WORD MEANING Name: Date: Crossing the Atlantic 1 Suppose you send a message to your friend in Europe about the latest fad in America. But it takes a few weeks to get there. By the time your friend gets your message, the fad has faded! Back in the 1800s, a letter took weeks or even months to get from America to Europe. Mail traveled by ship across the Atlantic Ocean. 2 Aman named Cyrus Field changed all that. With his help, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Ireland. The cable was more than 2,000 miles long. In some places, it was two miles deep under the ocean, 3 With the cable in place, people could send telegrams between the United States and England, The telegrams arrived in minutes! On August 16, 1858, U.S. President James Buchanan exchanged messages with Queen Victoria of England. 4 Laying the first cable did not go smoothly, though. Cyrus Field was a prominent businessman in New York. He made his fortune selling paper. He knew nothing about the telegraph. But he recognized a chance to make money. He got others to invest more than $1 million to pay for the project. mi Then he asked, for navy ships Laying of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph to lay the cable. cable at Trinity Bay in Newfoundland 5 Attempts to lay the first cable failed twice. Each time, the cable snapped. When the cable finally got connected, it lasted only three weeks. Then the signal died. Field’s determination did not waver. He raised more money. But then war caused a delay. He had to convince governments to help. He succeeded in the end. A second cable began working in 1866. People on both sides of the ocean were jubilant. They celebrated for days, and Cyrus Field became a rich man. 6 Since that time, communications have changed fast. The first radio message crossed the Atlantic in 1927. Telephone cables were laid in the 1930s. Each cable had only one wire. By the 1950s, new cables could handle 36 calls at a time. Today, we have many fiber-optic cables in place. They link all of the continents. They can carry 4 million times the number of voice circuits as the cable of the 1950s. Signals travel around the world at almost the speed of light. Scanned with CamScanner~ WORD MEANING Name Date: Augusta Savage, Artist Extraordinaire 1 The Pugilist is a famous sculpture created in 1942. The name means “fighter.” It is a sculpture of boxer Jack Johnson, who became the world’s first Black heavyweight champion in 1908. It shows him with his arms folded. He looks up with confidence, ready to face anything. 2 That fighting spirit was a reflection of its sculptor, Augusta Savage. Augusta was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida, in 1892. Asa child, she liked to make small figures. She used the red clay near her home. That was the start of her life’s work as a sculptor. Her father did not want her to be an artist. But she persisted, in spite of the many challenges she faced. 3 As an adult, Savage moved to West Palm Beach. There, she pursued)her career as an artist, and won some prizes, But Savage could not sell her artwork in Florida. So she moved to New York City to study art. The Harp, by Augusta She enrolled in an art course at Cooper Union "tne 1889 World's Fat in 1921. Over the next few years, she became an influential artist. Her work had an effect on many others in the Harlem Renaissance. That was a movement of Black writers and artists in the 1920s and 30s. (continued) Scanned with CamScanner