After the failure of the first Atlantic cable, proponents of oceanic submarine telegraphy sought to parry claims that the task they had attempted was simply impossible and to argue that it instead resulted from a series of correctable errors. Their first step was to pin as much blame as they could on Wildman Whitehouse while separating his practices from those of proper electrical scientists and engineers. The Atlantic Telegraph Company then teamed with the British government to establish a Joint Committee to investigate how such disasters might be avoided in the future. In 1861 the committee issued a massive Report that identified the rationalization of methods and standardization of materials as keys to bringing order and reliability to an industry that had hitherto lacked both. The Joint Committee Report exemplified the power of expertise backed by official authority, and it soon became the bible of British cable practice as the idiosyncratic methods of Whitehouse and other cable amateurs gave way to William Thomson and Latimer Clark’s emphasis on precise and standardized measurement. Guided by this new measurement-based approach to telegraph engineering, the Atlantic cable project was resurrected and would finally succeed in 1866.

"The first attempt to lay a transoceanic cable, the Atlantic cable project of 1856–58, had far-reaching effects on electrical theory and practice. Although it was launched by an American, Cyrus Field, the project soon came to be dominated by British capital and technical expertise. Among the leading figures in the Atlantic Telegraph Company were Charles Bright, the young chief engineer; Wildman Whitehouse, a Brighton surgeon turned electrical experimenter; and William Thomson, professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow and a member of the company’s board of directors. Whitehouse and Thomson had argued about signal propagation and cable design before joining the company; the circumstances of this dispute, and of its temporary resolution early in 1857, shed valuable light on how scientific and practical concerns interacted in the project, particularly around questions of measurement. The dispute flared again when the Atlantic cable failed in September 1858 after only a month of fitful service. The response to that failure would shape British cable telegraphy and electrical physics for decades to come."