Subaqueous, or marine, telegraphy owed its institution, however, to the introduction of gutta-percha, for insulating purposes. The late Dr. Werner Siemens having invented a machine for applying gutta-percha to a wire--similar in principle to the machine for making macaroni--considerable lengths of gutta-percha-covered subterranean wires were laid in Germany and Prussia between 1846 and 1849; and in 1849 Siemens laid a gutta-percha insulated conductor in the harbor of Kiel which was used for firing mines. Following this came the extensive system of underground lines laid down in England for the Magnetic Telegraph Company by their engineer, Mr. (afterward Sir Charles) Bright, in accordance with a patent of his. Short lengths were also laid, mostly through tunnels, by the Electric Telegraph Company a little later. On the 10th day of January, 1849, the late Mr. C. V. Walker, F.R.S., electrician to the Southeastern Railway, laid a gutta-percha-covered conductor, two miles long, in the English Channel. The wire was coiled on a drum on board the laying vessel, from which it was paid out as the vessel progressed. Starting from the beach at Folkestone, the line was joined up to an aerial wire, 83 miles in length, along the Southeastern Railway, and Mr. Walker, on board the Princess Clementine, succeeded in exchanging telegrams with London. On the 23d July, 1845, the brothers Jacob and John Watkins Brett addressed themselves to Sir Robert Peel, as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, relative to a proposal of theirs for establishing a general system of telegraphic communication--oceanic and otherwise. They were referred to the Admiralty, Foreign Office, etc., and gradually became involved in a departmental correspondence--more academic than useful--in which they were passed backward and forward from one government office to another. After considerable negotiations with both governments concerned, a concession was at last obtained by the Messrs. Brett, and a company formed for instituting telegraphy between England and France by means of a line from Dover to Calais. Twenty-five nautical miles of No. 14 copper wire covered with 1/2-inch thickness of gutta-percha was then manufactured, the electrician's tongue being the only test applied to some of the lengths. The shore ends for about two miles from each terminus consisted of a No. 16 B.W.G.[4] conductor covered with cotton soaked in india-rubber solution, the whole being incased in a very thick lead tube. The rest of the line was composed of the gutta-percha insulated wire above described, with 30-pound leaden weights fastened to it at 100-yard intervals,[5] the laying vessel having to be stopped each time one was put on. The submersion of the line was successfully effected, but it only lived to speak a few more or less incoherent words--one being a short complimentary communication to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, shortly afterward Emperor of the French. It