HISTORY .; 
83 
apparatus before a meeting of German naturalists at Bonn, in 
the section of physics presided over by Professor George 
Wilhelm Muncke of the University of Heidelberg. This 
gentleman was so pleased with the apparatus that he had one 
made like it to show to his classes ; and this apparatus is still 
preserved in the physical cabinet of the University of 
Heidelberg. 
We shall now show how this telegraph, after having been 
imitated by Weber of Goettingen, was brought to London. It 
may excite some surprise to meet with the name of Lord Byron 
in connection with this, but there is a verse in his works 
which mentions the name of John William Bizzo Hoppner, 
who was the intimate friend of William Fothergill Cooke, the 
introducer of the telegraph into England. 
During his stay at Heidelberg, which began in 1835, Cooke 
gave no thought to telegraphs or to the application of electri¬ 
city to telegraphy. He was the son of Dr. William Cooke, 
professor of medicine at Durham, and he was staying at 
Heidelberg to learn how to make anatomical models in wax. 
At the beginning of March, 1836, his friend Hoppner, who 
was a student at the University of Heidelberg, told him that 
the professor of physics had in his cabinet an electrical 
apparatus by which signals could be transmitted from one 
room to another. This professor was no other than Schilling’s 
friend, Georg Wilhelm Muncke, who had connected his private 
residence with his lecture-room by suspended wires. It was 
on the 26th of March, 1836, that Hoppner took his friend 
Cooke to one of Professsor Muncke’s lectures. 
When Cooke had seen the apparatus and learned that it 
could be worked at great distances, it occurred to him that 
such a method of correspondence would be of great utility in 
England, especially in the railway tunnels which were then 
daily extending. He immediately resolved to abandon his 
anatomical studies at Heidelberg, and return to England to 
prosecute schemes for establishing electric telegraphs. 
Cooke, who had never given much attention to general 
physics or even to electricity, did not become acquainted with 
Professor Muncke, whom he calls Moncke in his writings. 
He had no idea that the telegraph he saw had been invented 
by Schilling, and that the apparatus was made after the pattern 
