letter was literally pointed out by the current deflecting two of the
needles towards it.

An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the
Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western
Railway on July 25, 1837. The actual distance was only one and a half
mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its
length. It was late in the evening before the trial took place. Mr.
Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephenson and
other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a
dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at
Euston. Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied, and
'never,' said Wheatstone, 'did I feel such a tumultuous sensation
before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click,
and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention
pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.'

In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated
the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its
removal. In July, 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western
Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington terminus to West Drayton
station, a distance of thirteen miles. Part of the wire was laid
underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts
along the line. Their circuit was eventually extended to Slough in
1841, and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science,
which could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles in a
minute. The price of admission was a shilling.

Notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the
new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture