out by Cooke and Wheatstone. Before a parliamentary committee on railways in 1840, Wheatstone stated that he had, conjointly with Cooke, obtained a new patent for a telegraphic arrangement. The new apparatus required only a single pair of wires instead of five, and was greatly simplified. The telegraph was still too costly for general purposes. In 1845, however, Cooke and Wheatstone succeeded in producing the single needle apparatus, which they patented, and from that time the electric telegraph became a practical instrument, and was speedily adopted on all the railway lines of the country. In the meantime a bitter controversy arose between Cooke and Wheatstone, each claiming the chief credit of the invention. Cooke contended that he alone had succeeded in reducing the electric telegraph to practical usefulness at the time he sought Wheatstone's assistance, and on the other hand Wheatstone maintained that Cooke's instrument had never been and could never be practically applied. More of the actual work of invention was no doubt done by Wheatstone than by his partner, though Wheatstone could not altogether withhold from Cooke a certain share of the honour of the invention. He admitted that he could not have succeeded so early without Cooke's ‘zeal and perseverance and practical skill,’ but held that Cooke could never have succeeded at all without him. An arrangement was come to in 1843 by which the several patents were assigned to Cooke, with the reservation of a mileage royalty to Wheatstone; and in 1846 the Electro-Telegraph Company was formed in conjunction with Cooke, the company paying 120,000l. for Cooke and Wheatstone's earlier patents.
For some years Cooke employed himself very actively in the practical work of telegraphy, but does not appear to have achieved much in the way of invention after his separation from Wheatstone. He tried to obtain an extension of the original patents, but the judicial committee of the privy council decided that Cooke and Wheatstone had been sufficiently remunerated, and that the electric telegraph had not been so poor an investment as they had been led to believe by the press, the shareholders having received a bonus of 15l. per share, besides the usual dividend of four per cent. on 300,000l. The Albert gold medal of the Society of Arts was awarded on equal terms to Cooke and Wheatstone in 1867; and two years later Cooke was knighted, Wheatstone having had the same honour conferred upon him the year before. A civil list pension was granted to Cooke in 1871. He died on 25 June 1879.
[Sabine's History and Progress of the Electric Telegraph; Dr. Turnbull's Lectures on the Electric Telegraph; the Practical Magazine, vol. v.; Jeans's Lives of the Electricians; the Wheatstone and Cooke Correspondence.]
COOKE, WILLIAM JOHN (1797–1865), line engraver, was born in Dublin 11 April 1797, but came to England with his parents when only a year old. He was placed under the tuition of his uncle, George Cooke, the engraver, and in 1826 he received from the Society of Arts a gold medal for the great improvements which he made in engraving upon steel. He was employed upon the annuals, Stanfield's ‘Coast Scenery,’ Daniell's ‘Oriental Annual,’ and other illustrated publications of that day; but upon their decline about 1840 he left England and settled at Darmstadt, where he died 6 April 1865. His best plates are those after Turner of ‘Nottingham’ and ‘Plymouth’ in the ‘Views in England and Wales,’ ‘Newark Castle’ in Scott's ‘Poetical Works.’ Besides these he engraved ‘The Thames at Mortlake,’ also after Turner, ‘Calais Pier,’ after David Cox, for the ‘Gallery of the Society of Painters in Water Colours,’ and ‘Returned from his Travels, or the Travelled Monkey,’ after Sir Edwin Landseer.
[Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves, 1886; information from Mrs. Cooke.]
COOKES, Sir THOMAS (d. 1701), benefactor of Gloucester Hall, Oxford, belonged to an old Worcestershire family, and resided at Bentley Pauncefot in Worcestershire. He was a liberal patron of Bromsgrove grammar school, and endowed the school of Feckenham. By his will, dated 19 Feb. 1696, and proved in the prerogative court of Canterbury 15 Oct. 1701, he gave ‘to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Oxford, Lichfield, and Gloucester, and to the vice-chancellor and all the heads of colleges and halls in the university of Oxford, for the time being and their successors,’ the sum of 10,000l. to purchase lands, the profits whereof were to be devoted ‘either to build an ornamental pile of buildings in Oxford and endow the same with so many scholars' places and fellowships as they should think the revenue would maintain, or to endow such other college or hall in Oxford with such and so many fellowships and scholars' places as they should think fit.’ In the election to fellowships and scholarships preference was to be given to those who had been educated at Bromsgrove or Feckenham. The executors and the law courts kept the bequest unsettled till 1714, when the property was acquired by Glou-
