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.
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