In 1859 Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the
subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts
who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the
successful lines of 1865 and 1866. On February 4, 1867, he published
the principle of reaction in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to
the Royal Society; but Mr. C. W. Siemens had communicated the identical
discovery ten days earlier, and both papers were read on the same day.
It afterwards appeared that Herr Werner Siemens, Mr. Samuel Alfred
Varley, and Professor Wheatstone had independently arrived at the
principle within a few months of each other. Varley patented it on
December 24, 1866; Siemens called attention to it on January 17, 1867;
and Wheatstone exhibited it in action at the Royal Society on the above
date. But it will be seen from our life of William Siemens that Soren
Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them.

In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by
different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed
under Government control.

Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic
telegraph. He had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. Some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign
societies bore witness to his scientific reputation. Since 1836 he had
been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was appointed a
Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences. The same year he
was awarded the Ampere Medal by the French Society for the Encouragement
of National Industry. In 1875 he was created an honorary member of the
Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D.
of Cambridge.