PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANCE 123 
the result of careful research by Professor ‘Thomson. He had 
computed the scientific law for the operating speed of a cable. 
Curiously enough, the young engineer Charles Bright in 1857 
had advised almost the same size of copper wire and insula- 
tions as Thomson now decreed, but had been over-ruled by 
his elders. That is, Bright’s good judgment and engineering 
sense had estimated about what ‘Thomson’s research had later 
proved to be correct, but meantime devastating losses had 
been suffered. 
This incident is typical of how such mistakes occur. The 
right technique is sometimes a long time in being revealed 
by investigation of scientific theory. Meanwhile, practical 
men of sound judgment and professional intuition may have 
arrived at the same conclusions but, not being able to prove 
their ideas by accepted formulas, they may be quashed by 
superiors who actually are in the wrong. Bright had made a 
few experiments but was looked upon as only a youngster 
compared with Faraday and Morse. 
Many technical mistakes were made during the course of 
this pioneering. They arose, as a rule, from lack of a sense of 
proportion. One expert wished to emphasize some special 
feature; another urged his particular hobby. ‘There were 
numerous fallacies to be disposed of before the correct pro- 
cedure was learned. ‘The naive trust in faulty devices by the 
early officials seems astounding, yet such developments occur 
often in applied science. 
In May of 1864, Field returned to America, feeling much 
relieved at the sudden brightening of the prospects for a new 
cable that would operate successfully. In August, he was in 
Newfoundland to choose a landing place for the new cable. 
Sailing up picturesque Trinity Bay in the surveyor’s steamer, 
he picked out a little harbor called Heart’s Content, where 
only a fishing settlement of about sixty houses broke the wild 
landscape. This was twenty miles from the former landing 
