time the Telegraph bill was passed there had been about thirteen miles of
telegraph conductors, for Professor Wheatstone's telegraph system in
England, put into tubes and interred in the earth, and there was no hint
publicly given that that mode was not perfectly successful. I did not
feel, therefore, at liberty to expend the public moneys in useless
experiments on a plan which seemed to be already settled as effective in
England. Hence I fixed upon this mode as one supposed to be the best. It
prosecuted till the winter of 1843-44. It was abandoned, among other
reasons, in consequence of ascertaining that, in the process of inserting
the wire into the leaden tubes (which was at the moment of forming the
tube from the lead at melting heat), the insulating covering of the wires
had become charred, at various and numerous points of the line, to such
an extent that greater delay and expense would be necessary to repair the
damage than to put the wire on posts.

"In my letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, of September 27, 1837,
one of the modes of laying the conductors for the Telegraph was the
present almost universal one of extending them on posts set about two
hundred feet apart. This mode was adopted with success."

The sentence in the letter of September 27, 1837, just referred to, reads
as follows: "If the circuit is laid through the air, the first cost
would, doubtless, be much lessened. Stout spars, of some thirty feet in
height, well planted in the ground and placed about three hundred and
fifty feet apart, would in this case be required, along the tops of which
the circuit might be stretched."

A rough drawing of this plan also appears in the 1832 sketch-book.

It would seem, from a voluminous correspondence, that Professor Fisher