Page:Hamel Telegraph history England 1859.pdf/99

 constructing, one mile and a quarter in length, from Euston Square to Camden Town. This was the first instance of out-door telegraphing in England with a galvanic apparatus.” “Mr. Cooke had been permitted, at the Euston Square terminus, in a large building (the carriage house), to suspend many miles of wire, along which the current was made to pass, besides the wires in the open air to Camden Town.”—(Pp. 55.)

These facts and dates together will, perhaps, indicate to what countries, and in what relative proportions the realization of the galvano-electric telegraph is really due. In Cooke’s second volume, p. 119, the question of invention is thus viewed:—“If the electric telegraph were to be described generally in a few words, how would you describe it? Might it not be called an application of a few known principles, by means of a few simple contrivances to produce a practical result, which the experiments of scientific men, though their attention had been directed to the subject for a long series of years, had failed to produce?”