There was no help for them in books or colleges.
Watson, who had acquired a little knowledge, had become a shipbuilder.
Electrical engineering, as a profession, was unborn.

And as for their telegraphic experience, while it certainly helped them for a time, it started them in the wrong direction and led them to do many things which had afterwards to be undone.
The peculiar electric current that these young pathfinders had to deal with is perhaps the quickest, feeblest, and most elusive force in the world.

It is so amazing a thing that any description of it seems irrational.

It is as gentle as a touch of a baby sunbeam, and as swift as the lightning flash.

It is so small that the electric current of a single incandescent lamp is greater 500,000,000 times.