text: An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western Railway on 25 July 1837. The actual distance was only one and a half-miles (2.4 km), but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its length. It was late in the evening before the trial took place. Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Robert Stephenson and other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at Euston. Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied: and "never" said Wheatstone, "did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute."
  In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated the new-fangled invention with indifference, and requested its removal. In July 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington station terminus to West Drayton railway station, a distance of . Part of the wire was laid underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts along the line. Their circuit was eventually extended to  in 1841, and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science, which could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles per minute (7,500 km/s). The price of admission was a shilling (£0.05), and in 1844 one fascinated observer recorded the following: