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In the twelve years subsequent to the formation of the Electric company Charles Wheatstone had been seriously occupied at King’s College; so much so that he was able simultaneously to introduce the second generation technology of public electric telegraphy and the revolutionary means to pass the benefits of telegraphy on to the individual.

In the summer of 1858 he obtained a patent for the automatic telegraph which consisted of a Perforator, a Transmitter and a Recorder. For high volume circuits code messages were punched on to paper tape by several operators and then fed through an automatic transmitter at speed and received by an automatic printer. The automatic telegraph enabled wires to be used far more intensively than by simple manual operation. The same patent also introduced a Translator by which a receiving operator could by using just nine keys speedily convert or translate a coded message into the Roman alphabet printed on a paper tape for delivery to the recipient. He granted the sole licence for its use to the Electric company. Wheatstone’s automatic telegraph remained in use world–wide until the 1950s.

In his next patent, obtained on the same day in 1858, Wheatstone introduced the components of what he was to call the universal telegraph, a device he uncharacteristically promoted on a personal level. The instrument, with two compact dials, the communicator and the indicator, did not require galvanic batteries and, as it indicated individual letters and numbers by means of a rotating needle, could be worked by any one who could read in perfect safety. Two instruments in circuit was the most effective arrangement, but using up to four was possible on short lines.

In this patent he gave careful credit to W F Cooke as his co-devisor of the earlier galvanic dial or index telegraphs that inspired the universal telegraph.

The first galvanic dial telegraph using as a receiver a disc rotated by clockwork, regulated by an electrically-controlled escapement, contained in a clock-like mahogany case, and as a sender a small capstan making and breaking a circuit was patented by Cooke and Wheatstone as far back as January 1840. Cooke gave entire credit to Wheatstone for its invention, and was dismissive of its commercial potential.

The dial telegraph was improved by Wheatstone in the following years by replacing the capstan and galvanic battery with a metallic wheel or dial working a magneto device. Gently turning the wheel generated pulses of electricity that allowed the disc to turn step-by-step to each letter or number.

This electro-magnetic telegraph, as it was then called, was used on the short line by the side of the Great Western Railway between Paddington and Slough, alternately with the original two-needle apparatus in 1843, and on the London to Portsmouth line for a short period in 1845. The Electric Telegraph Company allowed Wheatstone access to its circuits to further his development of the dial telegraph in 1846. It was widely copied and improved in Britain and abroad but was brought to perfection in Wheatstone’s universal telegraph of 1858.

The Universal Telegraph, the name he carefully chose, able to connect private individuals, ordinary citizens rather than technicians, was to be Charles Wheatstone’s main preoccupation for a decade.