The Cable : Wire to the New World

In the rapidly changing world of the 1850s and 1860s, no endeavour had such far-reaching consequences as the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable. The Cable tells the extraordinary story of an adventure which would transform forever the way in which the world communicated. Overcoming natural forces in the name of human progress and technology, the cable revolutionised our understanding of electricity, and created a new global trade in finance and news. Gillian Cookson is an industrial historian specialising in the origins of engineering. She is research fellow at Durham University.