William Cooke

William Fothergill Cooke

By:Razia

In 1836 a son of a professor, William Fothergill Cooke attended a lecture on electricity and decided to build an electric telegraph.  The demonstration Cooke had attended was based on a model by the late Russian inventor Schilling.  Cooke wanted to make the telegraph for a higher usage and make a fortune at the same time. Cooke returned to England, but couldn’t make the telegraph model work with long wires to transmit the signal over long distances. Cooke met professor Wheatstone through a friend, Wheatstone had also been working on his own experiments with the telegraph.  Wheatstone brought a significant amount of scientific knowledge to the partnership.  They had soon devised a 5-needel telegraph using 20 letters of the alphabet.  Cooke believed the telegraph would be useful for the government, sending stock prices, and sending urgent news to families.  Cooke had built a working telegraph, now he faced the task of convincing people of its importance.

 

 

By: Yue wang

 William Fothergill Cooke was one of the British inventors of the electric telegraph. He patented his invention in May 1837 with his co-inventor Charles Wheatstone. The telegraph had many skeptics; People had doubts about the telegraph because they could not understand how it worked compared to the old-fashioned optical telegraph. This uncertainty about the electric telegraph made it difficult for Cooke to get the government’s support in building a telegraph network. So he turned to the private sector. After several attempts, he finally signed a contract with the London Birmingham Railway company to build an experimental telegraph line. The telegraph gained fame after an incident where it assisted the police in the capture of murderer John Tawell. Similarly, the use of the telegraph to spread the news of the birth of Queen Victoria’s second son also helped the telegraph to gain greater public notice. The public were now becoming increasingly aware of the usefulness of the electric telegraph. Eventually, Cooke convinced a financier John Lewis Ricardo to invest in his telegraph and he created the Electrical Telegraph Company, in September 1845.

 

Source: Standage, Tom. (2007) The Victorian Internet.