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"On an unassuming January day in 1854, an entrepreneur named Cyrus Field was struck by an idea: if he could lay a telegraph cable across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, thereby wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication, he was sure to bring about peace on Earth. His plan would later be described as a "wild and visionary scheme," the moonshot of the nineteenth century. At the time, no project like it had ever been attempted; in fact, science still lacked a universal theory of electricity. But twelve years, four spectacular-and spectacularly public-failures, and near-incalculable amounts of money, bravery, and tenacity later, the first transatlantic cable was laid, ushering in the global information age and transforming life on Earth forever. In Lightning Beneath the Sea, acclaimed author James M. Tabor weaves an unforgettable tale of radical vision, unwavering determination, and improbable triumph against the odds and wild rages of the Atlantic. The dream team Field assembled to realize the cable project included telegraph legend Samuel F. B. Morse; a young William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, called the da Vinci of his day; Michael Faraday, the father of electrical engineering; and legendary philanthropist and railway pioneer Peter Cooper, founder of the Cooper Union. Together, they battled miscalculations, freak accidents, probable corporate sabotage, and the hubris of the project's original chief electrician-a man who insisted on being called Wildman Whitehouse-while racing two rival efforts to establish telegraphic communications between continents. When it was finally done, their cable would span 2,000 miles and lie as many as 2.5 miles deep under the ocean. Today, hundreds of its descendants still carry 99 percent of the world's information through a "world undersea web." Deeply researched and written with verve, Lightning Beneath the Sea is the definitive account of an epoch-making achievement"-- Provided by publisher.
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