Electric Telegraph Company

The Electric Telegraph Company, the first electric telegraph company in Britain, was provisionally registered in September 1845 and officially incorporated as a company by Parliament in 1846. It was set up by William Fothergill Cooke and Joseph Lewis Ricardo to work the patents of Cooke and Wheatstone. The ETC's major growth period coincided with the expansion of the railways in the 1840s by providing electric communication to the railways' signal operators. The company grew rapidly with the realisation of the electric telegraph's potential for the transmission of news.

In 1852 arrangements between the ETC, the astronomer royal and the South Eastern Railway Company were made for transmitting Greenwich Mean Time signals. In 1855 the company merged with the International Telegraph Company, which was using submarine telegraph lines to connect to the Continent. This ended the operation of the two companies as different entities although using the same staff.

From the guide to the Records created and used by the Electric Telegraph Company, 1846-1872, (BT Archives)