# Talk:Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph

Tabletop (talk) 04:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no information regarding the power source used for sending and receiving telegraphs. As the first power station was built in 1882 (Cooke and Wheatstone's telegram was invented in 1837) there was no electrical grid to connect the telegram to. Without explaining how the telegraph functioned this article is seriously lacking.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iranian86Footballer (talk • contribs) 20:29, 13 August 2010 (UTC) 

Batteries?  86.166.71.0 (talk) 08:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This article is being nominated for good article status, since it satisfies the good article criteria:

Well-written: Although it is a technical article, it uses grammar and terminology that is easy for most readers to understand. It is structured according to WP:LAYOUT and other Wikipedia guidelines.
Verifiable with no original research: It has a good list of verifiable references, and these references are appropriately cited throughout the article.
Broad in its coverage: It covers not just the invention, but also information about the inventors, and the interesting related fact of how it was used to apprehend a criminal.
Neutral: There is no apparent bias.
Stable: Copyediting will undoubtedly take place, since it was just included as a DYK article.
Illustrated, if possible, by images: It contains several images of the invention itself, how it us used, and of associated persons.
Truthanado (talk) 13:11, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Excellent article, thanks! Wizzy…☎ 14:19, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 02:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-3 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


### Initial comments
On first pass, this looks quite solid and ripe for promotion. I only have one small issue I've seen so far (below), but note that I've also done some minor copyediting as I went, and in one case, moved an image. If you disagree with any of my tweaks, please feel free to revert. 

"The number of codes that can be obtained from 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... needles is 2, 6, 12, 20, 30 ... [1] respectively." -- I'm confused by the external link in this sentence. Is this meant to be a reference? It also appears to be a dead link.
It is a link to the integer sequence, it's not dead, it was just malformed. I've now formatted it as a ref and used the OEIS template.  It is part ref and part further information for more terms in the sequence.  By the way, it was not me who nominated the article for GA, while I am happy to provide information, I think the nominator should take the lead in dealing with GA issues/comments. SpinningSpark 21:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks--as it happens, that was all I needed, so we're all set. -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)


### Checklist
Question: Why do the letters I and E in the 5 needle system have three inclined needles and not just two? Is the image correct?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.195.178.129 (talk) 11:05, 26 October 2013 (UTC) 

They are errors, probably from copy and paste of one code to the next.  Thanks for spotting that, it should be fixed now. SpinningSpark 13:15, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

There is a request for comment at Electrical telegraph which concerns this article. SpinningSpark 19:10, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The diagram "Five-needle telegraph receiving the letter G" (also appears at top of this talk page) has a letter U on it, but the associated text says "The letters omitted were C, J, Q, U, X and Z", also the earlier photograph of an instrument ("Cooke and Wheatstone's five-needle, six-wire telegraph") has a letter V in that position. The cited source (Shaffner) also shows a V.
Here is am image I prepared for teaching, which is a possible replacement: Dder (talk) 09:57, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

"V" is the substitute character for "U" so it makes no practical difference. The diagram could still be amended though.  I would favour altering the original diagram to comply with the sources rather than have two contradictory diagrams floating around. SpinningSpark 00:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I have removed this image which was recently inserted as the lead image.  Besides making the lead overly cluttered, it is not clear to me that this is actually a Cooke & Wheatstone telegraph.  Although it is clearly a one-needle telegraph, the code that is displayed on its faceplate is not the same as the standard C&W one-needle code given in this article.  What's more, the nameplate shows that it is made by George Mason & Co, not C&W.  The one-needle telegraph instruments I have seen are much more compact and neat than this.  This looks like an early rival or variation, but without more context it is confusing to have it in the article. SpinningSpark 23:29, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Looking at this closer, the code is actually a needle version of the International Morse code.  It would seem that this set was intended for international messages. SpinningSpark 00:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
The instrument sits in a highly reputable museum and is labelled as "early Cooke and Wheatstone"... I am not an expert but I think they are--Stephencdickson (talk) 19:33, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Museum labels are a lot more unreliable than you may think.  We don't know who authored it or when.  We don't know if anyone fact checked it or examined the item's provenance.  Or even if it has any provenance.  In short, the label cannot be considered WP:RS. Since you cannot respond to my observations and nullify them, we simply shouldn't accept that label at face value. SpinningSpark 20:15, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

I reverted this addition. First of all it is unsourced, but would seem to be referring to this instrument in the Science Museum.  It is not the instrument used on the Euston-Camden Town rail line described in our article.  I no longer have access to the original source, but this book also clearly states it had a code-space of twelve, not twenty.  The Science Museum page says that their instrument is descibed in a later patent (7614).  There is no indication that this instrument was ever built or used anywhere, the patent seems to be regarding other improvements to the telegraph and the four-needle design may just be an explanatory example.  Further, the instrument is clearly marked "GPO" with a crown symbol, an organisation that did not exist in 1837.  I strongly suspect this is a replica based on the drawings in the patent, not an original instrument (which may never have existed).  The five-needle instruments on the GWR line were definitely directly replaced with two-needle instruments with no intermediate stage. SpinningSpark 09:18, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I screwed up edit description removing text that claims four-needle codes are not known. I said they were in note 9 when I meant note 8, Connected Earth page at https://web.archive.org/web/20130219081333/http://www.connected-earth.com/journeys/Firstgenerationtechnologies/Thetelegraph/Thetelegraphicagedawns/index.htm - CNTR has a much better picture at https://cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/ebirth.php.html Historians can be incorrect, especially with claims of "not known" as things can be discovered after they are done writing, or maybe the known, just not yet within their horizons. 207.195.18.171 (talk) 18:41, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

The article currently states that a small boy suggested that the receiving telegraph operator let the whole word "KWAKER" be transmitted, so that then the meaning ("Quaker") would be understood. However, the source cited for that line makes no mention of the small boy, only mentioning that the operator had difficulty understanding it and requested retransmission Scrooge Mcduc (talk) 03:49, 23 February 2025 (UTC)