The Electric Telegraph Company was the world's first public telegraph company founded in the United Kingdom in 1846 by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and John Lewis Ricardo, MP for Stoke-on-Trent.
At creation the company purchased all the patents Cooke and Wheatstone had obtained to date. It merged with the International Telegraph Company in 1855 to become the Electric and International Telegraph Company. C.F. Varley was chief engineer in the 1860s.
The company was nationalised by the British government in 1870 and British Telecom, the giant multi-national communications corporation based in over 170 countries worldwide today, is a direct descendant of Cooke's Electric Telegraph Company.
Read more about Electric Telegraph Company: Historical Documents
Famous quotes containing the words electric and/or company:
“The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media—movies, Telstar, flight—far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“We’re too unseparate. And going home
From company means coming to our senses.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)