London – Slough telegraphic line
Telegraphic communication between London and Slough, 1844In 1839, Cooke and Wheatstone collaborated with the famous engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to lay a permanent telegraph line between London's Paddington Station and West Drayton in Middlesex on the Paddington to Bristol railway.
However, like the 1837 scheme, this proved unsuccessful.
In 1843 Cooke and Wheatstone re-negotiated a contract with the Great Western Railway to extend the electric telegraph to Slough.
The London–Slough circuit opened for messages on 16 May and was Britain’s first true public telegraph service.
In time, six electric telegraph stations opened on this route at Paddington, Ealing, Hanwell, Southall, West Drayton and Slough.
In this exhibition
- Wheatstone's life and work
- Acoustics
- Electricity: the telegraph
- Railway telegraphy
- Five needle telegraph
- The ABC telegraph
- London – Slough telegraphic line
- Murder and the telegraph
- Optics: the stereoscope