The Electric Telegraph Company was the world's first public telegraph company founded in the United Kingdom in 1846 by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and John Lewis Ricardo, MP for Stoke-on-Trent.
At creation the company purchased all the patents Cooke and Wheatstone had obtained to date.[1]
It merged with the International Telegraph Company in 1855 to become the Electric and International Telegraph Company.[2]
C.F. Varley was chief engineer in the 1860s.
When the British government took over in 1868 the board of directors, apparently, ordered the destruction of all of its historic documents, records and files.[1]
It was subsequently taken over by the British General Post Office in 1870.[2]
Records of the Electric Telegraph Company (33 volumes), 1846-1872, the International Telegraph Company (5 volumes), 1852-1858 and the Electric and International Telegraph Company (62 volumes), [1852]-1905 are held by BT Archives.