Field, Cyrus West

Cyrus West Field (November 30, 1819, Stockbridge, Massachusetts - July 12, 1892, New York) is an American entrepreneur who organized the laying of the first transatlantic cable.

At the age of fifteen, he became a clerk in the pantry of the AT Stewart & Co. company’s haberdashery store in New York, where he worked for three years ^[3] , then returning to Stockbridge; Between 1838 and 1840, he worked with his brother Matthew Dickinson Field at a paper mill in Lee, Massachusetts; In 1840 he married and started his own paper business in Westfield, Massachusetts, but almost immediately became a partner of the owners of E. Root & Co. ”, New York paper wholesalers who went bankrupt a year later. Soon after, Field, together with his brother-in-law, founded Cyrus W. Field & Co. ^[4] and, by 1853, had accumulated $ 250,000 , paid off the debts of E. Root & Co, and temporarily withdrew from active business, leaving his company name and 100,000 dollars . In the same year he traveled with the artist Frederick E. Church in South America.

In 1854, thanks to information received from his brother Matthew, a civil engineer, Field became interested in the Frederick Newton Gisborne project (1824–1892) to lay a telegraph via Newfoundland, and then the idea of ​​a transatlantic telegraph cable (between Newfoundland and Ireland) ^[5] , with which turned to Morse and Matthew Fontaine Mori, head of the National Observatory in Washington. Together with Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor (1806–1882), Marshall Owen Roberts (1814–1880), and Chandler White, he founded the company New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph, which acquired a more profitable charter than Gisborne and had a starting capital of $ 1,500,000 . Having obtained all enforceable land rights on the American coast of the Atlantic Ocean, he and John Brett, who by that time had become his chief colleague, turned to Sir Charles Bright in London, and in December 1856 they organized the Atlantic Telegraph Company in Great Britain; the British government granted her a grant of £ 14,000 a year, which should be reduced to £ 10,000 a year after the cables begin to bring 6% of annual dividends; Similar grants were issued by the United States Government. Unsuccessful attempts to lay the cable were made in August 1857 and in June 1858; the cable was completely laid in the period from July 7 to August 5, 1858 ^[6] ; after this message was transmitted for some time, but in October the cable failed due to a breakdown in its electrical insulation ^[7] . Field, however, did not leave the enterprise, and as a result, in July 1866, after an unsuccessful attempt in the previous year, the cable was repaired and successfully put into operation.

In gratitude for his work, the Field received a gold medal from the United States Congress in 1867, and also won many other awards both at home and abroad. In 1870, Field founded the Pacific Cable Society between the United States and China, but this idea remained unrealized. In 1877, he bought out a controlling stake in New York Elevated Railroad, which controls Third and Ninth Avenue lines, and was its president in 1877-1880. He worked with Jay Gould on the completion of the Wabash Railway and during the period of his greatest activity in acquiring shares he bought the newspapers The New York Evening Express and The Mail, combining them under the name The Mail and Express and managing this company for six years ^[8] . In 1879, Field suffered heavy financial losses due to unsuccessful sales of "raised" shares by Samuel J. Tilden (while Field was in Europe), which led to a decrease in their value from $ 200 to $ 164; at the same time, Field lost much more money during the so-called “great Manhattan squeeze” on June 24, 1887, when Jay Gould and Russell Sage, who were supposed to be his patrons in an attempt to bring “increased” shares to $ 200 apiece, left him, and their price fell from 156½ to 114 in half an hour. The last five years of his life, Field lived in relative poverty in his native Stockbridge ^[9] . Died in New York.

• This article (section) contains text taken (translated) from the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica , which went into the public domain .