HISTORY. 
85 
believe, got his ideas from Gauss, I was so struck by the 
astonishing power of electricity, and so strongly impressed 
by the applications that might be raj.de of it to the telegraphic 
transmission of news, that from that period I completely 
abandoned my previous occupations and devoted myself with 
all my energies to the practical realization of an electric 
telegraph—a subject on which all my efforts have ever since 
been concentrated. Professor Moncke’s experiment was the 
only one on this subject that I had then seen or heard of.” 
Cooke tells that three weeks after he had witnessed Muncke’s 
experiments, he had constructed, partly at Heidelberg and 
partly at Frankfort, a similar apparatus, but with three needles, 
and capable of giving twenty-six signals. 
He returned to London on the 22nd of April, 1836, and he 
there devoted himself night and day to making a mechanical 
instrument set in motion by the attraction of an electro¬ 
magnet. This apparatus was in January, 1837, submitted to 
some of the Directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 
and Cooke made proposals to them for the adoption of his 
telegraph in the long tunnel between Edge-Hill and the Lime 
Street station, Liverpool. These proposals were however not 
accepted. 
After he had twice consulted Faraday, Cooke, on the advice 
of Dr. Roget, called, on the 27th of February, 1837, on Professor 
Charles Wheatstone at his house in Conduit Street, and again 
a short time afterwards he called at the professor’s rooms at 
King’s College. 
The result of these interviews was that in May, 1837, these 
gentlemen resolved to associate themselves together in an 
effort to introduce the use of the electric telegraph into 
England. 
At this time Wheatstone did not know that the electro¬ 
magnet could act at great distances, and Cooke having left 
behind him at Heidelberg the apparatus he had made there, 
constructed a new' one w r ith four needles. It was generally 
considered that the principle upon which Muncke’s apparatus 
was based was that which must be adopted for practical use. 
But neither Wheatstone nor Cooke was aware that in doing 
this they were adopting Schilling’s plan. 
A patent w T as granted to them, dated the 12th of June, 
