One of our most profound electricians is reported to have exclaimed:
“Give me but an unlimited length of wire, with a small battery, and I
will girdle the universe with a sentence in forty minutes.” Yet this is
no vain boast; for so rapid is the transition of the electric current
along the line of the telegraph wire, that, supposing it were possible
to carry the wires eight times round the earth, the transit would
occupy but _one second of time_!