THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 163, 19 April 1872, Page 3

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

The first telegrapb actually applied to the public use belongs entirely to Professor Wheatstone. In the instrument, first constructed and used under this patent, the signals were made with five needles, which; by their combined or separate movements, pointed to the letters of the alphabet engraved on the dial. Immediately on the taking out of the patent, the directors of the North Eastern railway sanctioned the laying down of wires between the ._ Huston square and Camden Town stations, a distance of about one mile and a half. The telegraph was afterwards adopted on the Great Western line; but in 1839 it was only carried as far as Slough, a distance of 18 miles ; and for several years, so little was the importance of the electric telegraph appreciated, that the public regarded it as a philosophical curiosity rather than as a thing of commercial value -This state of matters continued until 1845, and might have continued many years longer, bad not the arrest of Tawell the murderer,.through the ageucy of the Slough telegraph, strikingly proved its great utility Ths consequeuce was the speedy formation of a powerful company, which not only purchased the original patent of Messrs. Cook and Wheatstone, but also a variety of other patents which had been taken by these gentlemen, as well as by other individuals during the intervening period. I his company was incorporated by Act of Parliament in June, 1846, and rapidly extended its lines bver the country. Thus lay dormant for six. whole year's" the "greatest discovery of any age, a discovery which has during..the. ...lasJL twenty-six years gradually made itself felt throughput the globe..