Sir William Fothergill Cooke was born on May 4, 1806, and died on June 25, 1879. He was an English inventor who, along with Charles Wheatstone, co-invented the Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph. This invention received a patent in May 1837. In 1846, Cooke and John Ricardo started the Electric Telegraph Company, which became the first public telegraph company in the world. In 1869, he was given a knighthood.

Life

William Cooke was born in Ealing, Middlesex. His father, William Cooke, was a surgeon in that area and later became a professor of anatomy at the University of Durham. William studied at Durham School and the University of Edinburgh. At age 20, he joined the Indian Army.

After five years in India, Cooke returned to England. He then studied medicine in Paris and at the University of Heidelberg under Georg Wilhelm Munke. In 1836, Cooke saw electric telegraphy, which was still an experiment. Munke used a telegraphic machine based on a design by Pavel Schilling from 1835. Cooke decided to use this idea to create a working telegraph for railways and left medicine.

In early 1837, Cooke returned to England and met Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. They introduced him to Charles Wheatstone, who had studied electricity in 1834. Cooke had already built a telegraph system with three needles based on Schilling’s design and made plans for a mechanical alarm. He also worked to use his telegraph on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Cooke and Wheatstone became business partners in May 1837. Cooke managed the business side.

Their first patent, taken out in 1837, described a way to send signals and sound alarms using electric currents. Cooke tested his invention with the London & Blackwall Railway, the London & Birmingham Railway, and the Great Western Railway. A five-needle model was too expensive, so in 1838, Cooke and Wheatstone improved the design to use only two needles and patented it.

In 1840, Wheatstone told a parliamentary committee that he and Cooke had patented a new telegraph that used only one pair of wires. However, the telegraph was still too costly. In 1845, Cooke and Wheatstone created a single-needle telegraph and patented it. From that time, the electric telegraph became practical and was used on railway lines across the country.

A disagreement about who had the right to the invention arose between Cooke and Wheatstone. In 1843, they agreed that Cooke would own some patents, but Wheatstone would receive payment for each mile of railway using the telegraph. In 1846, the Electric Telegraph Company was formed with Cooke, paying £120,000 for earlier patents.

Later, Cooke tried to extend his patents, but a court decided he and Wheatstone had already been fairly paid. In 1867, Cooke and Wheatstone were both awarded the Albert Medal by the Royal Society of Arts. Two years later, Cooke was knighted, and Wheatstone had been knighted the year before.

In 1871, Cooke received a civil list pension. He died on June 25, 1879.

In May 1994, British Rail Telecommunications named locomotive 20075 Sir William Cooke.