ives my hopes,
but I am far from sanguine. The scientific men know little or nothing
absolute on the subject: Wheatstone is the only man near the mark.'

It would appear that the current, reduced in strength by its passage
through a long wire, had failed to excite his electro-magnet, and he was
ignorant of the reason. Wheatstone by his knowledge of Ohm's law and
the electro-magnet was probably able to enlighten him. It is clear that
Cooke had made considerable progress with his inventions before he met
Wheatstone; he possessed a needle telegraph like Wheatstone, an alarm,
and a chronometric dial telegraph, which at all events are a proof that
he himself was an inventor, and that he doubtless bore a part in
the production of the Cooke and Wheatstone apparatus. Contrary to a
statement of Wheatstone, it appears from a letter of Cooke dated March
4, 1837, that Wheatstone 'handsomely acknowledged the advantage' of
Cooke's apparatus had it worked;' his (Wheatstone's) are ingenious, but
not practicable.' But these conflicting accounts are reconciled by
the fact that Cooke's electro-magnetic telegraph would not work, and
Wheatstone told him so, because he knew the magnet was not strong enough
when the current had to traverse a long circuit.

Wheatstone subsequently investigated the conditions necessary to obtain
electro-magnetic effects at a long distance. Had he studied the paper
of Professor Henry in SILLIMAN'S JOURNAL for January 1831, he would have
learned that in a long circuit the electro-magnet had to be wound with a
long and fine wire in order to be effective.

As the Cooke and Wheatstone apparatus became perfected, Cooke was busy
with schemes for its introduction. Their joint patent is dated June 12,
1837, and before the end of the month Cooke was introduced to Mr. Robert
Stephenson, and by his address and energy got leave to try the invention
from Euston to Camden Town along the line of the London and Birmingham
Railway. Cooke suspended some thirteen miles of copper, in a shed at the
Euston terminus, and exhibited his needle and his chronometric telegraph
in action to the directors one morning. But the official trial took
place as we have already described in the life of Wheatstone.

The telegraph was soon adopted on the Great Western Railway, and also
on the Blackwall Railway in 1841. Three years later it was tried on
a Government line from London to Portsmouth. In 1845, the Electric
Telegraph Company, the pioneer