Failure™ Magazine

Cable Ready

Cyrus Field and the epic struggle to lay the first transatlantic cable.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History

The Six Million Dollar Man
In the end, Wall Street didn’t treat Field as well as his cable venture. “By 1880 Cyrus Field was worth around $6 million, which by the standards of the day, made him enormously rich. He would have easily been on the Forbes 400 list if such a list had existed,” says Gordon.

But Field proved to be a woefully inept investor. In fact, on a single day in June of 1887 he lost almost $6 million. “Nineteenth century Wall Street was a dog-eat-dog world and Field had no business being in that world—he didn’t have the personality for it. He was essentially broke at the end of his life,” laments Gordon.

Meanwhile, Field fared no better in his personal life, as he coped with a mentally ill daughter and a son who was mixed up in stock fraud. He died at the age of 72, shortly after the death of his longtime wife, Mary.

Postscript
In the 137 years since the first transatlantic cable the speed and methods available for transoceanic communication have expanded beyond Field’s wildest dreams. Yet despite the advent of wireless technology and satellite communications, a large percentage of transoceanic communication is still transmitted by cable. Even the original 1866 cable was still in use as recently as the late 1960s.

Yet, all the technological advancements haven’t fulfilled the prophecy described in The Times of London in 1858: “The Atlantic Telegraph…has gone far to make us…in spite of ourselves, one people.”

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