Several scholars who from the first had turned their minds to telegraphy, had analogous ideas.  It was thus that S.F.B.  Morse, superintendent of the Government telegraphs in the United States, whose name is universally known in connection with the very simple apparatus invented by him, made experiments in the autumn of 1842 before a special commission in New York and a numerous public audience, to show how surely and how easily his apparatus worked.  In the very midst of his experiments a very happy idea occurred to him of replacing by the water of a canal, the length of about a mile of wire which had been suddenly and accidentally destroyed.  This accident, which for a moment compromised the legitimate success the celebrated engineer expected, thus suggested to him a fruitful idea which he did not forget.  He subsequently repeated attempts to thus utilise the earth and water, and obtained some very remarkable results.

It is not possible to quote here all the researches undertaken with the same purpose, to which are more particularly attached the names of S.W.  Wilkins, Wheatstone, and H. Highton, in England; of Bonetti in Italy, Gintl in Austria, Bouchot and Donat in France; but there are some which cannot be recalled without emotion.

On the 17th December 1870, a physicist who has left in the University of Paris a lasting name, M. d’Almeida, at that time Professor at the Lycee Henri IV. and later Inspector-General of Public Instruction, quitted Paris, then besieged, in a balloon, and descended in the midst of the German lines.  He succeeded, after a perilous journey, in gaining Havre by way of Bordeaux and Lyons; and after procuring the necessary apparatus in England, he descended the Seine as far as Poissy, which he reached on the 14th January 1871.  After his departure, two other scholars, MM.  Desains and Bourbouze, relieving each other day and night, waited at Paris, in a wherry on the Seine, ready to receive the signal which they awaited with patriotic anxiety.  It was a question of working a process devised by the last-named pair, in which the water of the river acted the part of the line wire.  On the 23rd January the communication at last seemed to be established, but unfortunately, first the armistice and then the surrender of Paris rendered useless the valuable result of this noble effort.

Special mention is also due to the experiments made by the Indian Telegraph Office, under the direction of Mr Johnson and afterwards of Mr W.F.  Melhuish.  They led, indeed, in 1889 to such satisfactory results that a telegraph service, in which the line wire was replaced by the earth, worked practically and regularly.  Other attempts were also made during the latter half of the nineteenth century to transmit signals through the sea.  They preceded the epoch when, thanks to numerous physicists, among whom Lord Kelvin undoubtedly occupies a preponderating position, we succeeded in sinking the first cable; but they were not abandoned,