Words Under Water : 313 



bother to inquire or to see how the miracles of modern communica- 

 tion are performed. 



It was the idea of the ocean telegraph that gave interest and addi- 

 tional meaning to a more profound knowledge of the depths of the 

 sea. It was an American of titanic energy, organizing ability and per- 

 sistent courage by the name of Cyrus Field who made himself the 

 champion of the ocean telegraph development. 



In 1866, when Field had made the transatlantic cable a reality, all 

 of the leading men of the time in government and in business and 

 in science met in New York to offer Mr. Field congratulations at a 

 great testimonial dinner. There is a story that at this time Mr. Field 

 said, "Maury provided the brains, the British provided the financing 

 and I did the work." There is no concrete evidence that Field ever 

 made this remark; he might well have said it for every element of it 

 is true. 



Matthew Fontaine Maury worked indefatigably on the oceanogra- 

 phy and other technical aspects of the system. The British did provide 

 the bulk of the financing and Field not only did the work but carried 

 and overcame the burden of repeated failure extending over many 

 years. The remark would have been misleading in the sense that the 

 British contributed not only to the financing but also to the technical 

 developments and that it really took the work of many lesser men 

 also to solve all the problems. 



The submarine telegraph was a development rather than an inven- 

 tion. By this we mean that the idea of sending a message by way of 

 a wire resting on the bottom of the sea was essentially simple and 

 probably occurred to a number of people in various places and 

 times. For example, a Spanish scientist named Salva is credited with 

 having developed the general idea of such a system of communica- 

 tion before the beginning of the nineteenth century. After this, it 

 took a full half century before even a very limited cable service came 

 into practical use. However simple the idea, scores of technical diffi- 

 culties had to be overcome and an equal number of technical devices 

 perfected before the idea could become an operating reality. 



A land telegraph encounters fewer difficulties than a submarine 

 telegraph and so it is natural that the land telegraph was invented 

 and developed first. The strange circimistance is that the land tele- 

 graph was invented at sea. We have noted that this was on the packet 

 ship Sully in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The dramatic circum- 

 stances were these: The Sully was one of the packets operating 

 between Havre and New York and on a particular crossing in 1832 



