It was in prosecuting inquiries to resolve this problem, that Mr. Field became acquainted with two gentlemen who were to be soon after associated with him in the organization of the Atlantic Telegraph Company. These were Mr. Charles T. Bright, afterward knighted for his part in laying the Atlantic cable in 1858, and Dr. Edward O. Whitehouse, both well known in England, the former as an engineer, and the latter for his experiments in electro-magnetism, as applied to the business of telegraphing. He had invented an instrument by which to ascertain and register the velocity of electric currents through submarine cables. Both these gentlemen were full of the ardor of science, and entered on this new project with the zeal which the prospect of so great a triumph might inspire. With them was now to be associated our distinguished countryman, Professor Morse. Fortunately he was at this time in London, and gave his invaluable aid to the experiments which were made to determine the possibility of telegraphic communication at great distances under the sea. The result of his experiments he communicates in a letter to Mr. Field: "London, Five o'clock A.M., "October 3, 1856. "My dear Sir: As the electrician of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, it is with the highest gratification that I have to apprise you of the result of our experiments of this morning upon a single continuous conductor of more than two thousand miles in extent, a distance you will perceive sufficient to cross the Atlantic Ocean, from Newfoundland to Ireland. "The admirable arrangements made at the Magnetic Telegraph Office in Old Broad street, for connecting ten subterranean gutta-percha insulated conductors, of over two hundred miles each, so as to give one continuous length of more than two thousand miles during the hours of the night, when the telegraph is not commercially employed, furnished us the means of conclusively settling, by actual experiment, the question of the practicability as well as the practicality[A] of telegraphing through our proposed Atlantic cable. "This result had been thrown into some doubt by the discovery, more than two years since, of certain phenomena upon subterranean and submarine conductors, and had attracted the attention of electricians, particularly of that most eminent philosopher, Professor Faraday, and that clear-sighted investigator of electrical phenomena, Dr. Whitehouse; and one of these phenomena, to wit, the perceptible retardation of the electric current, threatened to perplex our operations, and required careful investigation before we could pronounce with certainty the commercial practicability of the Ocean Telegraph.