X-Patent
On July 31, 1790 inventor Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont became the first person to be issued a patent in the United States. His patented invention was an improvement in the "making of Pot Ash by a new apparatus & process." The earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be produced in miniature.
William Fothergill Cooke
Wheatstone and Cooke's first patent was taken out within a month and was "for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through electric circuits". Cooke now tested the invention, with the London and Blackwall Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway, and the Great Western Railway companies, successively allowing the use of their lines for the experiment. A five needle model of telegraph was given up as too expensive. In 1838 an improvement reduced the number of needles to two, and a patent for this was taken out by Cooke and Wheatstone.