William Fothergill Cooke was English inventor who worked with Charles Wheatstone in developing electric telegraphy.

William Fothergill Cooke was born near Ealing, Middlesex, England, on May 4, 1806, and was a son of Dr. William Cooke, a doctor of medicine, and professor of anatomy at the University of Durham. The boy was educated at a school in Durham, and at the University of Edinburgh. He became interested in electrical telegraphy when he was a child. His interest may have resulted from watching his father and Francis Ronalds transmitting messages from the coach house to the tool shed at the end of the garden when he was a boy. In 1826 he joined the East India Army, and held several staff appointments. While in the Madras Native Infantry, he returned home on furlough, owing to ill-health, and afterwards relinquished this connection. In 1833-4 he studied anatomy and physiology in Paris, acquiring great skill at modelling dissections in coloured wax.

In the summer of 1835, while touring in Switzerland with his parents, he visited Heidelberg, and was induced by Professor Tiedeman, director of the Anatomical Institute, to return there and continue his wax modelling. He lodged at 97, Stockstrasse, in the house of a brewer, and modelled in a room nearly opposite. Some of his models have been preserved in the Anatomical Museum at Heidelberg. In March 1836, hearing accidentally from Mr. J.W.R. Hoppner, a son of Lord Byron's friend, that the Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University, Geheime Hofrath Moncke, had a model of Baron Schilling's telegraph, Cooke went to see it on March 6, in the Professor's lecture room, an upper storey of an old convent of Dominicans, where he also lived.Although Cooke had no knowledge in electronics he recognised the chance of this invention for the future. Struck by what he witnessed, he abandoned his medical studies, and resolved to apply all his energies to the introduction of the telegraph. Within three weeks he had made, partly at Heidelberg, and partly at Frankfort, his first galvanometer, or needle telegraph. It consisted of three magnetic needles surrounded by multiplying coils, and actuated by three separate circuits of six wires. The movements of the needles under the action of the currents produced twenty-six different signals corresponding to the letters of the alphabet.

'Whilst completing the model of my original plan,' he wrote to his mother on April 5, 'others on entirely fresh systems suggested themselves, and I have at length succeeded in combining the UTILE of each, but the mechanism requires a more delicate hand than mine to execute, or rather instruments which I do not possess. These I can readily have made for me in London, and by the aid of a lathe I shall he able to adapt the several parts, which I shall have made by different mechanicians for secrecy's sake. Should I succeed, it may be the means of putting some hundreds of pounds in my pocket. As it is a subject on which I was profoundly ignorant, until my attention was casually attracted to it the other day, I do not know what others may have done in the same way; this can best be learned in London.'

The 'fresh systems' referred to was his 'mechanical' telegraph, consisting of two letter dials, working synchronously, and on which particular letters of the message were indicated by means of an electro- magnet and detent. Before the end of March he invented the clock-work alarm, in which an electro-magnet attracted an armature of soft iron, and thus withdrew a detent, allowing the works to strike the alarm. This idea was suggested to him on March 17, 1836, while reading Mrs. Mary Somerville's 'Connexion of the Physical Sciences,' in travelling from Heidelberg to Frankfort.

Cooke arrived in London on April 22, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth his plans for the establishment of an electric telegraph; but it was never published. According to his own account he also gave considerable attention to the escapement principle, or step by step movement, afterwards perfected by Wheatstone. While busy in preparing his apparatus for exhibition, part of which was made by a clock-maker in Clerkenwell, he consulted Faraday about the construction of electro- magnets, The philosopher saw his apparatus and expressed his opinion that the 'principle was perfectly correct,' and that the 'instrument appears perfectly adapted to its intended uses.' Nevertheless he was not very sanguine of making it a commercial success. 'The electro-magnetic telegraph shall not ruin me,' he wrote to his mother, 'but will hardly make my fortune.' He was desirous of taking a partner in the work, and went to Liverpool in order to meet some gentleman likely to forward his views, and endeavoured to get his instrument adopted on the incline of the tunnel at Liverpool; but it gave sixty signals, and was deemed too complicated by the directors. Soon after his return to London, by the end of April, he had two simpler instruments in working order. All these preparations had already cost him nearly four hundred pounds.

Cooke was not convinced that his telegraph would be able to transmit over long distances so he arranged a meeting with the noted physicist Professor Wheatstone, who was interested in both sound and electricity. From this single meeting developed a working partnership which culminated in the demonstration of the first working electric telegraph in the world. During this time the English physicist Charles Wheatstone was experimenting with electricity at King’s College, London. There he made his famous determination of the propagation velocity of electricity. Wheatstone showed that all the effects possible with a short wire could also be produced by a long one, and that the results were to all practical purposes instantaneous. By June 1836, he had demonstrated how this technology could be turned into a telegraph.

In March 1837 Cooke had problems with his telegraph. It seemed that the electrical power could not transmit a signal over long distances. He asked professor Wheatstone for advice. It was found that Cooke had forgotten to observe Ohm’s Law and that the multiplier winding had been miscalculated. Wheatstone and Cooke formed a partnership of convenience. Cooke was an entrepreneur in search of a fortune, Wheatstone an academic who understood the science of electricity. In June 1837, they were granted their first patent on an instrument using six wires, connected to five galvanometer needles arranged in a row across the face of a grid which displayed 20 letters of the alphabet. Each letter was sent in the form of currents flowing down two wires, causing the appropriate needles to swing against stops and point to the right letter. Complex to describe, the system was simple to use: children could, and did, operate it successfully.

Cooke and Wheatstone's telegraph employed five iron needles which when not in use rested in a vertical position. Each needle could be moved either to the left or the right by electromagnets. To transmit a letter of the alphabet two switches were pressed which caused two needles to move and point to the appropriate letter. By pressing different combinations of switches any one of twenty letters could be transmitted. Unfortunately J, C, Q, U, X and Z had to be omitted making it difficult to send some words. Alternative methods were adopted to spell words such as 'queen', 'quiz' or 'axe'. Despite its shortcomings, the advantage of their equipment was that it could be used by unskilled operators.

Cooke's business acumen played a crucial role in the success of their telegraph. He realised the potential of an almost instant method of sending messages for the new railway companies, and in 1837 he arranged a demonstration between Euston and Camden stations, a distance of 1.5 miles (2.4 km). There were problems in insulating the iron wires which carried the signal. The wires were covered with cotton and buried in iron pipes beside the railway line. While the wires remained dry there was no problem, but if they became wet the insulation failed. Nevertheless, the equipment clearly impressed the Directors of the Great Western Railway who allowed a trial to take place between Paddington and West Drayton. The trial was a partial success. The company did not accede to Cooke's request to extend it to Bristol, but did agree an extension as far as Slough, provided railway messages were carried free of charge. Cooke overcame the insulation problems by suspending the wires from iron posts using glass insulators. This extension was paid for by Cooke and Wheatstone and to recover some of the expense they offered the public the opportunity to send messages at a shilling (5 p) a time. Sir William Fothergill Cooke, English inventor, ca. 1870s

A Wheatstone-Cooke five-needle telegraph, 1837:

Real device

Real device

Scheme

A Wheatstone-Cooke five-needle telegraph (another device)

Although the five needle telegraph was easy to operate it required six wires, the cost of the first model made it impractical. Before the telegraph was used in all English railway lines, Wheatstone had to improve it.

A Wheatstone-Cooke two-needle telegraph, 1843

A Wheatstone-Cooke two-needle telegraph, ca. 1840

Cooke & Wheatstone replaced their first model in 1843 with a new type, using just two needles (and therefore three electrical wires). The letters of the alphabet were identified by counting the number of deflections of the needle, rather than the single deflection method of the five-needle instruments. This was the equipment that achieved fame by warning of murderer seen leaving Slough in 1845, leading to his arrest at Paddington. It is worth noting that the two needles were marked for Up Trains and Down Trains, suggesting their later use for signalling purposes.

Operating the two-needle telegraph

Letters of the alphabet were identified by multiple strokes of the needle, but it is not clear as to whether the two circuits were used independently for "Down" and "Up" messages, or whether the separate needles were used for sending and receiving messages.

Single-needle telegraphs mainly used by British railways "Items of the collection of Fons Vanden Berghen, Halle, Belgium".

Another improvement was the one-needle telegraph of 1845. The principle of this apparatus was not new, Steinheil had already proposed it in 1837. The needle stroke against small metal pipes that emitted sounds in different pitches. That "two tone melody" represented a code of the telegram. On the single-needle instruments, the Cooke & Wheatstone and other complex codes were abandoned and instead messages were sent morse code. The needles no longer required to be observed visually to be read - metal sounders were provided so that deflections could be identified by ear as a "ting" and a "tong". These sounders were, in fact, often enhanced by signalmen by the placing of a tobacco tin tightly on the sounders, producing a sharp "click" and "clack".

William Fothergill Cooke

A quarrel between Cooke and Wheatstone over credit for the invention was settled amicably in 1841 but flared again a few years later. Wheatstone is generally considered the more important of the two in the history of the telegraph, but Cooke contributed a superior business ability. Their most important invention, an electric telegraph using only one magnetic needle instead of several, was recognized by patent in 1845. Cooke was knighted in 1869 and granted a civil-list pension in 1871 for his services to telegraphy. Tragically he had by then developed financial problems and, although he had once earned a fortune, he died on June 25, 1879, Surrey, England, almost penniless.

This text has been compiled from the biographies of Cooke available in the Internet:
( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 )