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