The electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a
gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long
train of thinkers. In such a case he who crowns the work, making it
serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but
is likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole
inventor, although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is
perhaps less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner. He
who advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a
common boon, is entitled to our gratitude. But in honouring the keystone
of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on which
it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge. Justice at least is due to
those who have laboured without reward.
Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were the first
to bring the electric telegraph into daily use. But we have selected
Wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science,
and chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus. As James Watt
is identified with the steam-engine, and George Stephenson with the
railway, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph.
Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in February, 1802. His
father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed
to 128, Pall Mall, London, and became a teacher of the flute. He used to
say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at
the musical education of the Princess Charlotte. Charles, the second
son, went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to
several institutions in London. One of them was in Kennington, and kept
by a Mrs. Castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress. From
another he ran away, but was captured at Windsor, not far from the
theatre of his practical telegraph. As a boy he was very shy and
sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other
company than his own thoughts. When he was about fourteen years old he
was apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical
instruments, at 436, Strand, London; but he showed little taste for
handicraft or business, and loved better to study books. His father
encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge.
At the age of fifteen, Wheatstone translated French poetry, and wrote
two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it without
knowing it as his nephew's composition. Some lines of his on the lyre
became the motto of an engraving by Bartolozzi. Small for his age, but
with a fine brow, and intelligent blue eyes, he often visited an old
book-stall in the vicinity of Pall Mall, which was then a dilapidated
and unpaved thoroughfare. Most of his pocket-money was spent in
purchasing the books which had taken his fancy, whether fairy tales,
history, or science. One day, to the surprise of the bookseller, he
coveted a volume on the discoveries of Volta in electricity, but not
having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume. It was
written in French, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could
buy a dictionary. Then he began to read the volume, and, with the help
of his elder brother, William, to repeat the experiments described in
it, with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house.
In constructing the battery the boy philosophers ran short of money to
procure the requisite copper-plates. They had only a few copper coins
left. A happy thought occurred to Charles, who was the leading spirit in
these researches, 'We must use the pennies themselves,' said he, and the
battery was soon complete.
In September, 1821, Wheatstone brought himself into public notice by
exhibiting the 'Enchanted Lyre,' or 'Aconcryptophone,' at a music-shop
at Pall Mall and in the Adelaide Gallery. It consisted of a mimic lyre
hung from the ceiling by a cord, and emitting the strains of several
instruments--the piano, harp, and dulcimer. In reality it was a mere
sounding box, and the cord was a steel rod that conveyed the vibrations
of the music from the several instruments which were played out of sight
and ear-shot. At this period Wheatstone made numerous experiments
on sound and its transmission. Some of his results are preserved in
Thomson's ANNALS OF PHILOSOPHY for 1823. He recognised that sound is
propagated by waves or oscillations of the atmosphere, as light by
undulations of the luminiferous ether. Water, and solid bodies, such
as glass, or metal, or sonorous wood, convey the modulations with high
velocity, and he conceived the plan of transmitting sound-signals,
music, or speech to long distances by this means. He estimated that
sound would travel 200 miles a second through solid rods, and proposed
to telegraph from London to Edinburgh in this way. He even called his
arrangement a 'telephone.' [Robert Hooke, in his MICROGRAPHIA, published
in 1667, writes: 'I can assure the reader that I have, by the help of a
distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in
an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light.' Nor
was it essential the wire should be straight; it might be bent into
angles. This property is the basis of the mechanical or lover's
telephone, said to have been known to the Chinese many centuries ago.
Hooke also considered the possibility of finding a way to quicken our
powers of hearing.] A writer in the REPOSITORY OF ARTS for September 1,
1821, in referring to the 'Enchanted Lyre,' beholds the prospect of an
opera being performed at the King's Theatre, and enjoyed at the Hanover
Square Rooms, or even at the Horns Tavern, Kennington. The vibrations
are to travel through underground conductors, like to gas in pipes. 'And
if music be capable of being thus conducted,' he observes,'perhaps the
words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation. The
eloquence of counsel, the debates of Parliament, instead of being read
the next day only,--But we shall lose ourselves in the pursuit of this
curious subject.'
Besides transmitting sounds to a distance, Wheatstone devised a simple
instrument for augmenting feeble sounds, to which he gave the name
of 'Microphone.' It consisted of two slender rods, which conveyed the
mechanical vibrations to both ears, and is quite different from the
electrical microphone of Professor Hughes.
In 1823, his uncle, the musical instrument maker, died, and Wheatstone,
with his elder brother, William, took over the business. Charles had no
great liking for the commercial part, but his ingenuity found a vent
in making improvements on the existing instruments, and in devising
philosophical toys. At the end of six years he retired from the
undertaking.
In 1827, Wheatstone introduced his 'kaleidoscope,' a device for
rendering the vibrations of a sounding body apparent to the eye. It
consists of a metal rod, carrying at its end a silvered bead, which
reflects a 'spot' of light. As the rod vibrates the spot is seen to
describe complicated figures in the air, like a spark whirled about in
the darkness. His photometer was probably suggested by this appliance.
It enables two lights to be compared by the relative brightness of their
reflections in a silvered bead, which describes a narrow ellipse, so as
to draw the spots into parallel lines.
In 1828, Wheatstone improved the German wind instrument, called the MUND
HARMONICA, till it became the popular concertina, patented on June 19,
1829 The portable harmonium is another of his inventions, which gained
a prize medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He also improved the
speaking machine of De Kempelen, and endorsed the opinion of Sir David
Brewster, that before the end of this century a singing and talking
apparatus would be among the conquests of science.
In 1834, Wheatstone, who had won a name for himself, was appointed to
the Chair of Experimental Physics in King's College, London, But his
first course of lectures on Sound were a complete failure, owing to an
invincible repugnance to public speaking, and a distrust of his powers
in that direction. In the rostrum he was tongue-tied and incapable,
sometimes turning his back on the audience and mumbling to the diagrams
on the wall. In the laboratory he felt himself at home, and ever after
confined his duties mostly to demonstration.
He achieved renown by a great experiment--the measurement of the
velocity of electricity in a wire. His method was beautiful and
ingenious. He cut the wire at the middle, to form a gap which a spark
might leap across, and connected its ends to the poles of a Leyden jar
filled with electricity. Three sparks were thus produced, one at either
end of the wire, and another at the middle. He mounted a tiny mirror
on the works of a watch, so that it revolved at a high velocity, and
observed the reflections of his three sparks in it. The points of the
wire were so arranged that if the sparks were instantaneous, their
reflections would appear in one straight line; but the middle one was
seen to lag behind the others, because it was an instant later. The
electricity had taken a certain time to travel from the ends of the wire
to the middle. This time was found by measuring the amount of lag, and
comparing it with the known velocity of the mirror. Having got the time,
he had only to compare that with the length of half the wire, and he
found that the velocity of electricity was 288,000 miles a second.
Till then, many people had considered the electric discharge to be
instantaneous; but it was afterwards found that its velocity depended
on the nature of the conductor, its resistance, and its electro-static
capacity. Faraday showed, for example, that its velocity in a submarine
wire, coated with insulator and surrounded with water, is only 144,000
miles a second, or still less. Wheatstone's device of the revolving
mirror was afterwards employed by Foucault and Fizeau to measure the
velocity of light.
In 1835, at the Dublin meeting of the British Association, Wheatstone
showed that when metals were volatilised in the electric spark, their
light, examined through a prism, revealed certain rays which were
characteristic of them. Thus the kind of metals which formed the
sparking points could be determined by analysing the light of the spark.
This suggestion has been of great service in spectrum analysis, and as
applied by Bunsen, Kirchoff, and others, has led to the discovery
of several new elements, such as rubidium and thallium, as well as
increasing our knowledge of the heavenly bodies. Two years later,
he called attention to the value of thermo-electricity as a mode of
generating a current by means of heat, and since then a variety
of thermo-piles have been invented, some of which have proved of
considerable advantage.
Wheatstone abandoned his idea of transmitting intelligence by the
mechanical vibration of rods, and took up the electric telegraph. In
1835 he lectured on the system of Baron Schilling, and declared that the
means were already known by which an electric telegraph could be made of
great service to the world. He made experiments with a plan of his own,
and not only proposed to lay an experimental line across the Thames, but
to establish it on the London and Birmingham Railway. Before these plans
were carried out, however, he received a visit from Mr. Fothergill
Cooke at his house in Conduit Street on February 27, 1837, which had an
important influence on his future.
Mr. Cooke was an officer in the Madras army, who, being home on
furlough, was attending some lectures on anatomy at the University of
Heidelberg, where, on March 6, 1836, he witnessed a demonstration
with the telegraph of Professor Moncke, and was so impressed with its
importance, that he forsook his medical studies and devoted all his
efforts to the work of introducing the telegraph. He returned to London
soon after, and was able to exhibit a telegraph with three needles in
January, 1837. Feeling his want of scientific knowledge, he consulted
Faraday and Dr. Roget, the latter of whom sent him to Wheatstone.
At a second interview, Mr. Cooke told Wheatstone of his intention to
bring out a working telegraph, and explained his method. Wheatstone,
according to his own statement, remarked to Cooke that the method would
not act, and produced his own experimental telegraph. Finally, Cooke
proposed that they should enter into a partnership, but Wheatstone was
at first reluctant to comply. He was a well-known man of science, and
had meant to publish his results without seeking to make capital of
them. Cooke, on the other hand, declared that his sole object was to
make a fortune from the scheme. In May they agreed to join their forces,
Wheatstone contributing the scientific, and Cooke the administrative
talent. The deed of partnership was dated November 19, 1837. A joint
patent was taken out for their inventions, including the five-needle
telegraph of Wheatstone, and an alarm worked by a relay, in which the
current, by dipping a needle into mercury, completed a local circuit,
and released the detent of a clockwork.
The five-needle telegraph, which was mainly, if not entirely, due to
Wheatstone, was similar to that of Schilling, and based on the principle
enunciated by Ampere--that is to say, the current was sent into the line
by completing the circuit of the battery with a make and break key, and
at the other end it passed through a coil of wire surrounding a magnetic
needle free to turn round its centre. According as one pole of the
battery or the other was applied to the line by means of the key, the
current deflected the needle to one side or the other. There were five
separate circuits actuating five different needles. The latter were
pivoted in rows across the middle of a dial shaped like a diamond, and
having the letters of the alphabet arranged upon it in such a way that
a letter was literally pointed out by the current deflecting two of the
needles towards it.
An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the
Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western
Railway on July 25, 1837. The actual distance was only one and a half
mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its
length. It was late in the evening before the trial took place. Mr.
Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephenson and
other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a
dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at
Euston. Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied,
and 'never,' said Wheatstone, 'did I feel such a tumultuous sensation
before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click,
and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention
pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.'
In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated
the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its
removal. In July, 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western
Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington terminus to West
Drayton station, a distance of thirteen miles. Part of the wire was laid
underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts
along the line. Their circuit was eventually extended to Slough in 1841,
and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science, which
could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles in a minute.
The price of admission was a shilling.
Notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the
new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture
of the murderer Tawell. Between six and seven o'clock one morning a
woman named Sarah Hart was found dead in her home at Salt Hill, and a
man had been observed to leave her house some time before. The police
knew that she was visited from time to time by a Mr. John Tawell,
from Berkhampstead, where he was much respected, and on inquiring and
arriving at Slough, they found that a person answering his description
had booked by a slow train for London, and entered a first-class
carriage. The police telegraphed at once to Paddington, giving the
particulars, and desiring his capture. 'He is in the garb of a Quaker,'
ran the message, 'with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly to his
feet.' There was no 'Q' in the alphabet of the five-needle instrument,
and the clerk at Slough began to spell the word 'Quaker' with a
'kwa'; but when he had got so far he was interrupted by the clerk at
Paddington, who asked him to 'repent.' The repetition fared no better,
until a boy at Paddington suggested that Slough should be allowed to
finish the word. 'Kwaker' was understood, and as soon as Tawell stepped
out on the platform at Paddington he was 'shadowed' by a detective,
who followed him into a New Road omnibus, and arrested him in a coffee
tavern.
Tawell was tried for the murder of the woman, and astounding revelations
were made as to his character. Transported in 1820 for the crime of
forgery, he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and started as a chemist in
Sydney, where he flourished, and after fifteen years left it a rich man.
Returning to England, he married a Quaker lady as his second wife. He
confessed to the murder of Sarah Hart, by prussic acid, his motive being
a dread of their relations becoming known.
Tawell was executed, and the notoriety of the case brought the telegraph
into repute. Its advantages as a rapid means of conveying intelligence
and detecting criminals had been signally demonstrated, and it was soon
adopted on a more extensive scale.
In 1845 Wheatstone introduced two improved forms of the apparatus,
namely, the 'single' and the 'double' needle instruments, in which
the signals were made by the successive deflections of the needles. Of
these, the single-needle instrument, requiring only one wire, is still
in use.
In 1841 a difference arose between Cooke and Wheatstone as to the share
of each in the honour of inventing the telegraph. The question was
submitted to the arbitration of the famous engineer, Marc Isambard
Brunel, on behalf of Cooke, and Professor Daniell, of King's College,
the inventor of the Daniell battery, on the part of Wheatstone. They
awarded to Cooke the credit of having introduced the telegraph as a
useful undertaking which promised to be of national importance, and
to Wheatstone that of having by his researches prepared the public to
receive it. They concluded with the words: 'It is to the united labours
of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance that we must
attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has made
during five years since they have been associated.' The decision,
however vague, pronounces the needle telegraph a joint production. If it
was mainly invented by Wheatstone, it was chiefly introduced by Cooke.
Their respective shares in the undertaking might be compared to that of
an author and his publisher, but for the fact that Cooke himself had a
share in the actual work of invention.
In 1840 Wheatstone had patented an alphabetical telegraph, or,
'Wheatstone A B C instrument,' which moved with a step-by-step motion,
and showed the letters of the message upon a dial. The same principle
was utilised in his type-printing telegraph, patented in 1841. This was
the first apparatus which printed a telegram in type. It was worked
by two circuits, and as the type revolved a hammer, actuated by the
current, pressed the required letter on the paper. In 1840 Wheatstone
also brought out his magneto-electrical machine for generating
continuous currents, and his chronoscope, for measuring minute intervals
of time, which was used in determining the speed of a bullet or the
passage of a star. In this apparatus an electric current actuated an
electro-magnet, which noted the instant of an occurrence by means of
a pencil on a moving paper. It is said to have been capable of
distinguishing 1/7300 part of a second, and the time a body took to fall
from a height of one inch.
The same year he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society
for his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to
construct the stereoscope. He showed that our impression of solidity
is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an
object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view. Thus, in
the stereoscope, an arrangement of lenses and mirrors, two photographs
of the same object taken from different points are so combined as
to make the object stand out with a solid aspect. Sir David Brewster
improved the stereoscope by dispensing with the mirrors, and bringing it
into its existing form.
The 'pseudoscope' (Wheatstone was partial to exotic forms of speech) was
introduced by its professor in 1850, and is in some sort the reverse of
the stereoscope, since it causes a solid object to seem hollow, and a
nearer one to be farther off; thus, a bust appears to be a mask, and a
tree growing outside of a window looks as if it were growing inside the
room.
On November 26, 1840, he exhibited his electro-magnetic clock in the
library of the Royal Society, and propounded a plan for distributing the
correct time from a standard clock to a number of local timepieces.
The circuits of these were to be electrified by a key or contact-maker
actuated by the arbour of the standard, and their hands corrected by
electro-magnetism. The following January Alexander Bain took out a
patent for an electro-magnetic clock, and he subsequently charged
Wheatstone with appropriating his ideas. It appears that Bain worked as
a mechanist to Wheatstone from August to December, 1840, and he asserted
that he had communicated the idea of an electric clock to Wheatstone
during that period; but Wheatstone maintained that he had experimented
in that direction during May. Bain further accused Wheatstone of
stealing his idea of the electro-magnetic printing telegraph; but
Wheatstone showed that the instrument was only a modification of his own
electro-magnetic telegraph.
In 1843 Wheatstone communicated an important paper to the Royal Society,
entitled 'An Account of Several New Processes for Determining the
Constants of a Voltaic Circuit.' It contained an exposition of the
well-known balance for measuring the electrical resistance of a
conductor, which still goes by the name of Wheatstone's Bridge or
balance, although it was first devised by Mr. S. W. Christie, of the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, who published it in the PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSACTIONS for 1833. The method was neglected until Wheatstone brought
it into notice. His paper abounds with simple and practical formula:
for the calculation of currents and resistances by the law of Ohm. He
introduced a unit of resistance, namely, a foot of copper wire weighing
one hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the
length of wire by its resistance. He was awarded a medal for his paper
by the Society. The same year he invented an apparatus which enabled the
reading of a thermometer or a barometer to be registered at a distance
by means of an electric contact made by the mercury. A sound telegraph,
in which the signals were given by the strokes of a bell, was also
patented by Cooke and Wheatstone in May of that year.
The introduction of the telegraph had so far advanced that, on September
2, 1845, the Electric Telegraph Company was registered, and Wheatstone,
by his deed of partnership with Cooke, received a sum of L33,000 for the
use of their joint inventions.
From 1836-7 Wheatstone had thought a good deal about submarine
telegraphs, and in 1840 he gave evidence before the Railway Committee of
the House of Commons on the feasibility of the proposed line from Dover
to Calais. He had even designed the machinery for making and laying
the cable. In the autumn of 1844, with the assistance of Mr. J. D.
Llewellyn, he submerged a length of insulated wire in Swansea Bay, and
signalled through it from a boat to the Mumbles Lighthouse. Next year he
suggested the use of gutta-percha for the coating of the intended wire
across the Channel.
Though silent and reserved in public, Wheatstone was a clear and voluble
talker in private, if taken on his favourite studies, and his small
but active person, his plain but intelligent countenance, was full of
animation. Sir Henry Taylor tells us that he once observed Wheatstone at
an evening party in Oxford earnestly holding forth to Lord Palmerston
on the capabilities of his telegraph. 'You don't say so!' exclaimed the
statesman. 'I must get you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.' And so
saying, he fastened the electrician on Lord Westbury, and effected his
escape. A reminiscence of this interview may have prompted Palmerston
to remark that a time was coming when a minister might be asked in
Parliament if war had broken out in India, and would reply, 'Wait a
minute; I'll just telegraph to the Governor-General, and let you know.'
At Christchurch, Marylebone, on February 12, 1847, Wheatstone was
married. His wife was the daughter of a Taunton tradesman, and of
handsome appearance. She died in 1866, leaving a family of five young
children to his care. His domestic life was quiet and uneventful.
One of Wheatstone's most ingenious devices was the 'Polar clock,'
exhibited at the meeting of the British Association in 1848. It is based
on the fact discovered by Sir David Brewster, that the light of the sky
is polarised in a plane at an angle of ninety degrees from the position
of the sun. It follows that by discovering that plane of polarisation,
and measuring its azimuth with respect to the north, the position of the
sun, although beneath the horizon, could be determined, and the apparent
solar time obtained. The clock consisted of a spy-glass, having a nichol
or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a thin plate of selenite for
an object-glass. When the tube was directed to the North Pole--that
is, parallel to the earth's axis--and the prism of the eye-piece turned
until no colour was seen, the angle of turning, as shown by an index
moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave the hour of day. The
device is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but
it formed part of the equipment of the North Polar expedition commanded
by Captain Nares. Wheatstone's remarkable ingenuity was displayed in the
invention of cyphers which have never been unravelled, and interpreting
cypher manuscripts in the British Museum which had defied the experts.
He devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into
cypher which could only be interpreted by putting the cypher into a
corresponding machine adjusted to reproduce it.
The rapid development of the telegraph in Europe may be gathered
from the fact that in 1855, the death of the Emperor Nicholas at St.
Petersburg, about one o'clock in the afternoon, was announced in the
House of Lords a few hours later; and as a striking proof of its further
progress, it may be mentioned that the result of the Oaks of 1890
was received in New York fifteen seconds after the horses passed the
winning-post.
Wheatstone's next great invention was the automatic transmitter, in
which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of
paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the
signal currents. By substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending
the message, he was able to telegraph about 100 words a minute, or five
times the ordinary rate. In the Postal Telegraph service this apparatus
is employed for sending Press telegrams, and it has recently been so
much improved, that messages are now sent from London to Bristol at
a speed of 600 words a minute, and even of 400 words a minute between
London and Aberdeen. On the night of April 8, 1886, when Mr. Gladstone
introduced his Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, no fewer than 1,500,000
words were despatched from the central station at St. Martin's-le-Grand
by 100 Wheatstone transmitters. Were Mr. Gladstone himself to speak
for a whole week, night and day, and with his usual facility, he could
hardly surpass this achievement. The plan of sending messages by a
running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented
by Bain in 1846; but Wheatstone, aided by Mr. Augustus Stroh, an
accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to
bring the idea into successful operation.
In 1859 Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the
subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts
who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the
successful lines of 1865 and 1866. On February 4, 1867, he published the
principle of reaction in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to the
Royal Society; but Mr. C. W. Siemens had communicated the identical
discovery ten days earlier, and both papers were read on the same day.
It afterwards appeared that Herr Werner Siemens, Mr. Samuel Alfred
Varley, and Professor Wheatstone had independently arrived at the
principle within a few months of each other. Varley patented it on
December 24, 1866; Siemens called attention to it on January 17, 1867;
and Wheatstone exhibited it in action at the Royal Society on the above
date. But it will be seen from our life of William Siemens that Soren
Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them.
In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by
different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed
under Government control.
Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic
telegraph. He had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. Some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign
societies bore witness to his scientific reputation. Since 1836 he
had been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was appointed a
Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences. The same year he
was awarded the Ampere Medal by the French Society for the Encouragement
of National Industry. In 1875 he was created an honorary member of the
Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D.
of Cambridge.
While on a visit to Paris during the autumn of 1875, and engaged in
perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a
cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he
died in Paris, on October 19, 1875. A memorial service was held in the
Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy. His
remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried in
Kensal Green.