During the 1880s, following completion of the 105-mile Suez Canal, French entrepreneur Ferdinand DeLesseps poured billions of francs and 25,000 lives into an unsuccessful attempt to build a sea-level canal through Panama. The French effort was thwarted by disease, unreliable machinery, and almost a billion cubic yards of rock that stood in the way.
In 1879, Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal proposed a sea level canal through Panama. With the success he had with the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt just ten years earlier, de Lesseps was confident he would complete the water circle around the world. Time and mileage would be dramatically reduced when traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean or vice versa. For example, it would save a total of 18,000 miles on a trip from New York to San Francisco.
Although de Lesseps was not an engineer, he was appointed chairman for the construction of the Panama Canal. Upon taking charge, he organized an International Congress to discuss several schemes for constructing a ship canal. De Lesseps opted for a sea-level canal based on the construction of the Suez Canal. He believed that if a sea-level canal worked when constructing the Suez Canal, it must work for the Panama Canal.
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