Sir William Fothergill Cooke (4 May 1806 – 25 June 1879) was an English inventor. He was, with
Charles Wheatstone
Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE DCL LLD (6 February 1802 – 19 October 1875), was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope (a device for di ...
, the co-inventor of the
Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph, which was patented in May 1837. Together with
John Ricardo he founded the
Electric Telegraph Company
The Electric Telegraph Company (ETC) was a British telegraph company founded in 1846 by William Fothergill Cooke and John Ricardo. It was the world's first public telegraph company. The equipment used was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, ...
, the world's first public telegraph company, in 1846. He was knighted in 1869.
Life
He was born at
Ealing
Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan.
Ealing was histor ...
,
Middlesex
Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...
; his father, William Cooke, was a surgeon there, and later was appointed professor of anatomy at the
University of Durham
Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...
. He was educated at
Durham School
Durham School is an independent boarding and day school in the English public school tradition located in Durham, North East England and was an all-boys institution until 1985, when girls were admitted to the sixth form. The school takes pupils ...
and at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
, and at the age of 20 entered the
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...
.
After five years' service in India Cooke returned home; then studied medicine in Paris, and at
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
under
Georg Wilhelm Munke. In 1836 he saw electric telegraphy, then only experimental: Munke had illustrated his lectures with a telegraphic apparatus on the principle introduced by
Pavel Schilling
Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786–1837), also known as Paul Schilling, was a Russian military officer and diplomat of Baltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Aff ...
in 1835. Cooke decided to put the invention into practical operation with the railway systems; and gave up medicine.
Early in 1837 Cooke returned to England, with introductions to
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
and
Peter Mark Roget
Peter Mark Roget ( ; 18 January 1779 – 12 September 1869) was a British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer and founding secretary of The Portico Library. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the '' Thesaurus of English Words ...
. Through them he was introduced to Charles Wheatstone, who in 1834 gave the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
an account of experiments on the velocity of electricity. Cooke had already constructed a system of telegraphing with three needles on Schilling's principle, and made designs for a mechanical alarm. He had also made some progress in negotiating with the
Liverpool & Manchester Railway
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively ...
for the use of his telegraphs. Cooke and Wheatstone went into partnership in May 1837; Cooke handled the business side.
Wheatstone and Cooke's first patent was taken out within a month and was "for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through electric circuits". Cooke now tested the invention, with the
London & Blackwall Railway
Originally called the Commercial Railway, the London and Blackwall Railway (L&BR) in east London, England, ran from Minories to Blackwall via Stepney, with a branch line to the Isle of Dogs, connecting central London to many of London's docks. ...
, the
London & Birmingham Railway, and the
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...
companies, successively allowing the use of their lines for the experiment. A five needle model of telegraph was given up as too expensive. In 1838 an improvement reduced the number of needles to two, and a patent for this was taken out by Cooke and Wheatstone.
Before a parliamentary committee on railways in 1840, Wheatstone stated that he had, with Cooke, obtained a new patent for a telegraphic arrangement; the new apparatus required only a single pair of wires. But the telegraph was still too costly for general purposes. In 1845, however, Cooke and Wheatstone succeeded in producing the single needle apparatus, which they patented, and from that time the electric telegraph became a practical instrument, soon adopted on all the railway lines of the country.
In the meantime a priority dispute arose between Cooke and Wheatstone. An arrangement was come to in 1843 by which several patents were assigned to Cooke, with the reservation of a mileage royalty to Wheatstone; and in 1846 the
Electric Telegraph Company
The Electric Telegraph Company (ETC) was a British telegraph company founded in 1846 by William Fothergill Cooke and John Ricardo. It was the world's first public telegraph company. The equipment used was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, ...
was formed in conjunction with Cooke, the company paying £120,000 for Cooke and Wheatstone's earlier patents.
Cooke later tried to obtain an extension of the original patents, but the judicial committee of the Privy Council decided that Cooke and Wheatstone had been sufficiently remunerated. The
Albert Medal of the
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
was awarded on equal terms to Cooke and Wheatstone in 1867; and two years later Cooke was knighted, Wheatstone having had the same honour conferred upon him the year before.
A
civil list pension
Pensions in the United Kingdom, whereby United Kingdom tax payers have some of their wages deducted to save for retirement, can be categorised into three major divisions - state, occupational and personal pensions.
The state pension is based on ...
was granted to Cooke in 1871. He died on 25 June 1879.
In May 1994,
British Rail Telecommunications
British Rail Telecommunications was created in 1992 by British Rail (BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper cable which connected every major city and town in th ...
named locomotive
20075 ''Sir William Cooke''.
[North Yorkshire out for BRT Class 20s '']Rail
Rail or rails may refer to:
Rail transport
*Rail transport and related matters
*Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway
Arts and media Film
* ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini
* ''Rail'' ( ...
'' issue 227 25 May 1994 page 9
See also
*
Samuel Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...
Notes
References
;Attribution
*
Further reading
*
*
External links
* - See Appendix, Chapter III
Biography of Sir William Fothergill CookeBiography from the Institution of Engineering and Technology*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooke, William Fothergill
1806 births
1879 deaths
19th-century British inventors
People from Ealing
Telegraph engineers and inventors