The Atlantic Telegraph

Sir William Howard Russell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book documents the great 19th century technological achievement of laying a telegraphic cable beneath the Atlantic to allow messages to speed back and forth between North America and Europe in minutes, rather than the ten or twelve days it took to cross the ocean by steamer. Led by Cyrus W. Field and financed by the Atlantic Telegraph Company, an initially successful attempt in 1858 failed after three weeks. Repeated efforts by Field, a cadre of engineers, technicians, and sailors, backed by two groups of investors with help from the British and American navies, finally produced two working cables in July and September 1866. Illustrations here reproduce watercolors by Robert Dudley that document the extended, arduous process, and the title page shows sailors raising the anchor of the Great Eastern as the ship sets out from the Thames Estuary on July 15, 1865, fully loaded with cable. Field donated this book and related art works by Dudley to the Museum in 1892, together with commemorative medals, memorabilia, and specimens of cable.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art