Wheatstone and Cooke were the first people to seriously put the principles of communication based on electricity into practice. A lovely description of their first experiment was given in the Maitland Mercury of 11 June 1871 in relation to other matters:
"The first practical experiment made was by Messrs Wheatstone and Cooke, on the 25th July, 1837, who were co-patentees.
Late in the evening of that day, in a dingy little room in a booking office at Easton Square, by the light of a flaring dip candle, sat one of the inventors, with a beating pulse and heart full of hope. In an equally small room, at the Camden Town station, sat Mr Cooke and his two witnesses, well known to fame - Mr. Charles Fox and Mr. Stephenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelt by that trembling tongue of steel, which will only cease to discourse with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke, in his turn, touched the keys, and returned the answer "Never did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before" said Wheatstone "as when alone in that still room I heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words I felt all the magnitude of the invention, now proved to be practical beyond cavil or dispute".
The telegraph thence forward, as far as its mechanism was concerned, went on without a check, except for modifications to economise its construction and working. But, like all other scientific discoveries, the telegraph had powerful opposition to overcome:
- to one application, the Government of the day replied "that the telegraph was of no use in time of peace, and that the semaphore in time of war answered all purposes";
- and again, at a meeting of the proprietors of the Great Western Railway, in Bristol, we find that Mr Hayward, of Manchester, denounced the invention as a "newfangled scheme"; and
- about that time two powerful railway companies, who should have welcomed it with acclamation, passed a resolution repudiating an agreement they had entered into with the patentees. But Brunel opportunely came to its assistance, and rendered it valuable aid".