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apparatus, to which he directed the attention of Faraday and of the then 

 Secretary of the Royal Society, Dr. Roget, by whom he was informed 

 that Wheatstone had been for some time engaged in analogous investi- 

 gations. An introduction followed, and shortly afterwards Wheatstone 

 entered into partnership with Mr. Cooke, and a patent for a five-needle 

 telegraph (which from the number of insulated conductors was deemed 

 too expensive for general use), and subsequently another patent for the 

 two-needle telegraph, the first that came into general use, were taken 

 out in their joint names. 



To Mr. (now Sir W. F.) Cooke much credit is undoubtedly due for 

 the tact and ability he evinced in directing public attention to the impor- 

 tance of the electric telegraph, and in conducting the joint enterprise to 

 a most successful commercial issue ; but to Wheatstone alone must be 

 ascribed the inventive genius and fertility of scientific resource which led 

 to the many successive developments of the electric telegraph — the letter- 

 showing dial telegraph in 1840, the type-printing telegraph in 1841, the 

 magneto-electric dial telegraph, a subsequent extension of the same to 

 type-embossing, and lastly the automatic telegraph, by which messages 

 are transmitted with such unprecedented rapidity. It must also be borne 

 in mind that the idea of subaqueous telegraphy was first developed by 

 Wheatstone. It appears from his manuscripts that in 1837 he devoted 

 a good deal of time and attention to this subject ; and in the Bulletin de 

 l'Academie Royale de Bruxelles for October 7, 1840, in a notice by Prof. 

 Quetelet of his telegraph instruments, it is remarked : — " On sera sans 

 doute charme d'apprendre que l'auteur a trouve le moyen de transmettre 

 les signaux entre l'Angleterre et la Belgique, malgre l'obstacle de la mer." 

 But it appears that his first practical essays at submarine telegraphy were 

 made in the autumn of 1844 in Swansea Bay, with the assistance of Mr. 

 J. D. Llewellyn. 



More recently the Society of Arts, in tendering precisely the same award 

 for public services to the two former partners, failed to discriminate be- 

 tween very successful commercial tact and ability, and both inventive and 

 constructive genius of an exceptionally high order ; under these circum- 

 stances it is not surprising that Wheatstone should have declined the 

 proffered distinction, considering that he could present no claim to that 

 commercial merit which it must be, from its title, the special function of 

 that Society to foster. But scientific honours were profusely bestowed 

 on the great physicist ; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1836, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1855, and a foreign 

 Associate of the Academy of Sciences of France in 1873 ; he moreover 

 possessed thirty-four distinctions or diplomas conferred upon him by 

 various governments, universities, and learned societies, of which eight 

 are German, six French, five English, three Swiss, two Scotch, two 

 Italian, two American, and of Irish, Belgian, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, 

 and Brazilian each one. In 1868 the Government of Lord Derby con- 



