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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, May 19, 2003
In today's world of instant communications, it's hard to conceive of the delays in information spread that were routine in the mid-nineteenth century. News from Europe, then the center of world affairs, reached the United States only as quickly as the fastest ship could travel. Those delays ended in 1866 with the laying of a telegraph cable across the Atlantic. One of the greatest engineering feats of the century, the laying of the cable involved a decade of effort, numerous failed attempts, millions of dollars, near disaster at sea, and seemingly insurmountable technological problems (many unforeseen when the work started). When it finally succeeded, it changed the world. The cable was the brainchild of American businessman Cyrus Field. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), the greatest applied physicist of the nineteenth century, was scientific advisor to the project. The ship that laid the cable was built by the great English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Christened "The Great Eastern", it was five times the size of any ship then afloat. Though often overlooked, the story of the Atlantic cable is well worth our attention, both a story of triumph over difficulties and an important part of the making of the modern world and of the United States as a world power.
John Steele Gordon was born in New York City. He came by his interest in financial matters naturally, as both his grandfathers had seats on the New York Stock Exchange. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in history. His first book, Overlanding, tells the story of how he drove a Land Rover from New York to Tierra del Fuego. After returning to New York he served on the staffs of two Congressmen before becoming a full time writer. Specializing in business and financial history, he has published in Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. "The Business of America" is the title of his column in American Heritage magazine and of a book of those columns. His other books include The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street, a history of Wall Street in the 1860's; Hamilton's Blessing: the Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt; and The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power, 1653-2000, which formed the basis for a CNBC special. His latest book is A Thread Across the Ocean, a history of the laying of the Atlantic cable. He is now working on a history of the American economy. He is a frequent commentator on "Marketplace," the daily Public Radio business-news program heard on more than two hundred stations throughout the country, including WETA-FM and WAMU-FM, both in Washington, DC. He has also appeared on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer " on PBS; "New York: A Documentary Film" by Ric Burns; "Business Center" and "Squawk Box" on CNBC; and "Booknotes with Brian Lamb" on C-SPAN. Mr. Gordon lives in North Salem, New York.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Brent Warner
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