The situation was rather depressing to the young American, but "I thanked him," says Edison, "and hoped to reciprocate somehow. I knew I was in a hole. I had been staying at a little hotel in Covent Garden called the Hummums, and got nothing but roast beef and flounders, and my imagination was getting into a coma. What I needed was pastry. That night I found a French pastry shop in High Holborn Street and filled up. My imagination got all right. Early in the morning I saw Gouraud, stated my case, and asked if he would stand for the purchase of a powerful battery to send to Liverpool. He said 'Yes.' I went immediately to Apps, on the Strand, and asked if he had a powerful battery. He said he hadn't; that all that he had was Tyndall's Royal Institution battery, which he supposed would not serve. I saw it--one hundred cells--and getting the price--one hundred guineas--hurried to Gouraud. He said 'Go ahead.' I telegraphed to the man in Liverpool. He came on, and got the battery to Liverpool, set up and ready just two hours before the test commenced. One of the principal things that made the system a success was that the line was put to earth at the sending end through a magnet, and the extra current from this passed to the line served to sharpen the recording waves. This new battery was strong enough to pass a powerful current through the magnet without materially diminishing the strength of the current." The test under these more favorable circumstances was a success. "The record was as perfect as copper plate, and not a single remark was made in the 'time lost' column." Edison was now asked if he thought he could get a better speed through submarine cables with this system, and replied that he would like a chance to try it. For this purpose twenty-two hundred miles of cable stored under water in tanks was placed at his disposal from 8 P.M. until 6 A.M. He says: "This just suited me, as I preferred night work. I got my apparatus down and set up, and then to get a preliminary idea of what the distortion of the signal would be I sent a single dot, which should have been recorded upon my automatic paper by a mark about one thirty-second of an inch long. Instead of that it was twenty-seven feet long. If I ever had any conceit, it vanished from my boots up! I worked on this cable more than two weeks, and the best I could do was two words per minute, which was only one-seventh of what the guaranteed speed of the cable should be when laid. What I did not know at the time was that a coiled cable, owing to induction, was infinitely worse than when laid out straight, and that my speed was as good as, if not better than, the regular system, but no one told me this." After a short stay in England Edison returned to America. He states that the automatic was finally adopted in England and used for many years; indeed, it is still in use there. But they took whatever they needed from his system, and he "has never had a cent from them."