The Internet is where we live our digital lives. But it's also a physical network of cables that span the globe. Earlier this year, a South African man created this fantastic interactive map of all the world's submarine cables. (It was spotted this past weekend by Wired Science blogger Brian Romans.)

We've clearly come a long, long way since the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, which was laid in 1858 between the United States and Great Britain. Last week, we were lucky enough to have Hal Wallace, the electricity curator at the National Museum of American History walk us through the story of that very first submarine line. Here's what it looked like:

The line was the brainchild of the financier Cyrus Field. He had a stunningly simple plan. Take one British warship and one American frigate, load them up with cable, and navigate them towards each other. There was nothing fancy about the cable laying process: they just paid out the cable over the back and let it sink into the depths. When the British and American vessels met up, they spliced the cable together and were in business. You can see the apparatus here, thanks to Atlantic-Cable's sleuthing.

Sadly, the first cable didn't last long. After three weeks, it stopped working and was never reconnected. "The operators didn't realize how to work a cable like this," Wallace said. "The signal was very weak, so the answer was, 'More Power Scotty' and they fried the cable." By the time they laid the more permanent telegraph lines in the 1860s, operators had learned their lesson.