and to offer the tunnel people there—and the Suez Canal Company—the chance of obtaining some substantial American financial backing for the construction of a tunnel if it proved to be a practical proposition. The tunnel people in Europe showed varying degrees of interest in the proposal, and to strengthen their position, Davidson and Means, with another friend, an engineer, Arnaud de Vitry d'Avancourt, formed a New York corporation called Technical Studies, Inc., with the announced purpose of financing technical investigations and promoting the construction of a Channel tunnel. In April 1957, the Suez Canal Company, which by then had given up any hope of regaining control of the Canal, jumped into the tunnel picture by announcing that it intended to collaborate with the English and French tunnel companies to have made a very detailed geological survey of the Channel bed to determine the practicability of a tunnel. The tunnel came into the news again. When, at the seventy-sixth annual meeting of the Channel Tunnel Company, in London, D'Erlanger got up to confirm the latest development, he did so not before the usual handful of disillusioned shareholders, but in a room packed with people who had suddenly rediscovered and dusted off old Channel Tunnel Company stock certificates. A correspondent from the _Times_ of London who was present reported of the stockholders' reaction to the speech of the company's chairman on the possibilities of seriously reviving the tunnel project that it took only a few minutes "to excite their minds to a pleasurable pitch" and that "at least one member of Mr. d'Erlanger's audience darted out in the middle of his speech to instruct his broker to buy in shares." According to the _Times_, the only note of doubt was struck by a stockholder at the end of the meeting, which lasted half an hour: Mr. John Elliott, who bought his shares for a song almost, asked where the company's workings were. Did they really exist? He had visited Dover, and neither police, shopkeepers, nor the county surveyor could tell him where they were. He suggested that the board prove their existence by escorting a nominated half-dozen shareholders on an eye-witness excursion. Little attention was paid to the objector. The _Times_ reported that "other shareholders pooh-poohed his scepticism," and the meeting broke up. It was a far cry from the days of Sir Edward Watkin's special trains to Dover for tunnel parties. However, the price of Channel Tunnel Company stock, which had been available for years on the London Stock Exchange for as low as sixpence, rose to more than ten shillings by the day of the meeting and shortly thereafter rose rapidly, until by May 20 it reached twenty-six shillings and ninepence—six shillings and ninepence more than the price of the first Channel Tunnel Company stock in 1876.