The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH ELECTRIC
TELEGRAPH
CHAPTER XIII.
William Fothergill Cooke and the Telegraph-Moncke's Electrometer Experiments-The English Electric Telegraph invented-Invention of the
Alarum-The Mechanical Telegraph-The Escapement Apparatus-Mr.
Cooke's Efforts to put his Telegraph in Operation-The Second Mechanical
Telegraph-Wheatstone's Permutating Key-Board —Messrs. Cooke and
Wheatstone become associated-The Secondary Circuit invented-Mr. Cooke
improves his Original Telegraph-All the Improvements combined-Description of the Apparatuses-Improvements patented in 1838-Wheatstone's
Mechanical Telegraph-Further Improvements by Mr. Cooke.
WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE AND THE TELEGRAPH.
THE English Electric Telegraph, invented by William Fothergill Cooke, will be the subject of consideration in the present
chapter.
It is not nmy purpose to discuss the questionable claims of
others, in regard to their participation as auxiliaries in the
perfection of the above-mentioned telegraph. It is my purpose to give the facts with but little comment. The reader
can exercise his own judgment in the premises.
In the month of March, 1836, Mr. Cooke was engaged at
Heidelberg in the study of anatomy, in connection with the
interesting, and. by no means unprofitable profession of anatomical modelling; a self-taught pursuit, to which he had
been devoting himself with incessant and unabated ardor. On
the 6th of March, 1836, he witnessed an electro-telegraphic
experiment, exhibited by Professor [Moncke of Heidelberg, who
had, perhaps, taken his idea from Gaiiss. Mr. Cooke was so
much struck with the wonderful power of electricity, and so
strongly was he impressed with its applicability to the practical
transmission of telegraphic intelligence, that, on that very day,
he entirely abandoned his former pursuits, and devoted himself