A few days before this trial of the telegraph in London, Steinheil, of Munich, is said to have had one of his own invention at work there; and it is a difficult question to decide whether he or Cooke and Wheatstone were the first inventors. It is, however, a question of no consequence, as each worked independently. Since the first English electric telegraph was patented, there have been a thousand and one other contrivances of a similar kind taken out; but it may be doubted whether, for practical purposes, the original apparatus, with the improvements which its own inventors have made on it, is not still the best of them all.
From being used merely to carry railway messages, the telegraph was brought into the service of the general public; the advantages of such almost instantaneous communication were readily appreciated; and eight years after Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone took out their patent, lines of telegraph to the extent of 500 miles were in operation in England upon the original plan. In 1855 telegraphic correspondence had become so general, that the Electric Telegraph Company was started to supply the demand. In that establishment the Needle Telegraph of Wheatstone and Cooke is the one generally used, with the Chemical Recording Telegraph of Bain for special occasions. By means of the latter, blue lines of various lengths, according to an alphabet, are drawn upon a ribbon of paper, and as many as 20,000 words can be sent in an hour, though the ordinary rate is 100 per minute. In the purchase of patent rights alone, the Company have spent £170,000, and they are every year adding to the length of their wires. In June 1850 they had 6730 miles of wires, and despatched 29,245 messages a year. In December 1853 they had 24,340 miles of wires, and despatched 212,440 messages a-year. Their lines now extend over a much larger mileage, and convey a greatly increased number of messages. The Magnetic Telegraph Company have also a large extent of wires, and do a considerable business.
The land telegraph having had such success, the next step was to carry the wires across the deep, and link continent to continent,--an all-important step for an island kingdom such as ours, with its legion of distant colonies. The success of a submerged cable between Gosport and Portsmouth, and of one across the docks at Hull, proved the feasibility of a water telegraph, at least on a small scale, and it was not long before more ambitious attempts were made. On the 28th of August 1850, a cable, 30 miles long, in a gutta percha sheathing, was stretched at the bottom of the straits between Dover and Cape Grisnez, near Calais. Messages of congratulation sped along this wire between England and France; and although a ridge of rocks filed the cable asunder on the French coast, the suspension of communication was only temporary. The link has once more been established, and is in daily use. The first news sent by the wire to England was of the celebrated _coup d'etat_ of the 2d December, which cleared the way for Louis Napoleon's ascent of the throne. Numerous other cables have since been sunk beneath the waters; complete telegraphic communication has just been established between England and India, and will, no doubt, before long be extended to Australia.