COOKE, WILLIAM BERNARD (1778–1855), line engraver, was born in London in 1778. He was the elder brother of George Cooke [q. v.], and became a pupil of William Angus, the engraver of the ‘Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in Great Britain and Wales.’ After the termination of his apprenticeship he obtained employment upon the plates for Brewer's ‘Beauties of England and Wales,’ and then undertook the publication of ‘The Thames,’ which was completed in 1811, and for which he engraved almost all the plates. His most important work was the ‘Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England,’ chiefly from drawings by Turner, which he produced between 1814 and 1826, conjointly with his brother, George Cooke, and for which he executed no less than twenty-two plates, besides many vignettes. He also engraved after Turner ‘The Source of the Tamar’ and ‘Plymouth,’ and in 1819 five plates of ‘Views in Sussex,’ which were published with explanatory notices by R. R. Reinagle. Besides these he engraved ‘Storm clearing off,’ after Copley Fielding, for the ‘Gallery of the Society of Painters in Water Colours,’ 1833, as well as plates for Rhodes's ‘Peak Scenery,’ 1818, De Wint's ‘Views in the South of France, chiefly on the Rhone,’ 1825, Cockburn's ‘Pompeii,’ 1827, Stanfield's ‘Coast Scenery,’ 1836, Noel Humphreys's ‘Rome and its surrounding Scenery,’ 1840, and other works. He likewise published ‘A new Picture of the Isle of Wight,’ 1812, and ‘Twenty-four select Views in Italy,’ 1833. He was an engraver of considerable ability, and excelled especially in marine views, but the works which he published did not meet with much success. He died at Camberwell, of heart disease, 2 Aug. 1855, aged 77.
[Gent. Mag. 1855, ii. 334; Art Journal, 1855, p. 267; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School, 1878.]
COOKE, Sir WILLIAM FOTHERGILL (1806–1879), electrician, was born at Ealing, Middlesex, in 1806. His father was a surgeon there, but was afterwards appointed professor of anatomy at Durham, to which place the family removed. Cooke was educated at Durham and at the university of Edinburgh, and at the age of twenty entered the Indian army. After five years' service in India he returned home, intending to qualify himself for his father's profession, and passed some time on the continent, studying first at Paris, and subsequently at Heidelberg under Professor Müncke. While with Professor Müncke in 1836 his attention was directed towards electric telegraphy, the probable practicability of which had been previously demonstrated in various quarters in an experimental way. Indeed, the idea of the magnetic needle had, from the early part of the seventeenth century, occupied the minds of scientific men. Dr. Müncke had closely followed the course of discovery, and, for the purpose of illustrating his lectures at the university, had constructed a telegraphic apparatus on the principle introduced by Baron Schilling in 1835. Cooke's genius instantly caught at the prospect that was thus unfolded. Up to that time the electric telegraph had not been experimented upon much beyond the walls of the laboratory and the class-room, and the young medical student conceived the idea of at once putting the invention into practical operation in connection with the various railway systems then rapidly developing. He abandoned medicine, and devoted his mind to the application of the existing knowledge and instruments for telegraphy. Early in 1837 he returned to England, with introductions to Faraday and Roget. By them he was introduced to Professor Wheatstone, who had made electric telegraphy a special study, and had so far back as 1834 laid before the Royal Society an account of important experiments on the velocity of electricity and the duration of electric light. Cooke had already constructed a system of telegraphing with three needles on Schilling's principle, and made designs for a mechanical alarm. He had also made some progress in negotiating with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company for the use of his telegraphs. After one or two interviews, in which Wheatstone seems to have frankly revealed to Cooke all he had done towards perfecting the electric telegraph, a partnership was agreed upon between them, and duly entered into in May 1837. Wheatstone had neither taste nor leisure for business details, while Cooke possessed a good practical knowledge, much energy, and business ability of a high order. Wheatstone and Cooke's first patent was taken out in the same month that the partnership was entered into, and was ‘for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through electric circuits.’ Cooke now proceeded to test the utility of the invention, the London and Blackwall, the London and Birmingham, and the Great Western railway companies successively allowing the use of their lines for the experiment. It was found, however, that with five needles and five line wires the expense was too great, and in that form the electric telegraph was given up. In 1838 an improvement was effected whereby the number of needles was reduced to two, and a patent for this was taken
