WHO " INVENTED " THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH?* TELE first requisite

to a sound decision of any question is that its terms be well defined. In order to decide who " invented " the Electric Telegraph, we must set out with something like a distinct

* The Electric Telegraph : Was it Invented by Professor Wheatstone. By William Fothergill Cooke, reg. 1865. Third Thousand.

notion of what we mean by its "invention." All whose concern

with patents has ever made them acquainted with the claims of rival "inventors," know that the name of that genus irritabile is legion. When we attempt to trace back to their historical origin such inventions as the steam-engine, steam navigation, steam railway locomotion, or photography, or electric telegraphy, we find it, in each instance, difficult or impossible to assign to any

one man exclusive paternity of the original idea of any one of those inventions, or even undisputed priority in putting the prin- ciples involved in them to the test of practical experiment and actual application. It will in general be found that the acquired know- ledge and felt wants of each age suggest similar efforts in each field of invention to many men at one time. Hence the number of

bond fide competitors for the palm of invention in every applica- tion of scientific principles to practical use, and hence the difficulty of assigning that palm without having laid down plainly before-

hand upon what positive grounds and for what precise achieve- ments we mean to assign it. For example, if we had to decide the question,—who was the inventor of photography ?—we are referred back to the production of sun-pictures, long before Daguerre or Talbot. We find Thomas Wedgwood producing such pictures on paper by aid of a preparation of nitrate of silver

so far back as the year 1790, only he could not fix them ; and the subsequent experiments of Davy equally failed to do so. Or if

we seek the traces of the original invention of steam locomotion, perhaps we must go back to find them to a luckless French pro- jector, Solomon de Caus, in the seventeenth century, who got shut up in the Bicdtre for pestering Cardinal de Richelieu with his premature discovery that by the power of steam it was possible to navigate ships and drive carriages. We should certainly at least have to go back to Cugnot and Symington, in the following century, who produced working models of locomotive engines in France and in Scotland. We should have to go back, at all events,

to Trevethick and Blenkinsop, who early in the present century actually put locomotives down on railways, and made them keep

moving and carry coals. Why are the names of these pioneers of railway locomotion consigned to the background of the history of applied mechanical science, and why does George Stephenson's ulti- mate practical embodiment of the previous results of the inventive faculty of other men, who had probably more of that faculty than himself, bear off all the honours of the invention of steam locomo- tion from all his precursors and all his competitors in that long laboured field ? Simply because George Stephenson was the first to work out the problem of steam locomotion to successful prac- tical purpose, and raise it from a toy or hobby to a thing of use. It was in the power of persevering development and practical adaptation that he excelled all his clever precursors and competi- tors; and it was the accomplished result, not the original con- ception of that result as attainable, nor even the exhibition of the first specimens of its partial attainment, which identified his name for all future time with the honour of that invention.

Five and twenty years back, the question was referred by Messrs.

Cooke and Wheatstone to the arbitration of the late Sir Isambard Brunel and Professor Daniell—in what proportions was to be

attributed to each of them, the merit of the invention of thern Electric Telegraph, of which they were joint patentees in this country. The gentlemen referred to gave a well weighed award,

which both the parties professed to consider satisfactory, and which concluded as follows :—

" Whilst Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the Electric Telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a work of national importance, and Professor Wheatstone is ac- knowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful re- searches had already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application, it is to the united labours of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance, that we must attri- bute tho rapid progress which this important invention has made during the five years since they have been associated."

In subsequent years the rapidly realized success and recognized value of the invention gave rise to recurring eruptions of the controversy, which the arbitration above cited had been benevo- lently intended to set at rest.

As Professor Wheatstone has naturally had all the advantage on his side of that controversy which could be derived from scientific

sympathies (that we may not say camaraderies), at home and abroad, and as to have been previously known in the world of

science no less naturally drew after it the prevalent disposition in scientific circles to ascribe to him the lion's share of merit in any joint achievement wherein science was concerned, Mr. Cooke is the

party who has felt aggrieved by the monopoly of honours for the in- vention of the Electric Telegraph persistently claimed by, and fre- quently taken for granted as exclusively due to, his late scientific col-

league. We confess the merits of the case seem to us to lie in a nut- shell, as soon as it is stated with the precision indispensable in all such cases. We should be disposed to follow the eminent electrician, Mr. Varley, who lately addressed a letter to our weekly contemporary the Reader on the subject, in substituting for the question,—who invented the Electric Telegraph? the question,—who introduced it as applicable to practical use? Assuredly neither Professor Wheat- stone nor Mr. Cooke can lay claim to the honoura of the original invention of electric telegraphy. We may borrow, as the most concise we have met with, Mr. Varley's enumeration of their scientific precursors :—

" As each property of Electricity became known, its velocity being popularly considered instantaneous, it immediately suggested the idea of its application for rapid communication to a distance. Telegraphs were actually made and worked from one room to another, by means of static electricity, as far back as the last century, but the first person who proposed a telegraph worked by the voltaic battery, and who realized it, was Simmering. On the 6th of August 1809, he constructed a telegraph, and exhibited it working through 2,000 feet of wire. This telegraph depended upon the decomposition of water by voltaic electri- city. In the year 1802 Romagnosi discovered (and published the fact in Paris in 1804) that when a magnetized needle is submitted to the action of a galvanic current it is deflected. In 1819 Oersted drew more particular attention to this fact, and from it resulted the galvano- meter and the electro-magnet. It was Robert Norman, of the sixteenth century, to whom we owe the dipping needle, which gave rise to the vertical galvanometer or needle telegraph. The needle telegraph was the one first used in this country practically. Electric telegraphs of different forms were proposed or invented by many. There were Alexander, Steinheil, Davy, and several others, all obtaining com- munication in different ways by means of voltaic electricity. Baron Schelling seems to have been the first to have constructed a sub- marine telegraph under the River Neva, at St. Petersburg. It was he who constructed the first electro-magnetic telegraph, and in 1830 the Emperor of Russia saw it at work at Schelling's resi- dence, when a distant mine was exploded by electricity before the Emperor. The same year &belling started on a journey to China, and took his telegraph with him. He says he found it of great service, as it procured him introductions, and assisted him greatly in the object of his journey. To Sir William Watson is due the credit of having pointed out that the earth can be used to complete an electric circuit, and thus only one wire is necessary, instead of two. It will, therefore, be seen that telegraphs were not only constructed, exhibited, and worked at a very early date by scientific men, but that Scemmering had even proposed and exhibited his telegraph in 1809, which he described could be worked by night, as well as by day.' In a word, the inventors of the electric telegraph are legion."

One more inventor, before themselves, of electric tele- graphy has received due honour from Messrs. Cooke and Wheat- stone, and has received some passing notice in our own columns— Mr. Ronalds. "In 1823," says Mr. Cooke, in the preface to the first edition of the pamphlet now before us, "Mr. Francis Ronalds, a gentleman well known in the scientific world, published his Descriptions of an Electric Telegraph, and of some Other Electrical Apparatus, a work of originality and merit, although, as Mr. Ronalds proposed to work by frictional electricity, through a wire enclosed in a glass tube, his telegraph was not adapted for prac- tical use."

In 1836 Mr. Cooke, then a young man pursuing anatomical studies at Heidelberg, saw there for the first time a telegraph model at work—that of Baron Schelling—and foreseeing at once the great advantage that would result from its practical applica- tion in the then infant railway system of this country, set himself strenuously to put that idea into working shape. "So diligently," says Mr. Varley, "did he pursue this object, that within twelve months he had invented a telegraph suited for practical use."

"It was Mr. Cooke who first applied the attraction produced by voltaic electricity to the descent of a clock train, to control its motion or to ring a bell—an important step in practical telegraphy ; and ho at once entered into negotiations with the then Leeds and Manchester Railway for the construction of a telegraph on their line. After this he found many difficulties in his way the moment he had to telegraph through long distances, and immediately applied to the fountain-head for information, viz., to Professor Faraday. He was subsequently advised by Dr. Beget to consult Professor Wheatstone, who had then in his possession at King's College a considerable length of insulated wire ready for experimental purposes. In 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone took out their first patent ; and the Electric Telegraph shortly afterwards, thanks to Mr. Cooke's enthusiasm and energy, took root and spread over the length and breadth of the land."

The whole matter of controversy between Mr. Cooke, the practical projector, and Professor Wheatstone, the scientific coadjutor, in the great work of the introduction of the Electric Telegraph into Europe, appears to us, as we have already said, to lie in a nutshell. There can be no doubt at all of the direct and important bearing on that achievement of Professor Wheatstone's previous electrical experiments and discoveries. Indeed, there could have been no other motive why Mr. Cooke should have sought association with Professor Wheatstone in pursuing his own efforts for practical application to actual use of the scientific principles and results with which he had first

become acquainted at a German university, and the experi- mental application of which had been already anticipated more than forty years back by Mr. Ronalds, one of those lucklese pioneers of great inventions who so seldom persevere or succeed so as to reap their fruits. That the controversy still appears to remain unsettled seems to us to arise less from any distinctly stated dispute of facts, than from some want of distinctness in estimating the weight to be attached to facts undisputed. From the very fact that the two first patentees of electric telegraphy in England, Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone (we place the names in the same order aa they stand in the patent), found occasion to associate themselves together to carry out the invention, it appears to us out of the 'question that either of them should assert a just claim to its sole merit. Professor Wheat- stone must have been qualified to bring to bear upon it scientific principles and experiments which Mr. Cooke could not supply single-handed, or the latter had no conceivable motive for seeking him as a partner in his undertaking. On the other hand, that undertaking must already have assumed a substantive shape, and must have presented itself with "a provoking probability of suc- cess," as Sir Anthony Absolute says, or Professor Wheatstone- would have had just as little motive for partnership with Mr. Cooke. We must suppose Professor Wheatstone's skilled scien- tific co-operation to have been highly important to the speedy successful carrying out of the practical enterprise first started in that shape by Mr. Cooke, but we cannot suppose the " ener- gic nature and shaping mind" of the latter to have had less of motive force in the detailed conduct of the enterprise, than they undoubtedly had in the first determined pursuit of it as a prac- tical enterprise at all. "Many philosophers," says Mr. Varley, with truth, "have invented electric telegraphs; many had foreseen. their great use ; but the one man of indomitable energy, perse- verance, and foresight, who took the matter up, and forced the public into its recognition, is undoubtedly William Fothergill Cooke."