Frederick (or Frederic) Newton Gisborne was born on March 8, 1824, in Broughton, Lancashire, England.
He was a British inventor, electrical engineer, and civil servant. He was educated by clergymen and special instructors in England. He concentrated on mathematics, electricity, civil engineering, botany, and other scientific subjects. In 1842, he left England for a trip around the world and settled in Canada in 1845. He enrolled in a course in telegraphy offered in Montreal by one of Morse’s pupils and was offered a post with the Montreal Telegraph Company in Quebec City. As an expert electrical engineer, he was appointed superintendent of the lines of the Nova Scotia government at Halifax in 1847. After studying the problems of ocean telegraphy, he laid the first deep-sea cable in North American waters, between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick in 1852. In 1854, he was appointed the chief engineer of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, laying the Cape Ray–Cape Breton cable in July 1856 and completing the Newfoundland–Nova Scotia line by October. In 1879, Gisborne was appointed superintendent of the Canadian government telegraph service, the position he held until his death in 1892.

In 1850, he married Alida Ellen Starr (1834–1854) and in 1857, he remarried Henrietta Hernaman (1837–1928). He died on August 30, 1892, in Ottawa, Ontario.