Electric Telegraph Company
The ETC was heavily involved in laying submarine telegraph cables, including lines to the Netherlands, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man.
The Electric Telegraph Company was the world's first public telegraph company, founded in the United Kingdom by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and John Lewis Ricardo, MP for Stoke-on-Trent,[1] with Cromwell F. Varley as chief engineer.
[4] Up to this point telegraph lines had been laid mostly in conjunction with railway companies, and Cooke had been a leading figure in convincing them of its benefits.
Additional railway people who had become involved by 1849 included Samuel Morton Peto, Thomas Brassey, Robert Stephenson (of Rocket fame and who was chairman of the company in 1857–58), Joseph Paxton, and Richard Till, a director of several railway companies.
As a result, the company was formed without Wheatstone (although he claimed he had been offered the post of scientific adviser).
The relay allowed telegraph signals weakened over a long distance to be renewed and retransmitted onward.
[12] The setback with the Great Western did not slow the growth of the telegraph along railway lines, and these continued to be the main source of revenue.
The Moorgate office was arranged over three floors and a large number of men and boys were recruited on an accelerating rate of pay.
[16] The company also employed a significant number of women from a higher social class as telegraphists operating the Wheatstone needle instruments.
[20] In April 1848, the Chartists organised a large demonstration at Kennington Common and presented a petition signed by millions.
[22] The first competitor to emerge was the British Electric Telegraph Company (BETC), formed in 1849 by Henry Highton and his brother Edward.
Even worse for the ETC, in 1850 Parliament passed an Act giving it the right to force the railways to allow the BETC to construct a telegraph for government use between Liverpool and London.
The Magnetic also used a non-infringing system, generating the telegraph pulses electromagnetically by the operator's own motion of working the equipment handles.
[34] It planned to lay four separate cable cores as a diversity scheme against damage from anchors and fishing gear.
The work was begun in 1853 with the ship Monarch, specially purchased and fitted out for the purpose, and completed in 1854.
The purpose of this cable was to provide a connection to Osborne House, the summer residence of Queen Victoria.
[40] A number of improvements were made to Monarch over the years and its gear became the prototype for future cable ships.
[42] After nationalisation in 1870, Monarch irreparably broke down on her first cable mission for the General Post Office (GPO).
[43] The chief competitor to the company, the Magnetic, had succeeded in providing the first connection to Ireland in 1853 on the Portpatrick–Donaghadee route.
In September 1854 Monarch attempted to lay a lightweight cable from Holyhead in Wales to Howth in Ireland.
The main cable was made by Newall and laid by Elba between Weymouth and Alderney in August 1858.
[50] The Electric Telegraph Company formed the largest component of the resulting state monopoly run by the GPO.
[55] The primary system initially used by the company was the two-needle and one-needle Cooke and Wheatstone telegraphs.
This device sent messages at an extremely fast rate from text that had been prerecorded on paper punched tape.
This had a great economic advantage on busy long-distance lines where traffic capacity was limited by the speed of the operator.
