HISTORY. 
95 
Farther on we read :—“ Every sensible person will acknow¬ 
ledge that one man alone would be able to cut all the telegraph 
wires entering Paris, without it being possible to prevent him. 
We may assert that one man alone, without being stopped or 
even observed, could in twenty-four hours cut the electric wires 
of any particular line in ten places. 
“ It would be easy to demonstrate this assertion by a simple 
trial, if permission were given. 5 ’ 
We here see how far astray a sensible man may be carried 
by his interests and his prepossessions. Dr. Guyot, who 
clearly recognised the utility of the pneumatic telegraph in the 
great centres of population, would have done better had he 
followed up that idea, as then he would no doubt have given 
France the “ tubular post.” We must not, however, be 
surprised at the animus shown by Dr. Guyot ; have we not 
heard Thiers deny the possibility of railways, and Babinet pro¬ 
nounce submarine telegraphs impracticable ? 
To the history of this last-named means of communication 
we must now pass on. As we have already seen, submerged 
conductors were used by Schilling as early as 1812, for explod¬ 
ing mines. Dr. O’Shaughnessy, formerly superintendent- 
general of the Indian telegraphs, claims to have established, as 
early as 1839, a subaqueous telegraphic communication across 
the Hooghly. These experiments attracted little attention, and 
the method employed in them was not used elsewhere, nor 
indeed has it been described. 
In 1840, Professor Wheatstone suggested to the Select Com¬ 
mittee on Railways appointed by the House of Commons, the 
construction of a submarine telegraph between Dover and 
Calais. He afterwards developed his idea more fully in a 
pamphlet, which clearly showed that, as early as 1837, a 
correspondence on this subject was taking place between the 
professor and his friends. 
Professor Morse relates, that in 1842 he sank an insulated 
wire (he does not state what was the insulating material) 
between Castle Green and Grosvenor Island in the port of New 
York, and that he proved experimentally the possibility of a 
submarine telegraph across the Atlantic. 
In 1815, Charles West, of the firm of Silver & Co., laid an 
india-rubber cable across the bay of Portsmouth, This piece 
