Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/71

69 1848, two short lines in Ireland and in England were made, but 1844, one of considerable length, all the way from London to Portsmouth, was done for Government. Some tunnels were also furnished with telegraphs.

On the 3rd of June, 1844, His Majesty the Emperor Nicholas—being on his way to Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor—saw, at the Paddington station, the working of the telegraph on the line between London and Slough.

The telegraph on this line served, on the 1st of January, 1846, to apprehend the murderer Tawell, who had come from London to Slough purposely to poison Sarah Hart, and had immediately after returned by the railway train to the capital. This circumstance brought the telegraph at once, all over Great Britain, into great repute and demand.

In the autumn of that year, the Electric Telegraph Company in London was begun to be established.

Mr. Cooke and Professor Wheatstone well deserve thanks for having given the example in applying the electric telegraph to practical use for society at large. I allow myself here to state my feelings of regret, that Baron Schilling did not live to get informed of this application; he died just before it began to take place.