The First Message Crossed the Atlantic in 1858. Then Everything Went Wrong.

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Published Oct 27, 2026

August 17, 1858. New York City wakes to a hundred-gun salute. Church bells ring, flags fly from public buildings, and by nightfall, fireworks light up the sky. The city is celebrating a telegram from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. Not what it says, but how it traveled: along a 2,000-mile cable running under the Atlantic Ocean. Messages that once took two weeks by steamship now arrive in an instant. And the man behind the cable, a retired paper tycoon named Cyrus Field, is about to become the most famous person in America. But Field has a secret. His cable is already failing.
Why did a bored millionaire attempt the moonshot of the Victorian era? And how did one fragile wire lay the foundation for our connected world?
Special thanks to our guest, James M. Tabor, author of Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World at the Dawn of the Information Age.
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Jon Earle | Host/Producer
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Liv Fidler | Executive Producer

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