William Fothergill Cooke

Sir William Fothergill Cooke ( born May 4, 1806 Ealing, England; † June 25 1879 in Farnham, Surrey, England ) was an English inventor who worked on the development of the electric telegraph, together with Charles Wheatstone.

Life

His father, William Cooke († 1857) was since 1833 Lector of medicine at the University of Durham. William Fothergill Cooke himself was in the years 1826-1831 in the army in India. Then he made for his father anatomical specimens in wax. In 1833 he heard in Paris four anatomical lectures. In 1835 he accompanied the parents on a trip to Switzerland. In Heidelberg, Friedrich Tiedemann promised to help him. On his return he was again in November in Heidelberg and stayed at the Plöckstraße in the brewery to the new Essighaus. He had four boxes made ​​fully wax models. Beginning in March 1836 told him John William Rizzo Hoppner by Georg Wilhelm Munkes (which he later called Möncke ) lecture on Paul Ludwig Schilling of Cannstatt telegraph.

After Cooke on March 6, 1836 witnessed a demonstration for transmitting messages by wire, he came up with the idea that such a thing could be useful in the railway tunnels. He let in Heidelberg and Frankfurt make such an apparatus with three needles and traveled to the April 22, 1836 back to London. Twice he visited Faraday and struck a signalman for the tunnel at Liverpool before, but this did not materialize. On the advice of Peter Mark Roget he turned on February 27, 1837 Charles Wheatstone. Both decided to set up in England telegraph lines.

Their first patent in 1837, was impractical for reasons of cost. On July 25, 1837 ( about two weeks ago Schillings death), they demonstrated their needle telegraph with five needles, as they used a telegraph line along the railway line from Euston to Camden Town for a message to be transmitted successfully and receive a message.

On November 19, 1837 entered into a Company - Contract and on 12 December they filed a patent for their improvement with vertical placement of the needles one.

In 1845 they patented the 1- needle telegraph. 1845/46 he founded with the businessman and Chairman of the North Staffordshire Railway John Lewis Ricardo, the Electric Telegraph Company, of which he became director.

On November 11, 1869, he was appointed Sir.

Cooke should have had the good business sense of the two partners, while Wheatstone greater importance is attributed in the history of the telegraph.

Cooke died penniless and was last until his death in an annual pension of 100 pounds.