. Bulletin. Science. believing it to be a reproduction of Gauss' telegraph, and returned to England in April with the intention of transforming his model from a piece of lecture dem- onstration apparatus into a commercial instrument. After spending the summer of 1836 working on the needle telegraph, as well as on an unsuccessful syn- chronous telegraph discussed below, Cooke interested the Liverpool and Manchester railroad in trying his needle telegraph for communications through a rail- road tunnel at Liverpool. However, Cooke soon dis- covered that his instrument, while it would work in the
. Bulletin. Science. believing it to be a reproduction of Gauss' telegraph, and returned to England in April with the intention of transforming his model from a piece of lecture dem- onstration apparatus into a commercial instrument. After spending the summer of 1836 working on the needle telegraph, as well as on an unsuccessful syn- chronous telegraph discussed below, Cooke interested the Liverpool and Manchester railroad in trying his needle telegraph for communications through a rail- road tunnel at Liverpool. However, Cooke soon dis- covered that his instrument, while it would work in the space of a laboratory, would not work over a mile- long line. Since Cooke was neither a professional scientist nor an instrument-maker, he sought technical as- sistance from several prominent men, including Michael Faraday. Finally, in February 1837, he met Charles Wheatstone,'^ who was professor of experimental physics at King's College, London. Several years previous to the time Cooke met him, Wheatstone, with the ultimate intention of devising an electrical telegraph, had been investigating the distant transmission of electrical forces. In 1834 Wheatstone had been successful in sending signals through a reel of wire several miles long and was con- vinced that this newly discovered physical force was capable of being used for communication. In June 1836 Wheatstone had proposed a needle telegraph, the essential part of which used what he called a "permu- tating keyboard" that could send 30 different signals over six wires. However, Wheatstone had run into the same difficulty as Cooke had—that of transmitting signals over a long line—and the two men decided to tackle their problems together. Wheatstone and Cooke added to their system a sensitive relay that needed to move only jio inch in order to actuate an alarm, but the main problem of transmitting signals to a distance remained unsolved. During a trip to Europe in 1837 Joseph Henry had visited a number of labor
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Keywords: ., bookauthorunitedstatesdepto, bookcentury1900, booksubjectscience
