William Fothergill Cooke
William Fothergill Cooke | |
---|---|
Born | 4 May 1806 Ealing, England |
Died | 25 June 1879 Farnham, England | (aged 73)
Known for | Electrical telegraph |
Awards | Albert Medal (1867) |
Sir William Fothergill Cooke (4 May 1806 – 25 June 1879) was an English inventor. He was, with
Life
He was born at
After five years' service in India Cooke returned home; then studied medicine in Paris, and at
Early in 1837 Cooke returned to England, with introductions to
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
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.[2]
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 was formed in conjunction with Cooke, the company paying £120,000 for Cooke and Wheatstone's earlier patents.[3]
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 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.[3]
A
In May 1994, British Rail Telecommunications named locomotive 20075 Sir William Cooke.[4]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c Burnley 1887, p. 102.
- ^ a b Burnley 1887, pp. 102–103.
- ^ a b c Burnley 1887, p. 103.
- ^ North Yorkshire out for BRT Class 20s Rail issue 227 25 May 1994 page 9
References
- Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Burnley, James (1887). "Cooke, William Fothergill". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 102–103.
Further reading
- Burnley, James; Bowers, Brian (reviewer) (January 2011) [2004]. "Cooke, Sir William Fothergill (1806–1879)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6192. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Cooke, William Fothergill (1895). Extracts from the Private Letters of the Late Sir William Fothergill Cooke, 1836 – 39. London: E. and F. N. Spon.
External links
- Munro, John. "Heroes of The Telegraph".- See Appendix, Chapter III
- Biography of Sir William Fothergill Cooke
- Biography from the Institution of Engineering and Technology
- Texts on Wikisource: