The French Atlantic cable of 1869: settled technology and unsettled relationships

By the end of 1866, when the first transatlantic telegraph had been successfully brought into operation, it was widely believed that the technological problems which had surrounded the design, laying and working of long undersea cables had been settled. Yet a closer scrutiny of events during the planning, laying and subsequent working of the next major cable, which linked France with the United States in 1869, shows that the reassuring image of confidence presented to investors was not the full picture. Broad agreement had been reached about the cable´s structure and its electrical management, but other issues, especially ones relating to roles and relationships of the electrical engineers involved, were still not clearly resolved