Suppose, instead, he suggested, post towns were linked by a series of high pillars erected every hundred feet or so. Steel wires would stretch from pillar to pillar. Within cities, church steeples might serve as the pillars. Tin cases with wheels would roll along the wires and carry batches of letters. The expense would be “comparatively trifling,” he said, “nor is it impossible that the stretched wire might itself be available for a species of telegraphic communication yet more rapid.”
