The Laying of the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, A War Against Status Quo

“The laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable” is not necessarily identified as a project plan by definition, but due to the self-empowerment of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and later of Cyrus West Field, their approach has been supported in a strategic and tactic way with project management structures which became responsible for the particular success in the end.

The calculable outcome of the two projects - the construction of the SS Great Eastern, the later cable-laying ship - and the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable - was not recognizable at any time. But as far as the uniqueness of the conditions in their entirety is concerned, one identifies the core of project management as such for all milestones.

Both the construction of the SS Great Eastern and the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable were considered unique goals in a period of spiritual and intellectual departure for new dimensions, the Industrial Revolution or INDUSTRY 1.0. 30 years before the first wireless message transmission - Guglielmo Marconi - and 37 years before the first manned flight -Wright Brothers- these tasks, perceived in their complexity as impossible turned out to be feasible in the end. Limitations regarding multiple resources (money) meant that SS Great Eastern already drove its 1st owner into financial bankruptcy during construction. However, the subsequent laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable was not under the pressure of financial success, thus did not suffer from any shortage of any resources.

It’s fair to say that both projects were up to date respectively, in some parts, they overstretched man, material and technology for the prevailing conditions.

The laying of the first working Transatlantic telegraph cable took place between 1852 and 1866 and was considered a significant step in achieving in-time communication between the two worlds. In the sense of the project management theory / academics (Henry L. Gantt[1] was born only 5 years before the Transatlantic telegraph cable was laid), this achievement is extraordinary and at the same time superior. Risk management, role-cost plan, project environment analysis were not in the foreground of this project, because all 5 attempts were made with the intention that if an attempt will not succeed, then the next one will certainly do. Both British and American governments were interested in having the cable laid down successfully. Seen in this way, laying the first Transatlantic telegraph cable is a combination of a start-up / scale-up and product development[2]. The goal was predetermined, but the path was not. The laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable has exhausted all possible attempts at all levels and often brought all alternatives, whether technical, material or technological ones to their limits.

Both Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Cyrus West Field were fully immersed in their work. This was extremely important, because on top of professionalism, self-motivation, self-conviction, came the ability to convince others about the superordinate goals and milestones of the project. Their assertiveness ensured that in 1867 the first transmission of a message between Ireland and Newfoundland was possible. Both have broken new ground in their fields. With the SS Great Eastern, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had built a high-quality ship which was made entirely of steel for premium passenger’s travel to the West Indies. Only the deck and interior structures, the masts, were made of wood. The ship had a double hull, a novelty at the time, and was propelled by a propeller, two side wheels and sails. Cyrus West Field was already an extremely successful businessman by the age of 30. He laid the cable because he was convinced he was the right person for the job, even if it took him 5 attempts in 12 years.

For both protagonists it was true that they were entering a completely new territory, albeit each in a different way. The effort for the construction of a 600ft long ship, its economical operation, its marketing, the specification of an underwater cable, the procurement / commissioning of a suitable ship, including the laying work have led to a high need for coordination and conflict management work during the entire project operation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart

[2] It can also be seen as a war against the status-quo “failure is not an option!” Similar operations: All wars which ended with a white flag on one side, while both sides lost almost everything (first and second loser syndrome), second fight between Muhamad Ali vs. George Frazier, the recovery of Apollo 13

Idea definition creative planning targeted implementation effective control successful completion

The multi-stage planning at the beginning of the project has not been used here in a coherent way. The construction of the SS Great Eastern has benefited from the ambition, sense of duty and financial resources of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The stubbornness of the shipyard owner Scott Russel stood opposite to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s assertiveness, creativity and reputation. In terms of control (finances, risk), both projects left a lot to be desired. Their achievements secured both protagonists a position in the Hall of Fame of the Industrial Revolution. Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Cyrus West Field are still regarded as absolute pioneers and masters of their craft in their countries of birth.

At this point a first observation is made regarding the integration of these activities according to the project management rules.

A pioneering activity within a new, unknown ecosystem where all “must-have-objectives” are interdependent, empirical and iterative approaches are preferable to the ones of the academic project management. Because these keep the budget flows and the expectations open. It's over when it's over and it costs what it costs. Similar projects Manhattan Project (the construction of the first atomic bomb), the American rocket project -Polaris-, the moon landing(s), the Cold War, the construction of the Suez Canal, etc.

Must-Have-Objectives

1. the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable depends on the feasibility of a structurally sound, watertight undersea cable 2.500 miles in length,

2. this in turn depends on the availability and technological feasibility of gutta-percha,

3. the successful laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable depends on the technological feasibility of laying it down on the ground of the Atlantic Ocean within a few weeks,

4. this in turn depends on the existence and manoeuvrability of a seagoing ship that could take 9000t of cable on board,

5. the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable depends on the expertise on the Transatlantic Ocean soil, etc.

History and Financial Development

SS Great Eastern

SS Great Eastern (test run 07.09.1859) was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9.4.1806-15.09.1859) an engineer who made a major contribution to railway infrastructure, shipbuilding and naval infrastructure in England during the Industrial Revolution.

SS Great Western

SS Great Western (commissioned March 31, 1838) was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel from oak wood and had sails as well as side drive-wheels, each powered by a 2 cyl. steam engine. In addition to propulsion, the sails stabilized the ship in rough seas, so that both side wheels remained safely in the water thus remaining effective.

SS Great Britain

SS Great Britain (commissioned 07/26/1845) was also built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Wrought iron was used for the hull construction[1], and propulsion was by means of a propeller. This made Isambard Kingdom Brunel a pioneer in shipbuilding. At the same time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel launched a discipline in shipbuilding that continues to this day. The propeller with its most important parameters, strength, efficiency, longevity has been studied and further improved since the middle of the 19th century.

[1] The French built the first iron warship, the Gloire, completed in 1859. The Gloire’s iron plates were about 4.5 inches (11 cm) thick and backed by heavy timber. Displacing 5,617 tons, the vessel carried 36 guns. A sister ship, Couronne, soon followed; two British ironclads, the Black Prince and Warrior, each of 9,210 tons and capable of 14.5 knots, were completed in 1861 and 1862.

Construction of the SS Great Eastern

With the references SS Great Western and SS Great Britain under his belt, Isambard Kingdom Brunel started the SS Great Eastern project. Originally the ship was supposed to be called Leviathan. It all started with a sketch that mentioned the dimensions 600 ft x 65 ft x 30 ft. On the day of the splashback, January 31st, 1858, it was the largest object mankind ever made.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel had contacted the Eastern Steam Navigation Company with this suggestion and introduced them to the business model to take on the impending boom that was ought to be lighted up by the Australian gold fever in 1851. 3000 passengers could have been transported to Australia in a much shorter time than with conventional ships or more than 3000t of goods could have been transported on the way back to Europe. 6000t of coal would allow the return trip with a maximum of 14 knots (14 nautical miles / h) without having to take up fuel. These considerations prompted the Eastern Steam Navigation Company to place the order for the construction of the ship.

$ 2,430,000 was the estimate that Isambard Kingdom Brunel presented for the construction costs to the Eastern Steam Navigation Company.

It can be assumed that financial planning in a Controlling sense did not take place. The evolution of construction costs and operational expenses exploded during the construction operation, primarily due to the permanent conflicts between Scott Russel (Shipyard Messr Scott Russel & Co.) and?Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Isambard Kingdom Brunel had chosen other shipyards to build his previous ships. The Messr Scott Russel & Co. shipyard was the only one with the right capacity for a ship of this size.

At this point in the history of the Industrial Revolution, the handling of competencies and other resources such as time, money, people, materials and technologies was considered to be at the height of its time. The skills for coordination and organization in order to achieve the project goal were available in horizontal and vertical fashion, especially in the British shipping industry.

The construction work for the SS Great Eastern project certainly served all project disciplines. Nevertheless, it bankrupted its first owner during the construction. Two more owners followed. The quality of the finished ship was considered to be particularly high. That was ought to count from the beginning to the end. Time and costs got out of hand from the start (see table in the appendix). Apart from the high value of the ship, the remaining mandatory quality criteria (risk, integration, scope) failed due to the fact that the economy of scale did not work well or not at all in all areas of the planning.

Time + resources = time management

Time management + quality = personnel management, cost management, communication management

Quality: Quality management, Risk management, Integration management, Scope management

The SS Great Western and SS Great Britain served Isambard Kingdom Brunel as a proof of concept for the construction of the SS Great Eastern, which went beyond all previously known proportions due to the up-scaling. Both the shipyard space and the planning and execution requirements showed that x times larger means x + N times larger effort. The risk management or the integration management / scope management should have prevented all pitfalls. Repeatedly standardized processes carried out on a small scale - SS Great Western and SS Great Britain – didn’t help in the scope of success in the construction of the SS Great Eastern.

VISION STATEMENT

Science Fiction and Science btw. 1848 and 1903:

1.????French revolution: 1848

2.????“A voyage in a balloon”?by Jules Verne: 1851

3.??? “Journey to the centre of the Earth” by Jules Verne: 1864

4.????Building of the Brooklyn Bridge: 1869-1883

5.????“20.000 leagues under the seas” by Jules Verne: 1870

6.????Foundation of the German Empire: 1871

7.????“Around the world in 80 days” by Jules Verne: 1872

8.????Foundation of the Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft (former AEG): 1883

9.????Building of the Eifel Tower: 1887-1890

10.??Building of the King Carol I Bridge across the Danube: 1890-1895

11.??Foundation of the Society for Wireless Telegraphy System Telefunken by Kaiser Wilhelm II: 1903

In an environment of nuclear-powered submarines -Nautilus by Capt. Nemo- and flying ships (Jules Verne), the vision statement could not have been less factual. 30 years before the introduction of wireless telegraphy and 9 years before the introduction of the telephone, Cyrus West Field would become the first to contribute to the successful transmission of messages between Ireland and Newfoundland.

At this point it should be noted that neither Isambard Kingdom Brunel nor any stakeholder could have foreseen the fate of SS Great Eastern.

Cyrus West Field & the laying of the Transatlantic Cable

Cyrus West Field was the greatest American of the 19th century.

“Substantial progress came in 1837 with the writing telegraph constructed by Samuel Morse and improved in 1844. […] The laying of submarine cables began in 1850 (Dover–Calais). The first attempt to lay a submarine cable between Europe and North America was successful in 1858 - but the cable only worked for a few weeks and then had to be abandoned as unusable. It was not until 1866, after further costly failures, that a permanent telegraph line was established from Valentia, Ireland, to Heart's Content, Newfoundland.”[1]

In January 1854, the young American financier Cyrus West Field was visited by the English engineer Frederic Gisborne, who was in the process of laying a telegraph cable from New York to Newfoundland. In Newfoundland were docking the ships from Europe with messages or information on board.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegrafie

Cyrus West Field went home to think about it. He started a company to lay the telegraph cable to England. The delay of two weeks between the event and its publication would be reduced to only one day.

“Why wait for steamers to bring the news from Europe.” Cyrus West Field

The 2,200-mile path under the Atlantic Ocean presented great difficulties. Cyrus West Field selected a route that was particularly flat and smooth to avoid cable consumption. The cable would sink into the mud of the ocean floor and virtually become fixed by the sediments. This decision was encouraged by Matthew Fontaine Maury, director of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington DC, who published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic in 1847. Thus, he became the main consultant of Cyrus West Field for this project step. The North Atlantic Wind and Currents Chart, published by Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1847, showed captains how to take advantage of the ocean's currents and winds to drastically reduce voyage times. Its navigation instructions and the physical geography of the seas and their meteorology remain standard to this day. Matthew Fontaine Maury's unified system for recording synoptic oceanographic data was adopted by the American Navy and merchant companies around the world and served to develop charts for all major routes.

The first cables were made of copper wires insulated with gutta-percha[1] and tarred hemp. They were wrapped with 300,000 miles of iron wire, since the gutta-percha-tarred hemp compound had no structural properties whatsoever. They were about half an inch (12mm) in diameter. No ship was big enough to carry 2200 miles of cable, so it had to be spliced in the middle of the ocean.

[1] ?It served as the insulating material for early undersea telegraph cables, including the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The material was a key ingredient in Chatterton's compound, used as an insulating sealant for telegraph and other electrical wiring.

First try

3 months later, Cyrus West Field had completed the fundraising and contractual arrangements with the cable company Glass Elliot & Company. The British Government provided two ships and money in exchange for the transmission of government messages between England and New World America.

The American President Franklin Pierce decided on March 3rd, 1857, his last working day, to provide further financial support for the project.

Key data of the first attempt

25,000 tons of cable, 2 ships, 12 men, 3 weeks are the key data of the first project.

Course of the First Attempt

The cable could only be laid in the summer months from June to August. On August 5th, 1857 both ships left Valentia-Ireland. During the laying of the cable, test signals were constantly sent to monitor the integrity of the cable.

Both ships would depart from Valentia - Ireland and sail to Port St. John's. In the middle of the ocean, after a successful splicing, the second ship would continue laying the 2nd half of the cable.

While the Western Union[1] rival project was going according to plan, on August 15, 1857 the cable broke about 300 miles after leaving Valentia, forcing the company to make an early stop.

“Although this unfortunate accident will postpone the completion of this undertaking for a short time, the result has been to convince all the took part in this experiment that with some slight alteration in the paying out machinery there appears to be no great difficulties in laying down the cable.” Cyrus West Field

The Second Attempt

700 miles of new cable was commissioned to replace the cable that was lost.

Engineers and scientists were hired to check every step, every foot of cable along the project plan.

The equipment has been improved. It was adapted to the new requirements with regard to reliability, operational and user safety and quality assurance.

The difference to the first attempt laid in the halving of the laying time. Both ships, each carrying one-half the length of the lay cable, would depart from Valentia-Ireland and sail together to mid-ocean. There the splicing of the cable would take place and the ships would sail apart, one to Port St. John's the other to Valentia-Ireland.

On 6/10/1858, both ships 3 miles apart, the wire broken again.

[1] Siberia-Alaska, Underwater Telegraph Cable Behring Straight

The Third Attempt

The cables broke twice and were lost, but a third attempt was successful in 1858.

07/29/1858 both ships started again in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This attempt goes as a “success & loss at the highest level”. After two weeks, both ships have each reached their destination ports. For the first time Britain had had a direct connection with the USA.

The scientists and engineers argued about how much voltage it took to transmit a signal over the long distance of 2,200 miles. The high-voltage supporters prevailed with a 2000-volt configuration. After a month of operation, the cable's insulation burned several miles off the Irish coast.[1]

The American Civil War April 12, 1861 to June 23, 1865

Bad luck attracts bad luck. Nonetheless, Cyrus West Field was in constant contact with Abraham Lincoln throughout the American Civil War. The terrestrial telegraph networks were appropriated by the government and, along with Cyrus West Field's expertise, served as crucial tools of warfare. Cyrus West Field completed the USA-UK-USA route a total of 31 times.

SS Great Eastern is Back in Business, The Fourth Attempt

The failure of the cable, followed by the civil war, postponed the project until 1865. And in 1865 another failure came to the rescue. The Great Eastern - the largest ship ever built - had failed as a passenger ship because the "economy of scale" for which the ship was intended was not tested in the Southampton-West Indies ecosystem and the Southampton-New York ecosystem chosen as a replacement had different requirements regarding customer profile and trade.

[1] The signal could not be amplified. Therefore, had to be worked with 2000 V initially.

But it was large enough to support a single strand of 1-inch reinforced cable 2700 miles in length - a single strand weighing 5.000 tons.

On July 23, 1865, the SS Great Eastern departed from Valentia, Ireland. With 600 miles of cable on board and after all repairs due to insulation damage by nails, SS Great Eastern returned to Valentia-Ireland one more time without having achieved anything.

Before that, the captain turned the ship several times across to the laying direction, while the team members tried to catch the cable with a hook.

The Fifth Try

06/13/1866-07/27/1866 after 12 years no incidents.

"We arrived here of 9:00 o'clock this morning, all well, thank God, the cable is laid and is in perfect working condition."

A once dogged audience wasn't so outraged this time. But now a stronger cable - operating at a voltage well below 2000 V - survived and changed the nature of information exchange between America and Europe.

Project: The laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable

Internal Stakeholders: Peter Cooper, Frederic Gisborne, Charles Bright, John Watkins Brett, Moses Taylor, Marshall Owen Roberts

External: Samuel Morse, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company

Suppliers: Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company

Company: Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company

State: British State, American State

Creditors: Very Many

Customers: 2/3 of the world population at that time

Owner: New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company

Manager: Cyrus West Field

Employees: Very many

Economic Risks

This area has been considered as being the riskiest one despite funding from the British and American governments. The "project plan" hasn’t foreseen 5 attempts in order to end up with two fully operational Transatlantic cables. The risk assessment is that the effort has produced 100% obsolescence. Instead of 80%-20%, 20%-80% it has been delivered 100%-200%, at 80% being 0%. One speaks of non-linearity in this case.

Technical Risks

The technical risks have constantly dominated the financial ones. In order to get the technical risks under control, all 5 laying attempts were characterized by innovation and continuous improvement of the design of the Transatlantic cable, as well as of the production and loading or laying machines. These was expressed in an improvement in production technology with the aim of producing or loading the entire length in one piece.

Legal Risks

Labour law risks have dominated the operation. These may have been secured by insurance. The number of attempts was not contractually limited.

Organizational Risks

These have also dominated the operation. These were controlled by the fact that the laying attempts could only be carried out in the summer months. This reduced the risk of prematurely aborting the transfer attempt to a minimum. Nevertheless, tests had to be interrupted several times after a cable break and repeated a year later.

Environmental Risks

No consideration was given to the flora and fauna, neither during the laying of the Transatlantic cable nor when looking for grabbing dead cable ends.

Planning Risks

Were not particularly considered and fully accepted.

Contractual Risks

The deal structure has been defined between the stakeholders to such an extent that no contractual problems were imminent. The cable belonged to the financier, the company to the founders, the ship to Cyrus West Field.

Emotional Risks

None

Health risks

None

Risk Avoidance

Since the risk of failure was offset by trying again, the potential risk had only academic value.

Risk Transfer

The founders of the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company, the two governments and other voluntary financiers who would have shared in the profits have agreed to take the risk.

Risk Reduction

Wasn't necessary in this particular case

Post Mortem

In a multilayer world transformability is the process which doesn’t care about adaption or limitations, it simply writes the rules the ecosystem is governed by. The “job-to-be-done” then takes place by these very governing rules. Several utility functions for consumers[1] evolve in direction of the transformability vectors in a three-dimensional space.

The rules of Project Management and Product / Solution Development, respectively of Life Cycle Management even if known haven’t been applied consciously, neither by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, nor by Cyrus West Field. Despite of the fact, that the two projects along with multiple developments and discoveries have not been foreseen / planned as a whole, I merged their time lines together and began looking at the 1st Transatlantic Telegraph Cable as one superordinate goal. Solutions emerged from the abundance of the contemporary resources made “lucky circumstances” come handy. Those which brought people and solutions together in the scope of linking the two worlds were creative, wealthy, generous, intellectually up to the technological and technical needs and last but not least able to communicate, negotiate and willing to succeed. The superordinate goal became a locked target and none of the principal resources has been perceived as scarce or limited. Again, the strict rules of the academic Project Management have not been consequently applied. Nevertheless, all actions, milestones, break-down-structures and resources have been upgraded from try to try in order to fulfil the superordinate goal.

What if “Tier” replaces “Attempt”

I replace “Attempt” with “Tier” and the evolutionary, more Darwinian approach becomes an academic Engineering approach, which has only been disrupted by the American Civil War. I did this in order to allow the Post Mortem to become Lesson Learned and prove that the superordinate goal of the 1st Laying of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable created a technological base on which several complex projects have been built afterwards. The ambition wasn’t too big and when the exchange in information through the cable started, the speed, the quantity and the urgency of the information grew thus allowing mankind to add new qualities to importance and urgency. Literally speaking “The Cable” did upper all qualities information has been conveyed by and allowed tactical political, economical information as well as gossip and fake news to take an important space in people’s daily lives. In other terms the offering created demands which led to requests, thus the demand could become optimised, classified in domestic, commercial and special (governmental, industrial, military communication with a high degree of classification). Above and beyond that, it created an eco-system, turned non-consumers into consumers and allowed entrepreneurs to build their businesses, thus an economy of scale in a bottom-up fashion could take place. This linkage across the ocean is to be seen as a Breakthrough Innovation, where laborious tasks such as coding / decoding with Morse Code, writing the telegram, assigning the Post Office for the delivery added logistics and infrastructure to the new ecosystem and making it complete. Telephone, when available as a technology wasn’t used for long distances and became an add-on for the communication business until proper amplification and coding / filtering / equalisation techniques took it to the next level, which later became the commercial network.

More important the feasibility of in-time communication raised the needs for further technological innovations, guidelines, standardisations and commercial and technological regulations, data protection and privacy, as well as administration of the operation of such networks. This technological leap unveiled quickly many vacuum-zones which have then successively been transformed into ecosystems due to engineering (top-down) and evolutionary (bottom-up) approaches.

[1] Non-Consumers in an totally new ecosystem where the job-to-be-done?

Lessons Learned

?A technological approach runs always based on an engineering algorithm. This algorithm isn’t known when a Breakthrough Innovation is faced. In order to have a construction pattern -a blue print- for the engineering algorithm we need:

What is the utility function for the current solution?

In the situation of the 1st Transatlantic Telegraph Cable the utility function of short to middle distance telegraphy is to be looked at. This utility function bears the criteria for the appreciation of the utilisation by the end users. The end users confirm the job-to-be -done and absorb parts of the service (solution) or they absorb it fully. The question to ask is, what if this solution would contain more “band width[1]”. What sounds like scaling-up an existing business model has been proved during the entire entrepreneurship to be hard and not being able to return any of its investments for a very long time. Neither the building of the SS Great Eastern, nor the successive attempts have been considered and planned accordingly. The technical feasibility has been proven by laborious work and apparently endless resources of money.

[1] Information from USA for Europe and vice-versa, respectively closing the gap would also speed up the information transfer and add diversity regarding content and topics, thus the frequency of the data transfer will show the limitation of the cable.

Can the “Improvement” be absorbed by the end-users and how?

“The Cable” added benefits of all kind to the owners of the networks, and served as an improvement regarding time and range for the end users. The time-gap between two weeks could be shorted to 24h, thus the economy of scale for investments, tactic information for the stock exchange, tracking information for shipping of all kind or simple birthday greetings kicked-in quickly and was immediately registered as Return on Invest by its owners and investors. Wire based communication became commodity and it was used across all levels of the supply & value chain.

Business Model, Profit Formula, Value Preposition, Scalability / Transformability

Business Model

This was known best from terrestrial networks which were already in application. The sub-sea cables integrated islands into continents and made them accessible for everybody. The “distance” problem was a limitation and had to be solved by lesser technological means. In other words, a slow ship was tasked to do an urgent and important job. Failing in delivering the “job-to-be-done” raised the need for a Business Model which once possible filled the vacuum and created the ecosystem called Remote Data Transfer. It raised the need for several business models such as signal amplification, modulation and coding, error correction, noise and hash filtering, data encrypting and deciphering, distribution and data storage.

Profit Formula

It’s fair to say that we cannot formulate the Profit Formula. What we can do best is to describe the evolution of the events until a Profit Formula was possible.

a.??????The SS Great Eastern was an economic failure, but from the technological point of view it was a significant leap towards iron-ship building and revolutionized the war ship design in a significant way. The ecosystem for SS Great Eastern wasn’t existent, respectively it was assessed wrongly and because of this it served in a bankrupting way for far too long in a known ecosystem. Its initial Profit Formula didn’t work, that’s why all losses are to be perceived as an investment for the later breakthrough innovation / market creating innovation called Intercontinental Telegraphy, respectively wire based global communication.

b.??????Intercontinental Telegraphy was further subsidised by the two governments involved (the American and the British one) and additional investments came from investors, stakeholders and private people including Cyrus West Field. All subsidies in today’s money amount to more the 5 trillion US Dollars and can be seen as subsidies for filling a vacuum (ecosystem, respectively and a new market).

c.??????A proper Profit Formula emerged once the cable was laid down and it enabled a connection between America and Europe. The telegram service boomed within all domains. The stock market and betting on financial developments took off between England and USA. Last but not least, the Economic and Military Intelligence have been enabled in their daily work by a new tool, in-time data collection and surveillance. The Intelligence Business was very conservative that time and wasn’t established until the Civil War was about to use all technological means which resulted from transportation, communication, military developments and a purposeful strategy developed by the masterminds of that time.

Value Preposition

This is the hardest point which is only of a theoretic value. The Value Preposition of the SS Great Eastern was “we can take you to West Indies and back without refuelling”. This Vale Preposition resulted from the obvious issues which ships which were limited regarding cargo and range had at that time. By looking at how these challenges are mastered today we recognise, that the requirements for optimisation in terms of cargo and range are the same and soon we will see nuclear powered cargo ships running on the courses discovered by Vasco da Gama[1]. The main subject related to the Value Preposition is the Ecosystem. The Ecosystem is a buzz word which describes markets, industries, applications, Return on Invest, Return on Net assets, Return on Capital Expenditures and other financial and economic dimensions. The buzz word Ecosystem broadens the mind and stretches the wisdom which we got by dealing with the things mentioned above because it asks the stakeholders to consider the natural resources, respectively the emissions caused when we transform material into goods, when we transform fuel into motion[2].

Scalability and Transformability

5G, Industrial Internet of Things, Underwater Internet of Things, respectively Under Earth Internet of Things wouldn’t be possible w/o Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Cyrus West Field and the British and The American Government of those times, because these people filled the vacuum with a technology which was good enough the transform non-customers into paying customers. Everything, the emerging profit formulas, the possible business models and new markets, Value Prepositions and new requirements on speed, bandwidths, data protection and security lead to digital data transfer through glass fibre and wireless networks. More important, visionary scientists of the likes of Nikola Tesla[3], Guglielmo Marconi, Claude Shannon[4], George Boole[5] assembled a new science The Information Technology which until today remains as a backbone of the evolving mankind. Within a decade or so mankind will face more wireless data and power transportation than cable based.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama

[2] Supply- and Value-Chain, the life-blood of the economy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole