After that submarine cables were laid down between various countries. Some of them were costly failures, because, although the men who had taken the infant in charge had learned a great deal about its little ways, they had not learned all the refinements necessary to success in laying and working deep-sea ocean cables. So, in 1857, when Cyrus Field formed his Atlantic Telegraph Company, the cable that he and his plucky companions laid under the Atlantic failed completely of its object. But Field and some of those with him simply would not accept defeat. So they spent more money, laid more cables, failed again, toiled and moiled and worked like beavers for years, until at last in 1866 they finished a cable from Ireland to Nova Scotia that worked like a charm. It was, without exception, the greatest piece of work ever done in electricity, and its history is one of the finest of the many tales of engineering enterprise. To-day there are about a dozen cables between North America and Europe, and three between South America and Europe. There are cables in every sea and ocean in the world, and across every ocean except the Pacific. In all there are more than 150,000 miles of submarine cable under the waters of the globe, and there is a fleet of forty ships, large and small, fitted out solely for the purpose of laying and repairing submarine cables. Nowadays the laying of an Atlantic cable attracts no attention, and the fishing up of a slender rope less than an inch thick from the floor of the ocean, 12,000 or 15,000 feet down, is a thing done a dozen times a year. In Cyrus Field's time the Atlantic cable was the topic of the world for years, and the recovery of the broken cable was for a long time impossible, because no machinery then made could stand the strain. In 1866 a telegram from New York to London took hours on the way. For many years past the merchants of the two cities have been in the habit of grumbling vigorously if they don't get replies to their messages within half an hour of despatching. The result of the Derby is known in New York before the winning horse has slacked his pace after passing the judge's box, and it is all over the world before the proud owner has had time to lead him back into the paddock. A cable message goes round the world in an hour or so, and the sun gets so rattled that people hear of events that happened to-morrow.