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Summary

On 12 June 1837 William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone received a patent numbered 7390 for the world's first electric telegraph communications system. The system consisted of what came to be be referred to as a "finger key" for controlling a digital "make" and "break" electrical circuit which transmitted a electrical signal by electric current along wire to a point at the end of the transmission line. Here four needles mounted in to a central panel each on a pivot point would move left or right depending on the signal response produced by the "finger key" operator at the each of the four signal's origin points. This all came to be activated on the 4-needle signal reception end by the use of electromagnetic coils to recreate the "make" and "break" action from the original signal action created at the signal source point, which in this Cooke and Wheatstone system application utilized four separate "finger keys."

On 25 July 1837 the first message under this patent was sent on a line Cooke and Wheatstone engineered and which Wm. F. Cooke orchestrated the construction of that ran between London's Euston Station to Camden Town, London. A four-needle telegraph system was installed by Cooke's "mechanicians" on this section of railroad line connecting the two points, that was part of a larger rail line being constructed by Robert Stephenson between London and Birmingham. A system was needed to signal to an engine house at Camden Town to start hauling the carriages back up the incline to the waiting locomotive. A needle movement to the left could indicate "PASS", while movement to the right could indicate "STOP" to signal railway car movement.

As at Liverpool, the electric telegraph was in the end rejected in favor of a pneumatic system with whistles. Eventually the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph signaling system would become further developed and started to gain increased interest with further trial demonstrations before the public.

After several different trial demonstrations of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph signal system through-out England between July 1837 and on July 1840, the system would evolve into its more sophisticated form. Letters of the alphabet and numerals were added to the system by 1840 and the "ABC" dial telegraph was born. Initial development drawings for these improvement appeared first in the pages of Wm. F. Cooke's telegraph builder's journal. It was the first week of July in 1840, on the 4th of July, that the Cooke and Wheatstone 5-needle telegraph installation went into operation at the inauguration of the London and Blackwall Railway system engineered and constructed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great English civil engineer who had previously designed and constructed bridges and underwater tunnels.

With the Cooke and Wheatstone system put into daily public use by Brunel's railway service operation, the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph became the first working perfected commercial digital electric telegraph communications system in the world. The system pre-empted the still experimental telegraph demonstrated before the U. S. Congress by Alfred Vail and Samuel F. B. Morse on 24 May 1844 just a few months shy of four years later.

But this 1844 experimental telegraph demonstration, which Morse used to finally get $30,000 in federal funding to further develop his telegraph system for commercial use, would not have been possible had Morse not met Charles Wheatstone at Prof. Wheatstone's King's College London office in 1838. It was from Wheatstone where Morse had learned first of the use of a electric coil would with fine wire to 'step-up' the current for long distant electrical transmission through wire. Joseph Henry, the inventor of the electric coil and action of the electromagnet as early as 1829 was not in communication with Morse, but had told Wheatstone of this action when Henry visited Wheatstone in London the year before Morse did.

But equally or more importantly for Morse's success, was the concept of the telegraph "finger key" that was primary to the telegraph system Morse demonstrated before Congress in 1844. Cooke had devised the "finger key" with Wheatstone's approval and the earliest drawing of this exists in Wm. F. Cooke's electric telegraph journal of 1836 - 1842, as is shown hereof. It is found on one for the first pages of drawings found in the journal and predates later designs that came to be part of the Cooke and Wheatstone system.

It is the Cooke journal brought to America by the former Wm. F. Cooke machinist Frederick A. Kerby (or Kirby) sometime in 1842, where living briefly in New York City he appears to have shown the journal to Samuel F. B. Morse at the New York University. Kerby's 1894 New York Times obituary nor in the publication The Electrician - referred to Kerby's past association as being with that of Samuel F. B. Morse - all with virtually no mention of Wm. F. Cooke and or Charles Wheatstone. This was the case, even though Kerby had been Wm. F. Cooke's key witness in the famous 1840-1841 Cooke and Wheatstone arbitration hearing - which Cooke came to finally attain full recognition for his work on the telegraph Up until that time Charles Wheatstone seemed to receive the only public recognition In the New York Times and The Electrician obituary of 17 October 1894, it was stated: "F.A. Kirby, an electrician, at one time associated with Prof. Morse, died suddenly from heart disease yesterday morning at his home in Sayville, L.I."

It was two years after Frederick A. Kerby had arrived in the United States with Wm. F. Cooke's journal in hand, that Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrated for the first time the "Vail Lever Correspondent" telegraph key before the Congress of the United States. The Wm. F. Cooke telegraph journal was later taken to London, Ontario Canada - where Kerby would live with his wife and start a family and reside there for over 25 years before coming back to America with Cooke's journal still in hand.. it is interesting to note that Frederick A. Kerby was in ongoing possession of Cooke's telegraph journal after it had been used by Kerby on Cooke's behalf during Kerby's involvement as the primary machinist for Cooke and the key witness in the Cooke and Wheatstone legal arbitration case of 1840-1841.

Shown above left to right is first the full page in Wm. F. Cooke's telegraph builder's journal where his earliest design for a telegraph "finger key" is drawn, a close-up detail of said drawing - and also shown is a modern facsimile model of the 1844 Vail Lever Correspondent telegraph key - which shows identical design features as that of the earlier 1837 patented Cooke and Wheatstone "finger key" configuration as devised by Cooke. Even the metal lever arm tension spring is copied from Cooke's "finger key" configuration by Vail in his key that was used in 1844 Washington D.C. to Baltimore trial demonstration for the U.S. Congress. The difference between the two is that Cooke employed a "open circuit" design and Morse employed a "closed circuit" or "closing circuit" design - the latter a slight configuration change which enabled Morse to finally obtain approval in 1849 for a U.S. patent he applied for in 1844. The Cooke and Wheatstone patent of 1837 however predated Morse's patent award by 12 years.