Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/52

50 the 6th of March, 1836, to Professor Muncke's lecture room.

When Mr. Cooke saw the telegraphing, and was told that the instrument could work through great distances, the idea struck him that such a thing might be useful in England, particularly in tunnels along the railroads, which were at that time spreading more and more, and he determined to give up at once his anatomical occupation at Heidelberg, get such an apparatus as the Professor used made, and go to England, to endeavour to get such telegraphs there brought into use.

Mr. Cooke, who had never occupied himself with the study either of natural philosophy in general, or of electricity in particular, did not at all get further acquainted with Professor Möncke; he did not even acquire his name properly; he calls him Möncke. He had no idea that the apparatus he had seen had been contrived by Baron Schilling in Russia. He did subsequently suppose that Professor Möncke might have had the idea from Gauss, whom he calls Gaüss.

Let us see how Mr. Cooke himself, some years afterwards, in 1841, described what I have here, from my own investigation, detailed.