy new
technology.

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What is this thing, electricity?

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It's full of mystical,
sacrilegious qualities
attached to it.

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As leader of the transatlantic cable
expedition, Cyrus Field
knows that many

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have predicted his mission to be
impossible and bound for failure.

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It was looked upon by 99 out of
every 100 men,

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as the wild project of a Yankee
lunatic.

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But Field has staked his reputation and
fortune, as well as that of many others,

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on this endeavour.

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With ceremonies complete
in August 1857, the ship set sail
into

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the vast Atlantic Ocean.

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The goal of achieving high-speed
long-distance communications,

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is as old as civilization itself.

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VOICEOVER: Beacon to beacon sped
the courier flame.

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The moving light sped from the pyre
of pine and urged its way in golden

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glory like some strange new sun.

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Our ancient ancestors dreamed up
ingenious ways to communicate over
distance.

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Some used drums, others, smoke,
and carrier pigeons to send

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messages to each other.

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There is something fundamental about
the desire for news,

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to have information to keep up
with things, goes back to gossip.

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Even if you look at the letters of
Cicero, he's constantly asking

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his friends for news.

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He wants to know what's happening
in the city when he's out of town.

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He's sharing letters
with other people.

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The fastest that a human being
could travel was on a horse, really.

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In any practical way.

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And that hadn't changed
for millennia.

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They would have been the same
a thousand years earlier.

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For centuries, the most
reliable system of sharing
information had been a letter

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written by hand and
delivered by hand.

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VOICEOVER: "Darling AJ, your last
letter has nourished me for six months.

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"Now I need another from you,
and you will give it to me."

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By the early 1800s, the arrival of
formal postal services run by the
state or

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private companies, increases
the pace of human connectivity.

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The coming of steam
speeds things up further.

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Even so, delivering news across long
distances continues to depend

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on a piece of paper being transferred
from a writer to a reader.

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Information from beyond your locality
could take weeks, months, or years to
arrive.

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Driven by the Industrial Revolution,
a rise in education and the relentless

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pursuit of scientific discovery,
the 19th century is a time

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of phenomenal transformation.

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Among new technologies developed,
one will fundamentally change

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how we live on this Earth.

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VOICEOVER: The adoption of some
system of electrotelegraphic
communication has

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become for every civilised nation
a matter of absolute necessity.

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When electricity was first
harnessed, it was greeted like
supernatural power.

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People just didn't know how it
was working, but they loved it.

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They loved seeing it.

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It brought together Victorian
thinkers, so philosophers,
scientists,

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mathematicians, intellectuals,
and they used to debate a lot,

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discuss and disagree quite a lot
with things.

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Experiments by scientists like
Benjamin Franklin in America,

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Alessandro Volto in Italy,
and Michael Faraday in England,

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show that a wire connected
to an electrostatic machine or a
battery,

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will cause an electrical charge to
be felt at the wire's far end.

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So the public would want
to be part of the experiment.

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They'd be wanting
to touch the electricity.

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They'd want to feel it.

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They want to feel the hair
standing up on end.

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In the early 1800s, experimenters
in Britain,

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France, and the US,
harness electricity to create
machines

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that generate light, power, and heat.

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Crucially, they also discover
that electricity can be
used to facilitate

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long distance communications.

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Ever bigger and faster machines
and technology are developed.

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Steam, steel, and vast engines
power massive factories.

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And through the heart of it all,
electricity pulses.

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Electricity changed everything
in lots of ways.

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I think this makes people imagine
new possibilities for what
it is to be human.

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And it is why you get
the advent of science fiction.

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People like Jules Verne
and other science fiction writers
that start to emerge,

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imagining humanity living
differently as a result of
technology.

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Early attempts by pioneers to harness

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electricity to send
messages are too complex.

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But in 1837, Samuel Morse,
an American artist,

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invents a simple code of dots and
dashes, which can be translated

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into words using a codebook.

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Morse's business partner,
Alfred Vail expands
the code to include

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letters and special characters,
and in 1844, they successfully send

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a message by cable from Washington,
DC, to Baltimore.

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Morse code will come
to dominate the world.

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Da-di-da-di....da-da...da-di-di-di..
da-da-di-di...di.

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(Morse code beeps)

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Cable.

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The most frequent letters were
the ones to which Vail attributed

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the shortest number of characters.

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E, a dot, T, a dash,

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I, two dots, M, two dashes.

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And then when you come to letters
which are used very seldom, like J,

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the da, da, da, that's
one dot and three dashes.

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By the late 1840s, a
network of telegraph wires,

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is erected across America's east.

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New York, Washington,
and Chicago are connected.

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Across the Atlantic,
telegraph networks are constructed

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connecting the main cities of Europe.

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There are engravings where you can
hardly see the sky for the festoon
of wires.

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And a bird couldn't fly from ground
upwards without hitting a wire.

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Before the telegraph, it could take
days for a speech made by a
politician

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to travel from Chicago to New York.

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Once a telegraph happens,
those speeches

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can get to New York in
a matter of hours.

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(Beeping)

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When the first telegraphs
come in in England,

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immediately people start
trying to use them to transmit

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the results of horse races.

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You can get that news away from the
race course after the result has
been declared

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and get it into a betting shop in
London, before the news reaches the
betting shop.

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And obviously, you can
place a surefire bet.

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A lot of people could see the
commercial viability of it, that

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on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Those networks were becoming busy,
and the use of them,

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particularly for trade
and for transmission news

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and for stock brokers, was evident.

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It's something we still
see in modern days.

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For years, trading firms would have
invested tons of money in getting

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the fastest cables to be a
microsecond faster in getting data
and information

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on stocks and other commercial
activities, because speed is of
great importance.

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These land-based telegraphic systems,
pulsing with stock market prices

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and political news, are the beacons
of our modern information age.

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Having made his fortune in
the paper business,

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Cyrus Field understands
that the world is shrinking and
hungry for fast news.

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Now, a chance encounter
with British Telegraph pioneer,

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Frederick Gisborne, in 1853,
gives Field an an opportunity

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to enter the cable business.

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Frederick Gisborne is a very
interesting character.

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He's very well-educated.

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He takes all of his worldly goods
on a sled and walking through

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the wilderness to survey
different parts of the land.

230
00:17:21,860 --> 00:17:24,980
Gisborne had noticed
that lots of ships crossing the
Atlantic Ocean

231
00:17:25,740 --> 00:17:27,180
pass by Newfoundland.

232
00:17:27,420 --> 00:17:31,540
Gisborne has figured that
if he can erect a line connecting
Newfoundland's coast

233
00:17:31,740 --> 00:17:35,260
to the existing telegraph network
in North America, he could cut up to
five

234
00:17:35,620 --> 00:17:39,740
days off the time it takes to send
a message between Europe and America.

235
00:17:40,980 --> 00:17:43,940
It was quite a mad idea because
Newfoundland was quite remote

236
00:17:44,340 --> 00:17:47,500
from the rest of North America,
and it was very inhospitable.

237
00:17:48,180 --> 00:17:52,620
Backed by private equity,
Gisborne sets out full of hope.

238
00:17:53,460 --> 00:17:56,820
But bad weather and even
worse luck brings failure.

239
00:17:56,980 --> 00:18:00,820
A team member dies, others abandon
him.

240
00:18:01,020 --> 00:18:05,580
He did it at a horrible
time of the year, and you're in the
interior

241
00:18:06,340 --> 00:18:09,180
of Newfoundland that's undeveloped.

242
00:18:13,100 --> 00:18:18,580
Undaunted, Gisborne asks Cyrus Field
for funding for a second attempt.

243
00:18:20,900 --> 00:18:24,460
It was quite a mad idea,
but the legend has it that after
Gisborne left,

244
00:18:24,580 --> 00:18:26,220
Cyrus Field had an even madder idea,

245
00:18:26,740 --> 00:18:30,060
he looked at his globe, and he
realized that if you could lay a
cable

246
00:18:30,580 --> 00:18:31,780
all the way from New to St. John's
in Newfoundland,

247
00:18:31,940 --> 00:18:34,700
it would not be
just easier to lay a cable

248
00:18:34,860 --> 00:18:37,020
the whole way across
the Atlantic to Europe.

249
00:18:45,020 --> 00:18:48,780
But laying a 3,200 kilometers
long cable

250
00:18:48,940 --> 00:18:52,340
beneath the vast Atlantic
Ocean,

251
00:18:52,540 --> 00:18:55,500
is thought impossible by some of the
foremost men of science.

252
00:18:57,580 --> 00:19:01,700
VOICEOVER: "It was a mathematical
impossibility ability to submerge
the cable

253
00:19:02,580 --> 00:19:05,020
"successfully at so greater depth.

254
00:19:05,300 --> 00:19:09,580
"And if it were possible,
no signals could be transmitted
through so great a length."

255
00:19:11,500 --> 00:19:15,820
Even Samuel Morris,
now vastly wealthy from his telegraph

256
00:19:16,340 --> 00:19:20,700
investments, fear as the Atlantic
Ocean might be a step too far.

257
00:19:21,740 --> 00:19:24,660
VOICEOVER: "First, can electricity be
propelled to a distance

258
00:19:24,780 --> 00:19:26,460
"so great as the width of the ocean?

259
00:19:26,660 --> 00:19:29,820
"Second, this ocean bed
had not been sounded.

260
00:19:30,020 --> 00:19:35,620
"Third, can a cable of such length be
paid out to such a depth as
required?"

261
00:19:36,860 --> 00:19:42,780
But driven by ambition and profit,
Field pursues his plans with zeal.

262
00:19:43,340 --> 00:19:47,220
VOICEOVER: "It appears difficult to
overestimate the commercial returns
that will

263
00:19:48,860 --> 00:19:50,900
"accrue from this undertaking."

264
00:19:51,260 --> 00:19:52,940
Sometimes you do need
an outsider to come into a field
and say,

265
00:19:53,100 --> 00:19:54,300
'well, hang on a minute,
why don't we try this?'

266
00:19:54,460 --> 00:19:59,020
And the people who know all about
it will say, 'that can't be done'.

267
00:20:10,340 --> 00:20:12,100
To undertake his mission to connect
the world

268
00:20:12,260 --> 00:20:17,260
by cable, in 1856, Field gathers his
team of experts.

269
00:20:17,420 --> 00:20:20,900
Among them are the telegraph pioneer,
Samuel Morse,

270
00:20:21,060 --> 00:20:24,420
and the ground-breaking physicist,
William Thomson.

271
00:20:25,180 --> 00:20:26,540
It's striking at the time,

272
00:20:26,700 --> 00:20:29,580
it was all men that were involved in
laying the cable.

273
00:20:29,740 --> 00:20:32,900
Women weren't involved in the
engineering or designing,

274
00:20:33,020 --> 00:20:35,380
or any of the operations.

275
00:20:35,500 --> 00:20:38,500
Which is not unusual given how

276
00:20:38,660 --> 00:20:43,100
difficult it was for women to enter
certain professions.

277
00:20:44,620 --> 00:20:47,540
There were still notions of a
separate sphere,

278
00:20:47,700 --> 00:20:51,100
women belonging rather to the
household than out in schools.

279
00:20:51,460 --> 00:20:55,060
And that is something that we see
throughout the 19th century.

280
00:21:02,500 --> 00:21:06,260
There's one unexpected addition to
Phil's team,

281
00:21:06,380 --> 00:21:09,180
the British art dealer, John Brett.

282
00:21:10,260 --> 00:21:12,420
So John Brett is really interesting.

283
00:21:12,580 --> 00:21:17,140
He goes to the US, and in the US, he
brings with him lots

284
00:21:17,300 --> 00:21:19,900
of old masters, paintings from the
Renaissance.

285
00:21:20,060 --> 00:21:23,620
He makes a fortune selling these
and comes back to London as

286
00:21:23,740 --> 00:21:25,780
a fairly wealthy character.

287
00:21:25,940 --> 00:21:29,900
In the late 1840s, John Brett,
with his brother Jacob,

288
00:21:30,060 --> 00:21:32,780
had hatched a plan to lay a submarine
cable

289
00:21:32,900 --> 00:21:34,700
connecting Britain and France.

290
00:21:34,860 --> 00:21:38,500
If this succeeded, it would be the
first undersea cable to connect

291
00:21:38,620 --> 00:21:40,660
two countries in the world.

292
00:21:40,820 --> 00:21:43,900
The British and French governments
grant the Bretts permission

293
00:21:44,020 --> 00:21:45,660
to proceed with their plans.

294
00:21:46,260 --> 00:21:48,740
Of course, the British ruling
elite is interested in it.

295
00:21:48,900 --> 00:21:52,060
They see it as a means to control
territory,

296
00:21:52,180 --> 00:21:54,460
to control their colonies.

297
00:21:55,860 --> 00:22:01,060
The French also want to connect
with their colonies in Africa.

298
00:22:02,420 --> 00:22:06,260
Among the many challenges the Bretts
must overcome is that water

299
00:22:06,380 --> 00:22:09,700
and electricity can't mix.

300
00:22:10,500 --> 00:22:13,140
When you're stringing up telegraph
wires on land,

301
00:22:13,300 --> 00:22:16,260
you can just put the wire up and you
can have your telegraph poles,

302
00:22:16,380 --> 00:22:17,660
and it's all quite straightforward.

303
00:22:17,820 --> 00:22:22,060
You can't do that underwater because
water is an electrical conductor.

304
00:22:23,100 --> 00:22:27,100
So if you put a bare copper cable
into water, basically the current

305
00:22:27,220 --> 00:22:29,420
will just dissipate into the water.

306
00:22:37,340 --> 00:22:41,900
But after some research, the Bretts
find a solution.

307
00:22:44,620 --> 00:22:48,380
Gutta-percha, which was made from
the sap of the gutter tree,

308
00:22:48,540 --> 00:22:50,620
which was native to what was then
called Malaya,

309
00:22:50,780 --> 00:22:55,500
now Malaysia, in Southeast Asia,
or up well to being soaked in water.

310
00:22:55,940 --> 00:22:58,060
Irish chemical entrepreneur,

311
00:22:58,220 --> 00:23:01,500
Henry Bewley, then steps in with his
novel design

312
00:23:01,620 --> 00:23:03,260
for a new machine,

313
00:23:03,420 --> 00:23:05,980
which he calls the thermoplastic
insulator.

314
00:23:06,340 --> 00:23:10,780
Bewley's machine allows gutta-percha
to be stretched into a thin layer,

315
00:23:10,940 --> 00:23:14,860
allowing the latex to be finely
wrapped around the cable wire.

316
00:23:15,020 --> 00:23:19,100
Now, with a copper cable safely
insulated from the water,

317
00:23:19,220 --> 00:23:21,740
the Bretts were set to go.

318
00:23:24,260 --> 00:23:29,060
Here we have Jacob Brett's personal
album on the Origin and Progress

319
00:23:29,180 --> 00:23:31,180
of Submarine Telegraphy,

320
00:23:31,340 --> 00:23:37,260
presented to the institution as
a personal record of his work.

321
00:23:37,380 --> 00:23:40,420
And there's Jacob Brett himself.

322
00:23:40,580 --> 00:23:45,540
But it's also got some lovely
illustrations, including this one,

323
00:23:45,700 --> 00:23:48,340
showing the start of laying down
telegraph cable between

324
00:23:48,460 --> 00:23:49,740
England and France.

325
00:23:49,860 --> 00:23:51,860
We have the boats here.

326
00:23:51,980 --> 00:23:54,340
We've got the Cliffs of Dover here.

327
00:23:54,500 --> 00:23:58,900
And here you can see people actually
laying out the cable

328
00:23:59,020 --> 00:24:02,260
from the start through to the ship.

329
00:24:02,420 --> 00:24:05,340
So they've literally got a whole
load of wire,

330
00:24:05,500 --> 00:24:09,100
stuck it on the back of a fishing
boat, and went across the channel,

331
00:24:09,220 --> 00:24:11,060
spooling the wire out of the back.

332
00:24:11,220 --> 00:24:13,500
And it didn't go terribly well
because the wire

333
00:24:13,660 --> 00:24:15,220
floated on the water,
so they had

334
00:24:15,380 --> 00:24:17,420
to attach weight to it to get it to
sink.

335
00:24:17,580 --> 00:24:19,860
But finally, they get to France,
and they were then able to send

336
00:24:19,980 --> 00:24:21,900
messages between Britain and France.

337
00:24:23,900 --> 00:24:28,460
The Bretts' success is acclaimed
around the world.

338
00:24:28,620 --> 00:24:32,260
We stand on the threshold of an
improvement that may hasten

339
00:24:32,420 --> 00:24:36,260
the progress of our race more
rapidly than any other.

340
00:24:37,180 --> 00:24:41,100
Emboldened by success, John Brett
attempts to lay a cable

341
00:24:41,260 --> 00:24:45,140
connecting France to Africa, but
the Mediterranean Sea is far

342
00:24:45,300 --> 00:24:49,220
deeper and uneven, and the project
fails.

343
00:24:52,420 --> 00:24:53,660
Brett does, however,

344
00:24:53,820 --> 00:24:57,260
succeed in connecting Britain to
Ireland and continues

345
00:24:57,380 --> 00:25:01,140
the line to Dublin and the south.

346
00:25:01,300 --> 00:25:04,140
Brett foresees that someone will
succeed

347
00:25:04,260 --> 00:25:05,980
in laying a cable under the Atlantic,

348
00:25:06,140 --> 00:25:10,620
and when it comes, he will be ready
to connect to it.

349
00:25:13,900 --> 00:25:17,940
Along with John Brett, Phil's team
also includes the physicist

350
00:25:18,100 --> 00:25:20,780
William Thomson, who has
become fascinated

351
00:25:20,900 --> 00:25:23,300
by the theory of undersea telegraphy.

352
00:25:23,460 --> 00:25:26,500
Thomson relishes the challenge
of designing a submarine

353
00:25:26,660 --> 00:25:30,300
cable that many in the world of
science believe to be impossible.

354
00:25:31,100 --> 00:25:33,900
We may be sure that the American
telegraph will succeed.

355
00:25:34,060 --> 00:25:36,980
The corresponding solution
of the equation

356
00:25:37,140 --> 00:25:40,100
by which the effect of imperfect
insulation may be taken

357
00:25:40,260 --> 00:25:43,860
into account is the change of
electrical potential V

358
00:25:44,020 --> 00:25:46,380
in the cable due to imperfect
insulation

359
00:25:46,500 --> 00:25:47,980
is equal to 1 over 2...

360
00:25:48,140 --> 00:25:50,100
With his deep understanding
of physics,

361
00:25:50,260 --> 00:25:54,020
Thomson was the ideal candidate
for the position of chief engineer

362
00:25:54,180 --> 00:25:56,460
of Field's Atlantic Telegraph
Company.

363
00:25:56,620 --> 00:26:00,340
But ignorant of the scientific
challenges that faced them,

364
00:26:00,500 --> 00:26:03,460
Cyrus Field appoints Thomson as an
advisor,

365
00:26:03,620 --> 00:26:07,340
and instead an amateur experimenter,
Wildman Whitehouse,

366
00:26:07,500 --> 00:26:11,140
is given the most senior scientific
position in the company.

367
00:26:11,740 --> 00:26:14,540
Wildman Whitehouse,
appropriately named, yes.

368
00:26:14,660 --> 00:26:16,260
He was a surgeon by training.

369
00:26:16,420 --> 00:26:18,580
He had no background in electricity
or engineering,

370
00:26:18,740 --> 00:26:22,580
but not many people involved in the
enterprise did.

371
00:26:25,260 --> 00:26:28,140
He was a self-taught
telegraph engineer.

372
00:26:28,260 --> 00:26:29,580
He had his own theories.

373
00:26:29,700 --> 00:26:31,580
He'd done lots of research,

374
00:26:31,740 --> 00:26:34,060
but he used his his own special
terminology,

375
00:26:34,220 --> 00:26:37,580
and he used his own equipment to
measure the properties of wires.

376
00:26:37,740 --> 00:26:40,500
So they go into this with a chief
engineer

377
00:26:40,660 --> 00:26:43,260
who doesn't really know what's going
on.

378
00:26:43,420 --> 00:26:45,780
I mean, to be fair, hardly anyone
does.

379
00:26:48,820 --> 00:26:51,580
With his team in place, now, Field
must choose the route.

380
00:26:52,940 --> 00:26:57,140
Initially, a direct line running
from New York to Britain or France is

381
00:26:57,300 --> 00:27:02,420
considered until deep sea soundings
by the US Navy reveal something

382
00:27:02,540 --> 00:27:06,460
unexpected and providential.

383
00:27:06,580 --> 00:27:08,700
From Newfoundland to Ireland,

384
00:27:08,860 --> 00:27:12,300
the bottom of the sea between the
two places is a plateau,

385
00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:14,060
which seems to have been placed
there,

386
00:27:14,220 --> 00:27:16,380
especially for the purpose of
holding the wires

387
00:27:16,540 --> 00:27:20,500
of a submarine telegraph and of
keeping them out of harm's way.

388
00:27:22,180 --> 00:27:26,860
At some level, this felt miraculous.

389
00:27:27,620 --> 00:27:30,100
This must be there for a reason.

390
00:27:30,260 --> 00:27:34,140
God must have put this plateau
across the middle

391
00:27:34,300 --> 00:27:37,020
of the Atlantic Ocean so that we
could lay the cable,

392
00:27:37,140 --> 00:27:39,220
that this was part of human destiny.

393
00:27:39,380 --> 00:27:41,660
You're talking about a time when
people

394
00:27:41,780 --> 00:27:44,300
really saw God's hand in things,

395
00:27:44,460 --> 00:27:49,060
and he was doing it so the humanity
could live a better life.

396
00:27:51,180 --> 00:27:54,780
The Atlantic Plateau decides the
matter.

397
00:27:54,940 --> 00:27:58,060
Ireland will be the landing
point in Europe.

398
00:27:58,180 --> 00:27:59,740
But where in Ireland?

399
00:28:00,460 --> 00:28:03,500
The answer comes from an encounter
after between Field

400
00:28:03,660 --> 00:28:08,660
and Peter Fitzgerald, 19th Knight of
Kerry.

401
00:28:09,020 --> 00:28:12,420
Knight of Kerry was a member of
Parliament in London,

402
00:28:12,580 --> 00:28:15,300
and when Cyrus Field was raising
funds,

403
00:28:15,460 --> 00:28:18,380
he befriended Peter Fitzgerald, and
Peter,

404
00:28:18,540 --> 00:28:21,140
of course, knew everybody that was
important in London,

405
00:28:21,300 --> 00:28:23,500
and he opened the doors
for the raising

406
00:28:23,620 --> 00:28:25,740
of finance for Cyrus Field.

407
00:28:32,340 --> 00:28:36,340
The Knight of Kerry, he was actually
very innovative and progressive.

408
00:28:36,460 --> 00:28:38,700
He lived on the island,

409
00:28:38,940 --> 00:28:41,900
and very different to other British
landlords,

410
00:28:42,060 --> 00:28:44,340
he actually really cared about
his Irish tenants

411
00:28:44,460 --> 00:28:46,580
and the local population.

412
00:28:46,700 --> 00:28:49,540
This was shortly after the famine.

413
00:28:51,420 --> 00:28:54,460
In the decade before the first
Transatlantic cable attempt,

414
00:28:54,620 --> 00:28:58,220
a devastating famine, triggered by
the failure of the potato crop,

415
00:28:58,380 --> 00:29:01,500
had caused the deaths of one million
people in Ireland.

416
00:29:01,660 --> 00:29:06,100
Two million more had been forced to
emigrate.

417
00:29:06,220 --> 00:29:08,060
Under Fitzgerald's stewardship,

418
00:29:08,220 --> 00:29:12,700
however, the inhabitants of Valentia
Island escaped the worst.

419
00:29:13,340 --> 00:29:16,780
Sir Peter Fitzgerald was conscious
of ensuring that Valentia

420
00:29:16,900 --> 00:29:19,060
had economic viability.

421
00:29:19,220 --> 00:29:24,740
So he had invested in the growing
and weaving of flax for export.

422
00:29:24,900 --> 00:29:28,500
He invested in the development of
the slate factory.

423
00:29:28,980 --> 00:29:33,100
Through friends in London, Fitzgerald
has secured lucrative contracts

424
00:29:33,220 --> 00:29:34,700
to supply Valentia Slate

425
00:29:34,860 --> 00:29:37,980
to Westminster Palace and the London
underground.

426
00:29:38,140 --> 00:29:40,980
Now, Fitzgerald convinces Field
that the safe

427
00:29:41,140 --> 00:29:44,820
harbour of Valentia Island on
Ireland's westerly coast

428
00:29:44,980 --> 00:29:48,340
is the ideal location for his
European base.

429
00:29:51,020 --> 00:29:52,180
The team is assembled.

430
00:29:52,300 --> 00:29:54,260
The launch site agreed.

431
00:29:54,420 --> 00:29:56,620
But the biggest challenge
remains ahead.

432
00:29:56,780 --> 00:30:01,140
A cable strong and flexible enough
to survive the pressures of the vast

433
00:30:01,300 --> 00:30:04,220
Atlantic Ocean mission
must be produced.

434
00:30:04,380 --> 00:30:08,540
The Atlantic Telegraph is now
in the process of manufacture.

435
00:30:08,700 --> 00:30:14,100
2,500 miles of cable are to be ready
to go to sea by the end of May.

436
00:30:14,260 --> 00:30:18,420
And if no accident happens, electric
messages will be passing between

437
00:30:18,580 --> 00:30:22,660
Ireland and Newfoundland before
July.

438
00:30:22,820 --> 00:30:26,940
So this is one of the first cables,
and as you can see,

439
00:30:27,100 --> 00:30:30,300
there's copper in the middle with
gutta-percha

440
00:30:30,420 --> 00:30:31,540
and hemp surrounding it,

441
00:30:31,700 --> 00:30:36,460
and then iron, too, that was
twisted around it.

442
00:30:36,740 --> 00:30:40,740
To make a cable strong enough to
survive the forces involved,

443
00:30:40,900 --> 00:30:44,620
29,000 kilometers of copper wire
must be

444
00:30:44,780 --> 00:30:50,620
wound in 526,000 kilometers
of protective iron wire.

445
00:30:50,780 --> 00:30:54,620
That's an iron wire long enough to
reach the moon.

446
00:30:57,340 --> 00:31:00,060
The contract to manufacture
the cable

447
00:31:00,220 --> 00:31:03,380
goes to two rope and cable
manufacturers in England.

448
00:31:06,540 --> 00:31:08,500
The cable required lots of copper.

449
00:31:08,660 --> 00:31:11,140
This copper would have come from
Cornwall.

450
00:31:11,260 --> 00:31:13,140
It could have come also from Chile.

451
00:31:13,300 --> 00:31:16,340
And they wind it through the
machines, making a core.

452
00:31:16,500 --> 00:31:19,100
They then cover it with
gutta-percha.

453
00:31:19,260 --> 00:31:21,340
We had materials being used to make
this cable

454
00:31:21,460 --> 00:31:23,100
that came from Cornwall,

455
00:31:23,260 --> 00:31:24,860
that came from Chile, that came
from Indonesia.

456
00:31:25,020 --> 00:31:27,380
Workers around the world, thousands
of them had to come

457
00:31:27,500 --> 00:31:28,540
together to make this happen.

458
00:31:28,700 --> 00:31:31,580
It was a massive international
effort.

459
00:31:31,900 --> 00:31:34,620
This is the moment where we can
start to see what we now would

460
00:31:34,740 --> 00:31:35,900
think of as globalisation.

461
00:31:36,020 --> 00:31:38,780
This is where globalisation starts.

462
00:31:39,020 --> 00:31:40,740
The cables are extremely long.

463
00:31:40,900 --> 00:31:43,620
They require tons and tons of
gutta-percha.

464
00:31:43,780 --> 00:31:47,100
And the way they harvested the
latex was to cut the tree down.

465
00:31:47,260 --> 00:31:50,140
They essentially destroy
the forests.

466
00:31:55,620 --> 00:32:00,020
The costs involved for Field and the
Transatlantic Telegraph Company

467
00:32:00,140 --> 00:32:02,180
are inevitably substantial.

468
00:32:02,340 --> 00:32:05,140
Field invests much of his own
fortune.

469
00:32:05,300 --> 00:32:08,260
For the rest, he turns to the
private market.

470
00:32:08,820 --> 00:32:10,940
He goes and raises money
from investors.

471
00:32:11,100 --> 00:32:13,340
And a bit like with a
modern tech startup,

472
00:32:13,500 --> 00:32:14,580
you have a roadshow, you have a
PowerPoint deck,

473
00:32:14,740 --> 00:32:16,500
and he's saying, This is going
to be great.

474
00:32:16,660 --> 00:32:17,700
We're all going to make
lots of money.

475
00:32:17,860 --> 00:32:20,780
It's going to change the world.
World peace.

476
00:32:21,820 --> 00:32:24,300
I don't think the idea that this
will make humanity better

477
00:32:24,460 --> 00:32:26,700
is just spin. I think people
actually believe it.

478
00:32:26,860 --> 00:32:29,060
I think there's a sense that in some
way,

479
00:32:29,220 --> 00:32:31,340
the world has changed on its axis
here.

480
00:32:31,460 --> 00:32:33,060
Something different has happened.

481
00:32:33,220 --> 00:32:36,860
Maybe this is humanity entering a
better phase.

482
00:32:37,020 --> 00:32:39,860
There's still that belief
that technology

483
00:32:40,020 --> 00:32:42,940
could make us better, make us
better people,

484
00:32:43,060 --> 00:32:47,420
and to learn to love one another.

485
00:32:54,660 --> 00:32:57,740
August 4th, 1857,

486
00:32:57,900 --> 00:33:00,060
with the international press and
large crowds

487
00:33:00,220 --> 00:33:03,900
watching on Valentia Island, the
Atlantic Telegraph Company

488
00:33:04,020 --> 00:33:07,300
prepares to transform the world.

489
00:33:07,740 --> 00:33:10,260
On loan from the British and US
governments,

490
00:33:10,380 --> 00:33:12,180
the HMS Agamemnon

491
00:33:12,340 --> 00:33:16,980
and the USS Niagara carry half the
cable each on board.

492
00:33:17,140 --> 00:33:19,180
The idea is that Niagara will spoil
out its half,

493
00:33:19,300 --> 00:33:20,980
and then when they get halfway,

494
00:33:21,140 --> 00:33:23,460
they'll stick on the Agamemnon's
half

495
00:33:23,580 --> 00:33:25,260
and do the second half of the cable.

496
00:33:27,940 --> 00:33:30,020
Cable boats today are advanced.

497
00:33:30,180 --> 00:33:32,980
They're purpose-built ships
made for this purpose.

498
00:33:33,140 --> 00:33:38,620
They worked 365 days a year,
laying cable or fixing faults.

499
00:33:40,780 --> 00:33:45,460
The original guys took navy ships
that were not built for purpose.

500
00:33:45,620 --> 00:33:48,020
They modified them to take
the cable that they needed.

501
00:33:48,140 --> 00:33:49,580
They were learning as they went.

502
00:33:49,740 --> 00:33:53,540
They were finding problems
and fixing them on the go.

503
00:33:54,100 --> 00:33:58,180
But how they took those ships loaded
with that weight of cable to start

504
00:33:58,340 --> 00:34:02,300
distributing across the Atlantic is
mind-blowing.

505
00:34:04,660 --> 00:34:07,740
Before the ships depart, Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland,

506
00:34:07,900 --> 00:34:11,580
George Howard, delivers
a rousing speech.

507
00:34:11,740 --> 00:34:15,780
We are about to establish a new
material link

508
00:34:15,900 --> 00:34:18,060
between the old world and the new.

509
00:34:18,220 --> 00:34:22,420
Our new link, instead of superseding
and supplanting the old ones,

510
00:34:22,580 --> 00:34:27,340
is to give a life and intensity
which they never had before.

511
00:34:28,140 --> 00:34:29,380
There was bands there.

512
00:34:29,540 --> 00:34:32,860
There was artists depicting what was
going on,

513
00:34:33,020 --> 00:34:38,100
and there was huge excitement
over this transatlantic cable.

514
00:34:39,140 --> 00:34:40,820
We had so many visitors in the
island.

515
00:34:40,980 --> 00:34:43,780
It was a wonder where they got
accommodation.

516
00:34:43,940 --> 00:34:45,660
To celebrate the laying of the
cable,

517
00:34:45,820 --> 00:34:48,060
the Knight of Kerry had a banquet
and a dance,

518
00:34:48,220 --> 00:34:50,940
and these were held in John
O'Driscoll's store

519
00:34:51,060 --> 00:34:52,100
in the Slate Yard.

520
00:34:53,100 --> 00:34:55,860
On the eve of this great
ocean voyage,

521
00:34:56,020 --> 00:34:59,500
nerves among the sailors and
pioneers are on edge.

522
00:34:59,660 --> 00:35:03,500
The whole adventure of the big ship
leaving the harbour

523
00:35:03,660 --> 00:35:07,060
with the additional bit of laying
this cable out behind it,

524
00:35:07,220 --> 00:35:11,700
fit into a whole set of stories of
ocean adventures, I suppose,

525
00:35:11,820 --> 00:35:14,100
going back to Homer, really,

526
00:35:14,260 --> 00:35:16,900
of setting out into the ocean
and the ocean being,

527
00:35:17,060 --> 00:35:19,740
in in lots of ways, one of the last
frontiers.

528
00:35:23,100 --> 00:35:27,340
Cyrus Field feels the weight of
history.

529
00:35:28,020 --> 00:35:30,500
I have no words to express the
feelings

530
00:35:30,620 --> 00:35:31,940
which fill my heart tonight.

531
00:35:32,100 --> 00:35:35,260
It beats with love and affection
for every man,

532
00:35:35,380 --> 00:35:37,620
woman, and child who hears me.

533
00:35:44,300 --> 00:35:48,620
The following morning,
the ships set sail.

534
00:35:48,740 --> 00:35:51,380
In a portent of what may lie ahead,

535
00:35:51,540 --> 00:35:54,940
only hours after leaving port, the
cable snaps.

536
00:35:55,100 --> 00:35:58,260
The ships must return
to Valentia for repairs.

537
00:35:59,020 --> 00:36:02,580
The next day, they sail
out once more.

538
00:36:02,700 --> 00:36:04,180
This time with little fanfare.

539
00:36:04,340 --> 00:36:08,860
But again, almost immediately,
calamity strikes.

540
00:36:09,620 --> 00:36:14,020
When they were 280 miles out, as the
ocean suddenly got deeper,

541
00:36:14,140 --> 00:36:16,740
the cable was running out,

542
00:36:16,900 --> 00:36:18,940
it was very heavy, and it was
running out too fast,

543
00:36:19,100 --> 00:36:21,260
and the braking system wasn't
good enough,

544
00:36:21,420 --> 00:36:24,220
and they couldn't control the
braking system.

545
00:36:31,140 --> 00:36:33,740
The cable dropped really quickly.

546
00:36:33,900 --> 00:36:36,700
The guys on the ship went, Oh, my
God. Help, help.

547
00:36:36,860 --> 00:36:39,980
They pulled a brake and they
snapped the cable.

548
00:36:40,980 --> 00:36:42,620
That first cable was really
inadequate.

549
00:36:42,780 --> 00:36:47,620
It was really just too thin and too
weak to withstand the Atlantic.

550
00:36:48,340 --> 00:36:50,420
New boats today can measure
the tension on the cable.

551
00:36:50,580 --> 00:36:53,340
There could be a couple of tons
weight

552
00:36:53,500 --> 00:36:55,500
tension on the cable as it goes
to the greater depths,

553
00:36:55,620 --> 00:36:57,540
and they can vary and release those

554
00:36:57,700 --> 00:37:00,020
to manage that so it doesn't get
stressed.

555
00:37:00,180 --> 00:37:03,580
We're back in the day, the tensions
on the cable was causing the snap.

556
00:37:03,740 --> 00:37:09,620
The loss of 480 kilometers
of cable is a catastrophe.

557
00:37:09,740 --> 00:37:13,380
Not only has the 1857 mission failed,

558
00:37:13,540 --> 00:37:17,980
it has devoured most of the money
Field had raised.

559
00:37:23,540 --> 00:37:27,220
The Atlantic Telegraph Company
is an embarrassment to the world.

560
00:37:27,980 --> 00:37:30,620
Field, though, remains determined.

561
00:37:30,780 --> 00:37:32,860
Over winter, the braking system that
controls the speed and tension

562
00:37:33,020 --> 00:37:37,820
at which the cable is paid
out is improved.

563
00:37:38,300 --> 00:37:41,020
A fresh fundraising round is
initiated

564
00:37:41,180 --> 00:37:45,860
with shares of £20 sold to private
investors in the US and the UK.

565
00:37:46,460 --> 00:37:51,100
Then a year later, the team is set
to go again.

566
00:37:59,180 --> 00:38:01,860
June 10th, 1858,

567
00:38:02,020 --> 00:38:04,860
the two refitted ships depart for the
second time

568
00:38:04,980 --> 00:38:06,820
from Plymouth in the UK.

569
00:38:07,220 --> 00:38:08,820
The plan has changed.

570
00:38:08,980 --> 00:38:11,580
The ships will start laying cable
together

571
00:38:11,700 --> 00:38:13,620
from the middle of the ocean.

572
00:38:13,780 --> 00:38:18,860
It is proposed that the two ships,
each laden with half the cable,

573
00:38:19,020 --> 00:38:22,740
shall proceed together to a point
halfway between the two coasts.

574
00:38:22,860 --> 00:38:24,980
The two ends of the cable,

575
00:38:25,140 --> 00:38:26,780
having been carefully
joined together,

576
00:38:26,940 --> 00:38:30,420
the vessels will start in opposite
directions, one towards Ireland

577
00:38:30,540 --> 00:38:34,100
and the other towards Newfoundland.

578
00:38:36,580 --> 00:38:41,100
Newfoundland in the 1850s is
very sparsely populated place.

579
00:38:41,260 --> 00:38:45,180
It's dependent upon seasonal
fishery,

580
00:38:45,340 --> 00:38:49,100
cod primarily, hunting seals in the
winter.

581
00:38:49,260 --> 00:38:53,820
So it's basically a hunter-gatherer
subsistence life.

582
00:38:53,980 --> 00:38:57,900
And if the fish don't come in or if
the seals are offshore,

583
00:38:58,060 --> 00:39:00,140
the ice is offshore,
there's real hunger.

584
00:39:00,300 --> 00:39:03,660
People actually starve
to death in Newfoundland.

585
00:39:03,820 --> 00:39:06,420
The Agamemnon and the
Niagara

586
00:39:06,580 --> 00:39:09,340
successfully rendezvous halfway
between Europe

587
00:39:09,460 --> 00:39:11,780
and Newfoundland and set off.

588
00:39:12,900 --> 00:39:17,220
But within hours, catastrophe
hits again.

589
00:39:20,660 --> 00:39:22,420
The Agamemnon rose heavily

590
00:39:22,580 --> 00:39:25,780
and then went down quickly into the
deep trough

591
00:39:25,900 --> 00:39:28,580
of the sea, falling over as she did.

592
00:39:28,740 --> 00:39:33,820
So almost to capsize completely,
everything broke adrift.

593
00:39:34,420 --> 00:39:38,140
Equipped to carry 1,250
tons of cable,

594
00:39:38,300 --> 00:39:41,100
the Agamemnon struggles
to stay afloat.

595
00:39:41,260 --> 00:39:45,100
Two men are injured as
the ship rolls violently.

596
00:39:45,220 --> 00:39:46,420
Cabins are flooded.

597
00:39:46,540 --> 00:39:48,940
The cable is damaged.

598
00:39:52,900 --> 00:39:56,140
It was evident that the ship itself
would soon strain into pieces if

599
00:39:57,140 --> 00:40:01,420
the weather continued so.

600
00:40:01,620 --> 00:40:06,140
It takes 10 days for the storm to
blow out.

601
00:40:06,260 --> 00:40:07,220
Beaten and battered,

602
00:40:07,860 --> 00:40:10,300
the ship's rendezvous and make
repairs,

603
00:40:10,460 --> 00:40:13,740
and field then orders the cable
laying to continue.

604
00:40:13,900 --> 00:40:16,940
Again, however, the mission
is blighted.

605
00:40:17,060 --> 00:40:19,100
Twice more, the cable snaps.

606
00:40:19,260 --> 00:40:23,940
Long sections are lost several
kilometers down to the ocean floor.

607
00:40:24,060 --> 00:40:25,780
After a month of toil,

608
00:40:25,940 --> 00:40:31,340
the ships run perilously low on coal
and food, and finally,

609
00:40:31,500 --> 00:40:35,060
they realise they must give up and
return to Ireland.

610
00:40:35,180 --> 00:40:37,540
Cyrus Field faces ruin.

611
00:40:38,780 --> 00:40:42,540
The strain on the man was more
than the strain on the cable.

612
00:40:42,700 --> 00:40:46,260
We were in fear that both
would break together.

613
00:40:46,380 --> 00:40:49,020
Shocked by this second failure,

614
00:40:49,180 --> 00:40:51,500
chairman of the Atlantic Telegraph
Company,

615
00:40:51,660 --> 00:40:54,380
Sir William Brown, calls for the
entire mission to be

616
00:40:54,540 --> 00:40:58,020
scrapped and what remains
of the cable to be sold.

617
00:40:58,580 --> 00:41:02,820
But against all odds, Field
persuades the Company Board

618
00:41:02,940 --> 00:41:05,500
to allow him one last attempt.

619
00:41:05,660 --> 00:41:08,260
Quickly, he has the ships
reprovisioned,

620
00:41:08,380 --> 00:41:10,100
and just four weeks later,

621
00:41:10,220 --> 00:41:12,060
they sail again.

622
00:41:12,180 --> 00:41:15,260
The mission seems doomed.

623
00:41:15,380 --> 00:41:18,060
Three times more the cable breaks.

624
00:41:18,220 --> 00:41:21,980
Each time, crewmen fish it back
from the depths with grappling

625
00:41:22,100 --> 00:41:24,660
lines several miles long.

626
00:41:34,780 --> 00:41:37,420
Confronting each challenge head-on,

627
00:41:37,580 --> 00:41:41,300
the USS Niagara continues across the
Atlantic

628
00:41:41,460 --> 00:41:46,060
And on the evening of August 4th,
1858, Cyrus Field,

629
00:41:46,220 --> 00:41:50,260
the man whose drive and vision has
sustained this epic journey,

630
00:41:50,420 --> 00:41:54,500
at last enters Newfoundland's
Trinity Bay.

631
00:42:00,100 --> 00:42:03,300
Hours later, on the far side of the
ocean,

632
00:42:03,420 --> 00:42:05,580
the HMS Agamemnon arrives

633
00:42:05,740 --> 00:42:10,460
at Valentia Harbour to the sound
of a massive gun salute.

634
00:42:12,820 --> 00:42:18,420
Five years of toil, persistence,
and ingenuity has paid off.

635
00:42:18,580 --> 00:42:21,660
The two continents of Europe
and North America,

636
00:42:21,820 --> 00:42:25,460
the old world and the new,
have at last been joined together

637
00:42:25,620 --> 00:42:29,660
by a man-made sub-sea communications
cable.

638
00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:35,300
Among the first telegraphs Field
sends is one to his wife, Mary,

639
00:42:35,420 --> 00:42:38,060
and their seven children in New York.

640
00:42:39,700 --> 00:42:42,300
Arrived here yesterday, all well.

641
00:42:42,460 --> 00:42:45,580
The Atlantic telegraph
cable successfully laid.

642
00:42:45,740 --> 00:42:49,220
Please telegraph me here
immediately.

643
00:42:49,380 --> 00:42:52,540
Later that day, Field receives a
telegram from the

644
00:42:52,660 --> 00:42:56,220
American President, James Buchanan.

645
00:42:56,340 --> 00:42:59,420
I congratulate you with all my heart

646
00:42:59,580 --> 00:43:03,020
upon the success of the
great enterprise.

647
00:43:03,180 --> 00:43:05,060
Under the blessings of
divine providence,

648
00:43:05,220 --> 00:43:08,820
I trust it may prove instrumental
in promoting perpetual peace

649
00:43:08,980 --> 00:43:12,100
and friendship between
Kings and nations.

650
00:43:12,260 --> 00:43:16,820
I have not yet received the Queen's
dispatch.

651
00:43:22,140 --> 00:43:26,900
The world is completely besotted by
this and completely excited.

652
00:43:28,260 --> 00:43:31,420
In some places, all business was
suspended.

653
00:43:31,540 --> 00:43:33,020
Men rushed into the streets

654
00:43:33,180 --> 00:43:36,260
and flocked to the offices where the
news was received.

655
00:43:37,260 --> 00:43:40,180
There were tremendous celebrations
here in Valentia.

656
00:43:40,580 --> 00:43:46,580
There was barrels of porter poured
out by the Knight of Kerry.

657
00:43:46,740 --> 00:43:49,860
There were celebrations in Dublin
and London,

658
00:43:49,980 --> 00:43:51,180
all over the world, really.

659
00:43:52,940 --> 00:43:55,940
There are massive celebrations
in the streets of New York.

660
00:43:57,660 --> 00:44:00,100
There's a fireworks display so big

661
00:44:00,260 --> 00:44:02,660
that it sets the roof of the City
Hall on fire.

662
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:04,940
There's a half-day holiday declared.

663
00:44:06,180 --> 00:44:10,740
There's a piece of the cables
paraded down Fifth Avenue.

664
00:44:11,420 --> 00:44:14,620
There are telegraph balls.

665
00:44:15,660 --> 00:44:19,940
There's telegraph merchandise.
You could buy a walking stick,

666
00:44:20,100 --> 00:44:23,620
a gentleman's walking stick, that
had a piece of the actual cable

667
00:44:23,780 --> 00:44:26,580
built into the shaft, designed
by Tiffany's.

668
00:44:26,700 --> 00:44:28,580
Now, I want one of these.

669
00:44:28,740 --> 00:44:32,740
Here in New York, the triumphant
pyrotechnics We celebrated

670
00:44:32,860 --> 00:44:35,580
this final and complete subjugation

671
00:44:35,700 --> 00:44:38,420
by man of all the powers of nature,

672
00:44:38,540 --> 00:44:40,900
space and time included.

673
00:44:41,180 --> 00:44:46,100
The phrase is used that this
annihilates time and space.

674
00:44:46,540 --> 00:44:50,540
It has a hard to think of a bigger
claim to make about anything.

675
00:44:52,180 --> 00:44:55,500
If you could send a message
more or less instantly across it,

676
00:44:55,620 --> 00:44:58,020
time was gone, space was gone.

677
00:45:04,380 --> 00:45:05,580
August 16th,

678
00:45:05,740 --> 00:45:08,820
President Buchanan receives a
message from the British monarch,

679
00:45:08,940 --> 00:45:10,660
Queen Victoria.

680
00:45:10,820 --> 00:45:14,340
The Queen is convinced that the
President will join her

681
00:45:14,500 --> 00:45:17,780
in fervently hoping that the
electric cable will prove

682
00:45:17,940 --> 00:45:20,180
an additional link between
the nations

683
00:45:20,300 --> 00:45:22,700
whose friendship is founded upon

684
00:45:22,860 --> 00:45:25,660
their common interest and reciprocal
esteem.

685
00:45:28,260 --> 00:45:30,580
Glory to God in the highest
and to Earth,

686
00:45:30,740 --> 00:45:32,620
peace and goodwill to all
men,

687
00:45:32,780 --> 00:45:36,020
was the first message
sent on the cable.

688
00:45:36,180 --> 00:45:41,500
It's talked about in terms
of uniting humanity.

689
00:45:41,660 --> 00:45:44,580
Cyrus Field appears to have been
fully aware

690
00:45:44,740 --> 00:45:47,460
of the future implications
of his great endeavour.

691
00:45:47,620 --> 00:45:51,460
The whole earth will be belted
with electric current,

692
00:45:51,620 --> 00:45:54,340
palpitating with human thoughts and
emotions.

693
00:46:03,820 --> 00:46:06,300
Repeat, please. Repeat, please.

694
00:46:06,420 --> 00:46:10,340
Please send slower for the present.

695
00:46:10,500 --> 00:46:12,820
Repeat, please.
How?

696
00:46:12,940 --> 00:46:14,700
How do you receive...

697
00:46:14,860 --> 00:46:19,260
But as the world celebrates, the
cable is failing.

698
00:46:20,220 --> 00:46:21,380
Sorry we didn't catch that.

699
00:46:21,500 --> 00:46:23,500
Can you repeat, please?

700
00:46:23,620 --> 00:46:25,060
Repeat, please.

701
00:46:25,220 --> 00:46:26,820
The cable had been unreliable from
the start.

702
00:46:26,940 --> 00:46:28,100
From the very first day,

703
00:46:28,260 --> 00:46:30,140
it was quite difficult for the
operator

704
00:46:30,300 --> 00:46:32,380
to understand the message
being transmitted.

705
00:46:32,500 --> 00:46:33,900
Repeat, repeat, please.

706
00:46:34,020 --> 00:46:35,060
Repeat, please.

707
00:46:35,180 --> 00:46:36,180
Repeat, please.

708
00:46:36,300 --> 00:46:38,700
Please, just please say, say...

709
00:46:38,860 --> 00:46:40,860
So when you put a cable under the
sea

710
00:46:40,980 --> 00:46:42,900
and you make it very long,

711
00:46:43,060 --> 00:46:47,060
what you have is something called
retardation.

712
00:46:48,220 --> 00:46:53,900
It would lengthen these pulses, and
that meant that the next incoming

713
00:46:54,060 --> 00:46:56,620
pulse overlapped with
the previous pulse.

714
00:46:56,780 --> 00:46:58,900
There was no space between
the signals.

715
00:47:01,220 --> 00:47:04,460
And that meant the signals at the
other end of the cable

716
00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:09,020
were all distorted, so the telegraph
operators just heard noise.

717
00:47:09,180 --> 00:47:10,660
Repeat, please.
Repeat, please.

718
00:47:10,780 --> 00:47:12,540
Please send these and these.

719
00:47:12,660 --> 00:47:15,540
these and these.

720
00:47:15,940 --> 00:47:19,220
The first message to be sent over
was from Queen Victoria

721
00:47:19,340 --> 00:47:21,420
to President Buchanan in the US.

722
00:47:21,580 --> 00:47:24,980
And it was 90 words long, and it
took 16 and a half hours

723
00:47:25,140 --> 00:47:26,820
to transmit because of these
problems.

724
00:47:26,980 --> 00:47:28,820
In a converted slate house on
Valentia Island,

725
00:47:28,980 --> 00:47:33,340
Wildman Whitehouse seeks desperately
for solution.

726
00:47:33,500 --> 00:47:35,820
Whitehouse's answer is to turn up
the voltage.

727
00:47:35,980 --> 00:47:37,340
He thinks, well, surely this is the
way

728
00:47:37,500 --> 00:47:39,980
to make signals travel more
effectively

729
00:47:40,100 --> 00:47:41,340
over very long distances.

730
00:47:41,500 --> 00:47:43,820
He then increases the
voltage

731
00:47:43,980 --> 00:47:47,980
to around 2000 volts through this
narrow cable.

732
00:47:48,140 --> 00:47:50,660
So he thought, okay, well, I'm going
to give it a big amount

733
00:47:50,820 --> 00:47:52,140
of voltage on this side of the
cable

734
00:47:52,300 --> 00:47:53,940
to the point where it gets to the
other

735
00:47:54,060 --> 00:47:55,140
end of the very long cable.

736
00:47:55,300 --> 00:47:56,780
It's still going to have some
voltage.

737
00:47:56,940 --> 00:48:00,660
He didn't realise that that's just
not how the science works

738
00:48:00,820 --> 00:48:03,740
And what happened was he burnt out
the cable,

739
00:48:03,860 --> 00:48:05,620
so the cable was destroyed.

740
00:48:06,460 --> 00:48:09,580
After two weeks of evermore garbled
messages,

741
00:48:09,700 --> 00:48:12,140
the company board has enough.

742
00:48:12,300 --> 00:48:15,700
Whitehouse is fired and William
Thomson is promoted.

743
00:48:16,500 --> 00:48:18,780
Thomson immediately rectifies the
issue

744
00:48:18,940 --> 00:48:21,260
by reducing the power sent through
the cable.

745
00:48:22,460 --> 00:48:26,340
But the cable is too damaged to
survive.

746
00:48:26,780 --> 00:48:30,140
Within a week, the line is
permanently dead.

747
00:48:41,300 --> 00:48:43,740
When news of this gets into the
media,

748
00:48:43,900 --> 00:48:46,260
some of the media reports say
that the whole thing was

749
00:48:46,420 --> 00:48:50,140
made up, and it was all a complete
fake.

750
00:48:50,300 --> 00:48:54,700
There's a big scandal because this
cable has been hailed as a...

751
00:48:54,860 --> 00:48:56,980
you know, great breakthrough for
mankind,

752
00:48:57,140 --> 00:48:58,700
and that everyone's
written it up in the papers.

753
00:48:58,860 --> 00:49:00,740
So a lot of people say
"Well, did it ever work?

754
00:49:00,900 --> 00:49:02,820
This whole thing could have been a
hoax."

755
00:49:02,980 --> 00:49:06,380
It could have been a way of trying
to get money out of investors.

756
00:49:07,660 --> 00:49:11,140
Reliable and unimpeachable evidence
is wanting

757
00:49:11,300 --> 00:49:14,260
that one solitary, intelligible
sentence ever passed

758
00:49:14,420 --> 00:49:17,420
upon the cable
from either continent to the other.

759
00:49:17,580 --> 00:49:21,340
Have the cable managers
humbugged the public?

760
00:49:21,500 --> 00:49:23,700
The same obviously happened
with the moon landings.

761
00:49:23,860 --> 00:49:25,500
There are still people who say
"Oh, yes, it was all a trick."

762
00:49:25,660 --> 00:49:28,300
You know, "They got Stanley Kubrick
to do it,

763
00:49:28,420 --> 00:49:29,700
and it was all faked by NASA

764
00:49:29,860 --> 00:49:31,260
on sound stages and this sort of
thing."

765
00:49:31,420 --> 00:49:34,500
So these amazing leaps forward are
sometimes

766
00:49:34,660 --> 00:49:38,460
so amazing that people can't
believe that they really happened.

767
00:49:39,700 --> 00:49:44,700
After the failure in 1858, there
was a public inquiry in London,

768
00:49:44,820 --> 00:49:46,300
the first of its kind,

769
00:49:46,460 --> 00:49:49,820
and they brought all the
scientists together.

770
00:49:49,980 --> 00:49:54,100
William Thomson and Samuel Morse,
and Michael Faraday,

771
00:49:54,260 --> 00:49:55,860
all those people were brought
together

772
00:49:55,980 --> 00:50:00,020
to see why the 1858 cable failed.

773
00:50:00,460 --> 00:50:01,980
The inquiry's conclusions,

774
00:50:02,140 --> 00:50:06,980
published in 1861 in a 500-page
book, are damning.

775
00:50:07,140 --> 00:50:12,540
Amateurism, lack of proper
scientific rigour, money wasted.

776
00:50:20,060 --> 00:50:24,300
Following the inquiry, Cyrus Field
now turns to the one man

777
00:50:24,460 --> 00:50:29,620
whose scientific knowledge he hopes
can save the cable, William Thomson.

778
00:50:29,780 --> 00:50:33,100
Cyrus Field and the other directors
turn to Thomson and say

779
00:50:33,260 --> 00:50:36,220
"We should have listened to you.
Tell us what we were doing wrong.

780
00:50:36,340 --> 00:50:38,300
Help us sort it out."

781
00:50:38,460 --> 00:50:40,780
Among Thomson's first
recommendations

782
00:50:40,940 --> 00:50:44,420
is that future cables must use only
copper wire

783
00:50:44,540 --> 00:50:46,940
of the very highest purity.

784
00:50:47,220 --> 00:50:49,940
Thomson also stipulates
that future cables

785
00:50:50,100 --> 00:50:52,700
must be both stronger and more
flexible.

786
00:50:52,860 --> 00:50:56,980
Though this will increase costs,
the company agrees.

787
00:50:57,700 --> 00:51:01,180
He then invents something
called a mirrored galvanometer.

788
00:51:01,300 --> 00:51:03,540
Very sensitive instrument for

789
00:51:03,700 --> 00:51:08,140
measuring the current through a
very long cable.

790
00:51:08,300 --> 00:51:11,940
I am never content until I have
constructed a mechanical model

791
00:51:12,060 --> 00:51:14,140
of the subject I am studying.

792
00:51:14,300 --> 00:51:16,620
If I succeed in making one,
I understand.

793
00:51:17,460 --> 00:51:19,340
Otherwise, I do not.

794
00:51:20,820 --> 00:51:23,020
Thomson's super-sensitive
galvanometer

795
00:51:23,140 --> 00:51:25,980
revolutionises undersea telegraphy.

796
00:51:26,140 --> 00:51:30,140
The galvanometer allows signals to
be sent over vast distances

797
00:51:30,300 --> 00:51:33,100
using low amounts of electrical
current.

798
00:51:33,260 --> 00:51:36,140
A tiny mirror mounted on a light
coil of copper wire

799
00:51:36,260 --> 00:51:37,900
twists back and forth

800
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:41,460
in a magnetic field generated
by the electric current.

801
00:51:41,620 --> 00:51:43,780
A beam of light reflecting off the
mirror

802
00:51:43,940 --> 00:51:46,860
swings one direction for a
Morse code dot,

803
00:51:46,980 --> 00:51:48,460
the other for a dash.

804
00:51:55,420 --> 00:51:57,340
When the inquiry ends,

805
00:51:57,500 --> 00:52:01,460
the irrepressible Cyrus Field
prepares for a third attempt.

806
00:52:01,620 --> 00:52:05,300
Events in the US, however,
bring plans to a halt.

807
00:52:15,140 --> 00:52:18,180
An estimated 750,000 people

808
00:52:18,340 --> 00:52:21,340
lose their lives in the
American Civil War.

809
00:52:26,820 --> 00:52:31,780
The war reveals the strategic
value of high-speed communications.

810
00:52:32,860 --> 00:52:36,620
In this brutal long war,
both Confederate and Union sides

811
00:52:36,740 --> 00:52:39,660
use telegraphs to command armies.

812
00:52:40,140 --> 00:52:45,780
Meanwhile, the British government's
commitment to telegraphy also grows.

813
00:52:45,940 --> 00:52:49,340
In the short window during
which the Atlantic cable had worked,

814
00:52:49,500 --> 00:52:52,340
British military command sent
messages on it

815
00:52:52,500 --> 00:52:54,580
commanding their troops stationed
in Canada

816
00:52:54,740 --> 00:52:59,540
to disregard a previous order
calling on them to sail to India.

817
00:52:59,700 --> 00:53:02,860
As the Indian mutiny had since been
suppressed,

818
00:53:03,020 --> 00:53:06,100
the soldiers were no longer
required.

819
00:53:06,660 --> 00:53:09,980
This saved the British government
£50,000 at a stroke,

820
00:53:10,140 --> 00:53:12,860
more than repaying
its own investment in the cable.

821
00:53:14,380 --> 00:53:16,540
British Prime Ministers often
talked about the telegraph

822
00:53:16,700 --> 00:53:19,020
as a trigger, like a trigger on a
gun.

823
00:53:19,180 --> 00:53:21,020
You know, could put an army
in place

824
00:53:21,180 --> 00:53:23,060
and you could keep that army in the
barracks,

825
00:53:23,220 --> 00:53:25,380
send the telegraph,
send the army out,

826
00:53:25,540 --> 00:53:28,140
and it can, you know, go to work or
go to war.

827
00:53:37,500 --> 00:53:41,300
After so much failure,
raising finance for a new attempt

828
00:53:41,420 --> 00:53:43,740
proves a mammoth undertaking.

829
00:53:43,900 --> 00:53:47,500
Investors have lost fortunes in
previous attempts,

830
00:53:47,660 --> 00:53:50,420
and have little interest
in being burned again,

831
00:53:50,540 --> 00:53:52,780
but Field remains adamant.

832
00:53:52,940 --> 00:53:56,340
A transatlantic cable will be
achieved.

833
00:53:56,460 --> 00:53:57,740
The Atlantic telegraph's value

834
00:53:57,900 --> 00:54:00,020
can hardly be estimated to the
commerce

835
00:54:00,140 --> 00:54:02,020
and even to the peace of the world.

836
00:54:05,300 --> 00:54:09,580
Then, in a bold move for his third
attempt at the mission,

837
00:54:09,700 --> 00:54:13,300
Field leases an extraordinary asset.

838
00:54:13,420 --> 00:54:16,380
Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

839
00:54:16,540 --> 00:54:20,260
the Great Eastern is the largest
ship in the world.

840
00:54:20,420 --> 00:54:22,740
There's this enormous
ship, The Great Eastern.

841
00:54:22,860 --> 00:54:25,700
It's never really made any sense.

842
00:54:25,860 --> 00:54:28,700
Turns out it's absolutely
brilliant for cable laying.

843
00:54:28,860 --> 00:54:33,700
The Great Eastern is refitted to
carry a whopping 10,000 tons

844
00:54:33,820 --> 00:54:36,620
of cable and a crew of 200.

845
00:54:37,380 --> 00:54:39,300
There's a wonderful painting

846
00:54:39,460 --> 00:54:41,700
by the official painter,
Robert Dudley,

847
00:54:41,860 --> 00:54:45,620
of the Great Eastern, and there's
a normal size frigate beside her,

848
00:54:45,780 --> 00:54:48,780
and then a smaller
supply ship beside that.

849
00:54:48,940 --> 00:54:51,060
And you can see, just as
a painter, what he's done.

850
00:54:51,180 --> 00:54:52,900
He's put them there for scale.

851
00:54:53,060 --> 00:54:55,340
That you look at the Great Eastern,
you think "Oh, a ship."

852
00:54:55,500 --> 00:54:58,540
Then you realise "No, that's a
normal-size ship beside it.

853
00:54:58,660 --> 00:55:00,100
That is a beast!"

854
00:55:00,220 --> 00:55:02,500
It's about scale. It's about...

855
00:55:02,620 --> 00:55:04,460
"Look at what we can build."

856
00:55:04,620 --> 00:55:08,820
Bigger, better, but also
the kinda conquest of the Atlantic.

857
00:55:08,980 --> 00:55:12,740
"We can conquer not just the
surface, but the deeps.

858
00:55:12,900 --> 00:55:15,220
We can conquer the bottom of the
ocean."

859
00:55:21,380 --> 00:55:27,100
On July 23, 1865,
the world's press descend once again

860
00:55:27,260 --> 00:55:30,980
on Valentia Island to witness the
third attempt to connect Europe

861
00:55:31,100 --> 00:55:33,020
to America by cable.

862
00:55:33,180 --> 00:55:37,260
Rich and powerful mingle
with less well-off locals.

863
00:55:39,100 --> 00:55:41,260
It was a strange crowd to look at.

864
00:55:41,420 --> 00:55:44,900
Half the men were barefoot, and
none of them were decently clad.

865
00:55:45,060 --> 00:55:48,780
The chances are that three or four
could have seen the point of a joke

866
00:55:48,940 --> 00:55:51,180
and given a smart answer
themselves.

867
00:55:55,260 --> 00:55:57,780
So we're on the most westerly
point of Valentia Island now.

868
00:55:57,940 --> 00:56:00,100
Next stop from here is
North America.

869
00:56:00,260 --> 00:56:02,580
And see those islands there?
They're the Skelligs.

870
00:56:02,700 --> 00:56:04,980
And in 1865, just beyond them

871
00:56:05,140 --> 00:56:07,020
is where the Great Eastern had to
anchor

872
00:56:07,180 --> 00:56:10,380
because it was too large
to come into this harbour.

873
00:56:10,540 --> 00:56:12,940
So a boat had to come out and
collect the shoreline cable,

874
00:56:13,060 --> 00:56:15,220
and bring it back, and connect it

875
00:56:15,380 --> 00:56:18,180
to this purpose-built
cable station right here.

876
00:56:18,900 --> 00:56:24,100
With a cable plugged in, Cyrus
Field sets out on the Great Eastern,

877
00:56:24,220 --> 00:56:26,980
destination: Newfoundland.

878
00:56:27,140 --> 00:56:32,100
The Great Eastern proves far more
reliable than the old navy ships.

879
00:56:32,220 --> 00:56:34,180
Progress is easily made.

880
00:56:34,340 --> 00:56:38,380
The Great Eastern, from her size
and constant steadiness

881
00:56:38,540 --> 00:56:41,500
and from the control over her
afforded by the joint use

882
00:56:41,620 --> 00:56:43,100
of paddles and screw,

883
00:56:43,260 --> 00:56:46,940
renders it safe to lay
an Atlantic cable in any weather.

884
00:56:47,060 --> 00:56:48,860
Everything went quite well

885
00:56:49,020 --> 00:56:52,300
until they were 600 miles off of
Newfoundland.

886
00:56:52,460 --> 00:56:55,980
A damaged cable went out
and they had to haul it back in.

887
00:56:56,980 --> 00:57:00,460
But when the crew tries to haul
the cable up from the depths,

888
00:57:00,620 --> 00:57:02,780
it breaks.
(snap)

889
00:57:03,540 --> 00:57:05,380
It flew through the stoppers and
with one bound,

890
00:57:05,540 --> 00:57:08,660
leaped over the intervening
space and flashed into the sea.

891
00:57:08,820 --> 00:57:13,900
The cable, gone forever,
down into that fearful depth.

892
00:57:14,220 --> 00:57:15,500
The cable snaps,

893
00:57:15,660 --> 00:57:17,900
and it's lost to the bottom of the
sea.

894
00:57:18,020 --> 00:57:20,260
But this time, unlike in 1857,

895
00:57:20,380 --> 00:57:23,260
they decide to mark the spot

896
00:57:23,380 --> 00:57:25,740
and to come back and recover it.

897
00:57:34,780 --> 00:57:38,860
Though disappointed,
the team is optimistic.

898
00:57:39,180 --> 00:57:40,700
For before the cable broke,

899
00:57:40,860 --> 00:57:43,140
operators were sending clear
messages

900
00:57:43,300 --> 00:57:47,500
between the Great Eastern
and Valentia Island, County Kerry.

901
00:57:49,220 --> 00:57:52,620
Now certain that the cable can
function perfectly,

902
00:57:52,740 --> 00:57:55,420
Field raises a new round of finance.

903
00:58:05,780 --> 00:58:08,780
July 13th 1866,

904
00:58:08,940 --> 00:58:12,580
the Great Eastern weighs
anchor and departs Valentia Island

905
00:58:12,700 --> 00:58:14,260
for the fourth attempt.

906
00:58:15,980 --> 00:58:18,900
It was so calm that the masts of
her convoy

907
00:58:19,020 --> 00:58:20,940
were reflected in the ocean.

908
00:58:21,100 --> 00:58:25,460
A large shoal of porpoises gambled
about us for about half an hour.

909
00:58:25,620 --> 00:58:31,100
A glorious sunset,
and later, a crescent moon.

910
00:58:31,260 --> 00:58:34,300
This time, there are no
significant problems.

911
00:58:43,700 --> 00:58:48,660
After 14 days at sea, the massive
ship reaches Newfoundland,

912
00:58:48,820 --> 00:58:50,700
where a new cable station has been
built

913
00:58:50,820 --> 00:58:52,940
in the village of Heart's Content.

914
00:58:56,700 --> 00:58:59,660
And then all of a sudden,
they look out,

915
00:58:59,780 --> 00:59:02,060
they see six huge masts

916
00:59:02,220 --> 00:59:05,580
coming around the point,
of an almost 700-foot ship

917
00:59:05,740 --> 00:59:08,100
coming into the mouth of the
harbour

918
00:59:08,260 --> 00:59:10,100
to change the face of the town
forever.

919
00:59:14,220 --> 00:59:16,660
The ladies would have
wore their Sunday best.

920
00:59:16,820 --> 00:59:20,060
The men would have been
in top hats and tails.

921
00:59:20,220 --> 00:59:22,620
They would have had huge
celebrations.

922
00:59:26,980 --> 00:59:30,500
Cyrus Field walks off the
Great Eastern and he comes ashore,

923
00:59:30,660 --> 00:59:33,420
and he's literally hoisted above
the heads of the people.

924
00:59:33,540 --> 00:59:35,580
(cheering and shouting)

925
00:59:35,740 --> 00:59:39,300
And then they send a message
and actually say,

926
00:59:39,460 --> 00:59:42,580
"We have now connected the two
continents."

927
00:59:42,740 --> 00:59:45,580
It is a glory to our age and
nation,

928
00:59:45,740 --> 00:59:48,980
and the men who have achieved it
deserve to be honoured

929
00:59:49,140 --> 00:59:51,300
among the benefactors of their
race.

930
00:59:52,100 --> 00:59:55,060
Since the discovery of Columbus,
nothing has been done

931
00:59:55,220 --> 00:59:58,060
in any degree comparable to the
vast enlargement

932
00:59:58,180 --> 00:59:59,580
that has thus been given

933
00:59:59,700 --> 01:00:02,300
to the sphere of human activity.

934
01:00:03,660 --> 01:00:06,980
The world is stunned and thrilled.

935
01:00:07,100 --> 01:00:10,460
Cyrus Field has achieved his dream.

936
01:00:10,620 --> 01:00:13,220
He telegraphs a note to his friend
and supporter,

937
01:00:13,340 --> 01:00:16,180
the Knight of Kerry in Valentia.

938
01:00:20,540 --> 01:00:23,820
This was put together
by the Knight of Kerry.

939
01:00:23,980 --> 01:00:26,060
And there is this message
from Cyrus Field,

940
01:00:26,180 --> 01:00:27,620
sent from Heart's Content

941
01:00:27,780 --> 01:00:29,940
in Newfoundland, so they've got to
the other side.

942
01:00:30,100 --> 01:00:33,500
And it says "Ireland and America
are united by telegraph.

943
01:00:33,660 --> 01:00:36,460
Please remember me very
kindly to all your family."

944
01:00:36,580 --> 01:00:37,980
Sent at 12:30.

945
01:00:39,460 --> 01:00:42,460
With the transatlantic cable
successfully relaying messages

946
01:00:42,580 --> 01:00:44,620
between Europe and North America,

947
01:00:44,780 --> 01:00:47,620
Field heads out into the ocean to
see if he can find

948
01:00:47,780 --> 01:00:49,780
the cable that had sunk the year
before.

949
01:00:49,940 --> 01:00:54,980
After three weeks grappling,
the 1865 cable is recovered

950
01:00:55,100 --> 01:00:57,660
from a depth of two kilometres down.

951
01:00:57,820 --> 01:01:00,740
In a characteristic act of
showmanship,

952
01:01:00,900 --> 01:01:05,180
Cyrus Field uses the 1865 cable to
send a message

953
01:01:05,340 --> 01:01:08,820
from the Great Eastern
to the cable hut on Valentia Island,

954
01:01:08,980 --> 01:01:13,620
and from there his message is
relayed, via the new 1866 cable,

955
01:01:13,740 --> 01:01:15,740
back to Newfoundland.

956
01:01:15,900 --> 01:01:18,860
And they say he wept as
he sent that message.

957
01:01:20,380 --> 01:01:22,580
As I sat in the electrician's room,

958
01:01:22,740 --> 01:01:25,620
a flash of light came up from the
deep,

959
01:01:25,780 --> 01:01:29,540
which, having crossed to Ireland,
came back to me in mid-ocean,

960
01:01:29,700 --> 01:01:31,780
telling that those so dear to me
were well

961
01:01:31,940 --> 01:01:34,540
and following us with their wishes
and their prayers.

962
01:01:34,700 --> 01:01:37,540
This was like a whisper of God
from the sea,

963
01:01:37,660 --> 01:01:39,860
bidding me keep heart and hope.

964
01:01:51,300 --> 01:01:53,020
The significance of that moment

965
01:01:53,140 --> 01:01:55,780
is when you realise that the world

966
01:01:55,900 --> 01:01:58,260
that we knew had changed forever,

967
01:01:58,420 --> 01:02:01,260
and the way that you communicated
had changed forever.

968
01:02:03,020 --> 01:02:05,660
A lot of inspiration that we can
take from them

969
01:02:05,820 --> 01:02:08,580
is about perseverance,
about being hardworking,

970
01:02:08,740 --> 01:02:10,660
about understanding each other's
skillset

971
01:02:10,820 --> 01:02:13,420
and putting the right people in
the right place.

972
01:02:14,860 --> 01:02:16,860
The thing that gets me is that

973
01:02:17,020 --> 01:02:19,300
they tried and failed and tried
and failed.

974
01:02:19,420 --> 01:02:20,620
And it's like...

975
01:02:20,780 --> 01:02:23,460
just keep trying until you achieve
it.

976
01:02:24,140 --> 01:02:27,580
I admire the perseverance and
resilience

977
01:02:27,740 --> 01:02:31,060
that Cyrus Field and all of the men
back then had,

978
01:02:31,220 --> 01:02:34,060
that they weren't giving up on
this challenge.

979
01:02:34,220 --> 01:02:37,740
They were going to succeed
and connect the two continents.

980
01:02:37,900 --> 01:02:43,540
That vision and that hope or dream,
that's what I take from the story.

981
01:02:55,100 --> 01:02:58,220
It also transforms life
on Valentia Island.

982
01:02:58,820 --> 01:03:02,020
Skilled cable operators
come from far and wide.

983
01:03:02,340 --> 01:03:05,940
Housing, offices,
and a new cable station are built.

984
01:03:06,100 --> 01:03:08,900
And just as the Knight of Kerry
had anticipated,

985
01:03:09,020 --> 01:03:11,900
Valentia's economy thrives.

986
01:03:13,300 --> 01:03:16,500
So Valentia Island becomes
a global centre of communications.

987
01:03:16,820 --> 01:03:21,020
The local impact is that
a lot of well-paid staff arrive

988
01:03:21,140 --> 01:03:23,020
to work in the cable station.

989
01:03:24,420 --> 01:03:26,460
The British gentlemen
and their families

990
01:03:26,580 --> 01:03:28,860
lived in the cable station houses.

991
01:03:30,100 --> 01:03:31,660
In the height in Valencia,

992
01:03:31,820 --> 01:03:34,260
when the cable station
was in full operation,

993
01:03:34,380 --> 01:03:36,740
there was up to 200 employees,

994
01:03:36,900 --> 01:03:40,660
about 23 English families
living there,

995
01:03:40,820 --> 01:03:44,580
and maybe 28 single rooms
for British gentlemen.

996
01:03:46,500 --> 01:03:48,260
They set up tennis courts.

997
01:03:48,740 --> 01:03:51,060
There's pictures
of them playing croquet.

998
01:03:51,540 --> 01:03:53,740
There's pictures of them
taking photographs

999
01:03:53,860 --> 01:03:55,620
in the lawns which they built

1000
01:03:55,780 --> 01:03:57,660
in front of the telegraph
buildings.

1001
01:03:58,660 --> 01:04:01,100
Now, their wages
were supposed to be equivalent

1002
01:04:01,220 --> 01:04:02,980
to a bank manager at the time.

1003
01:04:03,140 --> 01:04:05,500
So you can imagine
200 bank managers here

1004
01:04:05,620 --> 01:04:07,740
in an island off the coast.

1005
01:04:08,340 --> 01:04:11,940
That had a massive influence
on the local economy here.

1006
01:04:12,540 --> 01:04:15,660
So they lived in the lap of luxury.

1007
01:04:16,820 --> 01:04:20,340
In the first years, all the cable
operators are outsiders,

1008
01:04:20,780 --> 01:04:25,100
but in time, many Kerry locals
will be trained into the plum jobs.

1009
01:04:25,980 --> 01:04:28,300
They bring new wealth
and status to the island.

1010
01:04:36,660 --> 01:04:38,700
On the opposite side
of the Atlantic,

1011
01:04:38,820 --> 01:04:40,700
the people of Heart's Content

1012
01:04:40,820 --> 01:04:43,220
also find their lives enriched.

1013
01:04:43,740 --> 01:04:47,620
The families of the employees here

1014
01:04:47,780 --> 01:04:51,060
would have enjoyed
many different things

1015
01:04:51,260 --> 01:04:53,940
compared to the people
who were in Heart's Content

1016
01:04:54,060 --> 01:04:55,660
prior to the cable.

1017
01:04:55,980 --> 01:04:59,140
Things like curling, billiards,

1018
01:04:59,580 --> 01:05:01,300
art classes,

1019
01:05:01,460 --> 01:05:06,340
all sorts of more European
leisure activities.

1020
01:05:07,100 --> 01:05:08,900
These people had cash money,

1021
01:05:09,660 --> 01:05:12,780
so they were able
to order from catalogues,

1022
01:05:13,340 --> 01:05:16,380
and these fashions
were available to them.

1023
01:05:28,380 --> 01:05:31,180
The success
of the transatlantic cable

1024
01:05:31,300 --> 01:05:33,780
sparks a communications gold rush.

1025
01:05:36,020 --> 01:05:38,860
Cables are laid
under every ocean and sea

1026
01:05:39,020 --> 01:05:41,340
until the entire planet
is connected.

1027
01:05:42,660 --> 01:05:45,460
For cable pioneers like Cyrus Field,

1028
01:05:45,620 --> 01:05:48,060
Samuel Morse,
and Wildman Whitehouse,

1029
01:05:48,180 --> 01:05:50,100
who redeems his reputation,

1030
01:05:50,220 --> 01:05:52,500
telegraphy generates great wealth.

1031
01:05:53,980 --> 01:05:56,460
Yesterday, we had 50 messages,

1032
01:05:56,620 --> 01:06:00,260
paying us, I suppose,
not less than £12,000.

1033
01:06:01,620 --> 01:06:05,140
Sending a telegram was really,
really expensive.

1034
01:06:06,580 --> 01:06:07,860
For 20 words,

1035
01:06:07,980 --> 01:06:10,540
you're paying £20 in 1866,

1036
01:06:10,700 --> 01:06:12,700
which is an enormous amount
of money.

1037
01:06:13,060 --> 01:06:17,140
It's more than the annual budget
of a worker at the time

1038
01:06:17,260 --> 01:06:18,660
working in one of the mills.

1039
01:06:20,700 --> 01:06:23,020
It was so completely out of reach

1040
01:06:23,140 --> 01:06:26,340
for 99% of the world population.

1041
01:06:27,940 --> 01:06:30,620
One of the reasons that the
Atlantic Telegraph is so profitable

1042
01:06:30,740 --> 01:06:32,700
right away is that traders

1043
01:06:32,860 --> 01:06:35,260
and financial types
could send messages,

1044
01:06:35,420 --> 01:06:37,420
could synchronize markets
much more efficiently.

1045
01:06:37,700 --> 01:06:39,540
And so we see immediately

1046
01:06:39,700 --> 01:06:42,500
an increase in the pace
of business information

1047
01:06:42,620 --> 01:06:43,980
travelling around the world.

1048
01:06:44,780 --> 01:06:47,180
Suddenly, you start
to see complaints

1049
01:06:47,300 --> 01:06:48,460
from of stockbrokers saying,

1050
01:06:48,620 --> 01:06:51,420
We used to have an easy life,
and now we're expected to jump

1051
01:06:51,580 --> 01:06:53,980
as soon as we receive news
about a price changing.

1052
01:06:54,300 --> 01:06:56,180
So it was a cause
of a lot of stress.

1053
01:07:00,820 --> 01:07:02,660
With humanity sharing information

1054
01:07:02,820 --> 01:07:05,060
at speeds
hitherto thought impossible,

1055
01:07:05,180 --> 01:07:06,860
the world seems to shrink.

1056
01:07:06,980 --> 01:07:09,900
Life seems to move at a faster pace.

1057
01:07:11,620 --> 01:07:14,460
Today, people complain that there's
a information overload.

1058
01:07:14,580 --> 01:07:15,740
It's too much to deal with.

1059
01:07:18,180 --> 01:07:21,340
But imagine how much
more traumatic it must have

1060
01:07:21,460 --> 01:07:22,740
been for people living

1061
01:07:22,980 --> 01:07:25,980
in the second half of the 19th
century, because they went from

1062
01:07:26,300 --> 01:07:28,180
really not having
international communication,

1063
01:07:28,340 --> 01:07:30,540
not having
telecommunication at all,

1064
01:07:30,700 --> 01:07:33,740
to having it in a very
short period of time.

1065
01:07:34,180 --> 01:07:36,740
Year by year,
the technology improves.

1066
01:07:36,980 --> 01:07:38,420
Data moves faster.

1067
01:07:38,620 --> 01:07:40,140
Photographs can be sent.

1068
01:07:40,380 --> 01:07:43,380
News crisscrosses
continents in an instant.

1069
01:07:46,500 --> 01:07:47,500
Suddenly,

1070
01:07:47,660 --> 01:07:50,100
you can get news from around
the world very, very quickly.

1071
01:07:50,260 --> 01:07:52,660
And they really, I think,
went through

1072
01:07:52,820 --> 01:07:55,380
a very, very dramatic
acceleration in the pace of life.

1073
01:07:57,540 --> 01:07:59,860
Newspapers are heavy
consumers of it.

1074
01:08:00,300 --> 01:08:03,220
So newspapers are now carrying
stories from around the world,

1075
01:08:03,380 --> 01:08:06,300
maybe a day after they happen,
which is revolutionary.

1076
01:08:08,460 --> 01:08:12,340
In time, the price of sending
a message by cable falls,

1077
01:08:12,780 --> 01:08:14,940
but it will take years
before sending messages

1078
01:08:15,100 --> 01:08:17,300
becomes affordable
to ordinary people.

1079
01:08:18,220 --> 01:08:21,420
For decades into the first part
of the 20th century,

1080
01:08:21,700 --> 01:08:23,900
the only telegram worth the price

1081
01:08:24,060 --> 01:08:26,980
is one sending news
of a birth or a death.

1082
01:08:28,180 --> 01:08:31,540
Meanwhile, the overwhelming
impact of the cable

1083
01:08:31,700 --> 01:08:35,860
continues to make itself felt
as the world grows ever smaller.

1084
01:08:43,620 --> 01:08:47,580
(explosions)

1085
01:08:50,380 --> 01:08:52,780
The big tipping point
is the First World War.

1086
01:08:56,300 --> 01:08:58,660
They're sending back
reports of casualties.

1087
01:08:58,820 --> 01:09:01,340
They're sending back
the horror of that war

1088
01:09:01,620 --> 01:09:04,220
in a way that would run
directly counter

1089
01:09:04,340 --> 01:09:06,700
to the narrative of heroism

1090
01:09:06,860 --> 01:09:10,300
that the same government
that paid for the wires

1091
01:09:10,420 --> 01:09:11,740
would want to put out.

1092
01:09:14,780 --> 01:09:18,500
And suddenly, people in England are
getting reports of what's happening

1093
01:09:18,620 --> 01:09:21,500
on the battlefield as it happens.

1094
01:09:26,300 --> 01:09:28,940
People realized,
Well, no, this is horrific.

1095
01:09:29,460 --> 01:09:31,860
So it changes our sense of empathy.

1096
01:09:31,980 --> 01:09:33,700
It changes our sense of value,

1097
01:09:33,820 --> 01:09:35,340
it changes our sense of purpose

1098
01:09:35,500 --> 01:09:38,540
of not just what it is to be
a people or a nation,

1099
01:09:38,660 --> 01:09:40,700
but how that impacts globally.

1100
01:09:41,660 --> 01:09:44,780
There's a moment where we glimpse
our world coming into being.

1101
01:09:57,500 --> 01:09:59,900
The First World War

1102
01:10:00,060 --> 01:10:05,140
also acutely reveals the strategic
importance of undersea cables.

1103
01:10:05,620 --> 01:10:08,780
One of Britain's first moves
in August 1914

1104
01:10:08,940 --> 01:10:11,460
is to cut Germany's
transatlantic cable,

1105
01:10:11,620 --> 01:10:14,820
giving the Allies
an immediate advantage in the war.

1106
01:10:27,140 --> 01:10:31,220
The battle for control of the global
information superhighway

1107
01:10:31,340 --> 01:10:32,260
had begun.

1108
01:10:40,300 --> 01:10:42,420
The years that follow
the First World War

1109
01:10:42,540 --> 01:10:43,820
bring change to Ireland.

1110
01:10:45,220 --> 01:10:49,460
Irish nationalists rise to end
centuries of British rule in Ireland

1111
01:10:49,620 --> 01:10:53,740
and achieve independence
for most of the island in 1922.

1112
01:10:54,820 --> 01:10:57,620
Worried for the safety
of their communications,

1113
01:10:57,780 --> 01:11:00,420
Britain reroutes
its Atlantic telegraph connection

1114
01:11:00,580 --> 01:11:02,980
from Valentia Island
to Cornwall.

1115
01:11:04,900 --> 01:11:07,380
In the Carrier System Department,

1116
01:11:07,540 --> 01:11:09,940
trained technicians
maintain equipment

1117
01:11:10,100 --> 01:11:13,980
that transmits hundreds of messages
over a single pair of wires.

1118
01:11:14,380 --> 01:11:17,860
In the decades that follow,
the technology leaps forward.

1119
01:11:18,260 --> 01:11:23,260
Radio telegraphy, the telephone,
faster data transfer languages,

1120
01:11:23,500 --> 01:11:26,980
and satellites come to displace
Morse code telegraphy.

1121
01:11:27,860 --> 01:11:31,140
Cable stations become
increasingly irrelevant,

1122
01:11:31,500 --> 01:11:33,380
and in 1966,

1123
01:11:33,540 --> 01:11:38,020
the Valentia Island Cable Station
shuts its doors for good.

1124
01:11:38,940 --> 01:11:42,020
But undersea cables
remain the mainstay

1125
01:11:42,180 --> 01:11:45,500
of our global communication
systems to this day.

1126
01:11:48,100 --> 01:11:52,300
99% of international traffic
goes via sub-sea cables,

1127
01:11:52,500 --> 01:11:54,500
with only 1% via satellites.

1128
01:11:57,700 --> 01:12:00,020
Everything from your searches
on the Internet,

1129
01:12:00,180 --> 01:12:02,860
to your AI learning,
to your digitised voice.

1130
01:12:03,740 --> 01:12:06,860
We take all those ones and zeros,
create an optical signal,

1131
01:12:06,980 --> 01:12:08,580
and send it across the sub-sea link.

1132
01:12:10,860 --> 01:12:14,260
I think the physics
of that alone is phenomenal.

1133
01:12:41,940 --> 01:12:46,140
When Samuel Morse sent
his first telegraph in 1844,

1134
01:12:46,260 --> 01:12:47,180
it read...

1135
01:12:47,900 --> 01:12:50,500
What hath God wrought?

1136
01:12:50,620 --> 01:12:52,820
In the two centuries since,

1137
01:12:52,980 --> 01:12:56,860
the overwhelming scale of
what he intended has become clear.

1138
01:12:59,220 --> 01:13:02,020
Technology amplifies human nature,

1139
01:13:02,180 --> 01:13:04,740
so it amplifies the good things
and it amplifies the bad things.

1140
01:13:06,620 --> 01:13:08,580
So yes, they allow us to do
wonderful things,

1141
01:13:08,700 --> 01:13:09,980
to get more information,

1142
01:13:10,140 --> 01:13:12,340
share information with our friends,
share pictures,

1143
01:13:12,540 --> 01:13:13,740
to stay in touch with people,

1144
01:13:13,900 --> 01:13:15,700
to communicate,
to work from anywhere.

1145
01:13:15,860 --> 01:13:17,980
This is all immensely positive
and which makes our lives

1146
01:13:18,100 --> 01:13:20,140
much easier, much more flexible.

1147
01:13:20,260 --> 01:13:22,500
But the pace of life increases,

1148
01:13:23,140 --> 01:13:24,860
and this is both exhilarating

1149
01:13:25,020 --> 01:13:26,460
and, for some people,
quite worrying.

1150
01:13:29,020 --> 01:13:30,780
The reality is, of course,

1151
01:13:30,940 --> 01:13:32,540
that it didn't bring on
world peace.

1152
01:13:34,060 --> 01:13:36,380
It soon could become
an instrument of war.

1153
01:13:37,540 --> 01:13:40,620
So the virtuous utopian idea

1154
01:13:40,780 --> 01:13:43,860
that the telegraph was going
to lead on to world peace

1155
01:13:43,980 --> 01:13:45,300
was just a myth.

1156
01:13:47,820 --> 01:13:52,460
The Internet changed
our world beyond imagination.

1157
01:13:52,860 --> 01:13:56,980
And yes, there are some negatives,
but the positives easily,

1158
01:13:57,100 --> 01:13:59,180
easily outweigh the negatives.

1159
01:14:00,540 --> 01:14:03,060
Even just think about
something like the pandemic.

1160
01:14:03,940 --> 01:14:07,980
We were still able to educate
people because of the Internet.

1161
01:14:09,420 --> 01:14:12,740
Just think about health
and health information

1162
01:14:12,860 --> 01:14:14,980
and medical technology.

1163
01:14:15,100 --> 01:14:18,900
You can now operate on on somebody

1164
01:14:19,060 --> 01:14:22,820
on a different continent
with robotic hands

1165
01:14:22,980 --> 01:14:26,780
somewhere else
because of the Internet.

1166
01:15:08,220 --> 01:15:11,740
I think there's something we take
for granted today, and that is

1167
01:15:12,380 --> 01:15:14,340
that through a phone,

1168
01:15:15,180 --> 01:15:17,900
we can be connected to things
that are happening

1169
01:15:18,020 --> 01:15:19,820
all around the world instantly.

1170
01:15:20,500 --> 01:15:23,580
Before the telegraph, no human
being had ever experienced that.

1171
01:15:25,820 --> 01:15:28,500
The more we can communicate,

1172
01:15:28,660 --> 01:15:30,860
the better we can communicate
with distant people,

1173
01:15:31,300 --> 01:15:34,380
the more understanding there is,
the more empathy there can be,

1174
01:15:34,540 --> 01:15:37,260
and the better we can be
as human beings.

1175
01:15:37,380 --> 01:15:39,660
I think that's worth salvaging.

1176
01:15:47,700 --> 01:15:51,700
Cyrus Field's vision
and courage change the world.

1177
01:15:52,300 --> 01:15:55,980
Though bad investments caused him
later to lose much of his fortune,

1178
01:15:56,260 --> 01:16:00,900
he was ever conscious of the seismic
transformation he had set in motion.

1179
01:16:02,980 --> 01:16:08,340
What God has joined together,
let no man put asunder.

1180
01:16:10,820 --> 01:16:13,180
Peter Fitzgerald,
the Knight of Kerry,

1181
01:16:13,340 --> 01:16:17,460
fulfilled his dreams of seeing
Valentia becoming a key nodal point

1182
01:16:17,620 --> 01:16:20,020
of the Global
Communications Network.

1183
01:16:21,620 --> 01:16:23,700
For his contributions to science,

1184
01:16:23,860 --> 01:16:27,220
William Thompson was ennobled
as Lord Kelvin.

1185
01:16:27,380 --> 01:16:29,460
He is buried in Westminster Abbey,

1186
01:16:29,620 --> 01:16:32,980
surrounded by a floor
of Valentia Slate.

1187
01:16:34,300 --> 01:16:37,540
Those who periled the original
Atlantic Telegraph

1188
01:16:37,700 --> 01:16:41,140
were impelled by a sense
of the grandeur of their enterprise

1189
01:16:41,300 --> 01:16:45,340
and of the worldwide benefits
which must flow from its success.

1190
01:16:45,620 --> 01:16:49,500
Science, even in its most lofty
speculations,

1191
01:16:50,140 --> 01:16:54,260
can promote the social
and material welfare of man.

1192
01:16:54,820 --> 01:16:58,100
These are unsung heroes
in the world.

1193
01:16:58,500 --> 01:17:01,380
They were the pioneers to lay
these communication systems,

1194
01:17:01,500 --> 01:17:03,340
this cable, across the Atlantic.

1195
01:17:04,060 --> 01:17:06,780
They were the first
to take this adventure

1196
01:17:06,900 --> 01:17:08,380
and do it and show that, yes,

1197
01:17:08,540 --> 01:17:11,820
you can transmit messages
and data across continents.

1198
01:17:12,140 --> 01:17:14,700
So it was far more
than just physics.

1199
01:17:15,060 --> 01:17:18,500
They had an attitude
to serve the society

1200
01:17:18,980 --> 01:17:22,140
with the solution that they had
in mind, and that's amazing.