The first demonstration of the "instantaneous" transmission of images was made by a German physicist, Ernst Ruhmer, who arranged 25 selenium cells as the picture elements for a television receiver. In late 1909 he successfully demonstrated in Belgium the transmission of simple images over a telephone wire from the Palace of Justice at Brussels to the city of Liege, a distance of . This demonstration was described at the time as "the world's first working model of television apparatus". The limited number of elements meant his device was only capable of representing simple geometric shapes, and the cost was very high; at a price of £15 (US$45) per selenium cell, he estimated that a 4,000 cell system would cost £60,000 (US$180,000), and a 10,000 cell mechanism capable of reproducing "a scene or event requiring the background of a landscape" would cost £150,000 (US$450,000). Ruhmer expressed the hope that the 1910 Brussels "Exposition Universelle et Internationale" would sponsor the construction of an advanced device with significantly more cells, as a showcase for the exposition. However, the estimated expense of £250,000 (US$750,000) proved to be too high.