The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

"Respectfully, your obedient servant, "Samuel F. B. Morse." These experiments and others removed the doubts of scientific men. Professor Faraday, in spite of the law of the retardation of electricity on long circuits, which it was said he had discovered, and which would render it impossible to work a line of such length as from Ireland to Newfoundland, now declared his full conviction that it was within the bounds of possibility. The passage of electricity might not be absolutely instantaneous, or have the swiftness of the solar beam, yet it would be rapid enough for all practical purposes. When Mr. Field asked him how long it would take for the electricity to pass from London to New York, he answered: "Possibly one second!" Thus fortified by the highest scientific and engineering authorities, the projectors of an ocean telegraph were now ready to bring it before the British public, and to see what support could be found from the English Government and the English people.