Ampere developed the idea of Laplace into a definite plan, and in
1830 or thereabout Ritchie, in London, and Baron Schilling, in St.
Petersburg, exhibited experimental models. In 1833 and afterwards
Professors Gauss and Weber installed a private telegraph between
the observatory and the physical cabinet of the University of
Gottingen. Moreover, in 1836 William Fothergill Cooke, a retired
surgeon of the Madras army, attending lectures on anatomy at the
University of Heidelberg, saw an experimental telegraph of
Professor Moncke, which turned all his thoughts to the subject. On
returning to London he made the acquaintance of Professor
Wheatstone, of King's College, who was also experimenting in this
direction, and in 1836 they took out a patent for a needle
telegraph. It was tried successfully between the Euston terminus
and the Camden Town station of the London and North-Western
Railway on the evening of July 25th, 1837, in presence of Mr.
Robert Stephenson, and other eminent engineers. Wheatstone,
sitting in a small room near the booking-office at Euston, sent
the first message to Cooke at Camden Town, who at once replied.
"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 without cavil or dispute."
The importance of the telegraph in working railways was manifest,
and yet the directors of the company were so purblind as to order
the removal of the apparatus, and it was not until two years later
that the Great Western Railway Company adopted it on their line
from Paddington to West Drayton, and subsequently to Slough. This
was the first telegraph for public use, not merely in England, but
the world. The charge for a message was only a shilling,
nevertheless few persons availed themselves of the new invention,
and it was not until its fame was spread abroad by the clever
capture of a murderer named Tawell that it began to prosper.
Tawell had killed a woman at Slough, and on leaving his victim
took the train for Paddington. The police, apprised of the murder,
telegraphed a description of him to London. The original "five
needle instrument," now in the museum of the Post Office, had a
dial in the shape of a diamond, on which were marked the letters
of the alphabet, and each letter of a word was pointed out by the
movements of a pair of needles. The dial had no letter "q," and as
the man was described as a quaker the word was sent "kwaker." When
the tram arrived at Paddington he was shadowed by detectives, and
to his utter astonishment was quietly arrested in a tavern near
Cannon Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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