Europe & America: Reports Of Proceedings At An Inauguration Banquet Given
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Europe & America: Reports Of Proceedings At An Inauguration Banquet Given
Cyrus West Field
Printed by J. Causton and Sons, 1868
Technology & Engineering; Telecommunications; Technology & Engineering / Telecommunications; Transatlantic cables
Cyrus West Field was an American merchant and promoter, laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
Background
Field was born on November 30, 1819 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts to Rev. David Dudley Field, a Congregational clergyman, and Submit Dickinson Field, daughter of Revolutionary War Captain Noah Dickinson from Somers, Connecticut. The eighth of ten children, he was the brother of David Dudley Field, Jr. , Henry Martyn Field, and Stephen Johnson Field, the 38th United States Supreme Court Justice, among other siblings.
Career
He received a puritanical upbringing in New England and at the age of fifteen went to New York, where he found employment as an errand boy.
In 1837 he returned to New England and worked in a paper mill.
When the company failed in 1841, he personally assumed its debts. Field and his brother-in-law set up the mercantile firm of Cyrus W. Field and Company.
By 1852 Field was free of debt and had built a personal fortune of $250, 000.
He enlisted financial backing from New York and London capitalists.
Perhaps his most impressive feat was in acquiring the services of Britishers Charles Tilson Bright, the great engineer, and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), the distinguished physicist and authority on electricity.
In 1865 the fourth try also failed.
Undaunted, Field organized a new company, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, and rechartered the Great Easternas the laying ship.
In 1866 the 1, 852 miles of cable were finally laid. Field was honored the world over, and the venture made him wealthy.
He made money in western railroads and, in the late 1876, acquired control of the New York Elevated Railroad Company, which also prospered.
Then he went overboard.
He invested heavily in the Manhattan Elevated Railroad, a holding company formed by financier Jay Gould that had a monopoly of New York's rapid transit, and speculated in wheat futures.
But Gould outmaneuvered Field, and in 1887 the wheat market collapsed; these setbacks, compounded by his son's bankruptcy, drained Field's fortune.
He lived modestly during the last five years of his life in his native Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and died in 1892 at the age of 72.