The 24 July 1837 saw the first use of Cooke and Wheatstone’s electric telegraph, only patented the previous month, when Robert Stephenson introduced it on a trial basis for the Camden Incline before the winding engines were commissioned in October that year. But he decided to retain the pneumatic telegraph.
In 1846 the Electric and International Telegraph Company, which owned the Cooke and Wheatstone patents, was incorporated for public telegraphic communications using railway routes as corridors for the overhead lines.
Their Gloucester Road works, built in 1858 (2013) housed an extensive factory carrying out a great variety of skilled operations. The company was nationalised and taken over by the Post Office in 1870. The single storey building facing Gloucester Road was replaced by the present three-storey building in c1871. The complex at what is now 44 Gloucester Avenue is being redeveloped for office and residential use.