This volume is one of a series comprising new editions of early books on the subject of the Electric Telegraph. Anyone researching the technology, development and operation of telegraphy, or persons simply wanting an absorbing read, will find these works of the greatest historical interest. This particular book, An Illustrated Handbook to the Electric Telegraph, by Robert Dodwell, was originally published at London in 1865. Dodwell, who was at one time District Engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company in Manchester, here presents a non-technical but very readable account of the Electric Telegraph, from the earliest days up to the mid-nineteenth century. By this time most of the essential features of telegraphy had been invented and patented, experimentally tested and then either discarded or put into operation somewhere or other in Europe or the United States of America. Dodwell deals mainly, but not exclusively, with telegraphy in Britain. The three broad topics covered are, first, the Galvanic Battery, the means to generate the electric fluid (as electricity was then called), the newly discovered and wonderful agency that made long-distance communications possible. Secondly, the various Sending and Receiving Instruments used for communicating the telegraphic signals are discussed. Thirdly, the Line Wire, the medium by which signals are carried across country and around the world, either overground, subterranean, or submarine, are examined. Dodwell also relates many amusing anecdotes about the misapprehensions, misconceptions and misunderstandings of the telegraph by his Victorian contemporaries.

About the Author

Robert Dodwell was born at Vauxhall, London, in 1831. By 1851, aged 20, he was working in Liverpool as a telegraph clerk. He married in 1857 and had several children. By 1859 he had moved to Manchester, where he became an active and very able District Manager for the Magnetic Telegraph Company. He was responsible for the rebuilding of the telegraph circuits of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, and later became involved in marketing Henleys Dial Telegraph. In the years 1861-62 he spent time lecturing and writing on telegraphy. During this period he wrote An Illustrated Handbook to the Electric Telegraph. In 1863 he became engineer to Bonellis Telegraph Company in Manchester. He also took out a patent for, of all things, an insect repellent, and by September he was bankrupt. Whether this misfortune was due to his patent activities is not known. In July 1864 he was appointed commission agent to the Universal Private Telegram Company, also in Manchester. We hear nothing more about Dodwell until 1874, when he compiled The Social Code, a telegraph code book. His fortunes again prospered in 1875 when he became managing director of the Oriental Telegram Agency, Leadenhall Street, London. The Agency used an abbreviating code of his devising to correspond by telegraph with agents in Europe, America, Australia, India and China, on behalf of subscribers. Unfortunately for Dodwell, the Agency failed in 1876. He spent his final years working as a freelance electrical engineer. He died sometime in the early 1900s, by which time he was in his seventies, at Vauxhall, the place of his birth.