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Codex Lipack: The original manuscript journal of William Fothergill Cooke. Together with Professor Charles Wheatstone of King's College, London, William Fothergill Cooke was the English co-patentee of the world's first perfected commercial digital electric telegraph communications system. Shown is the title page to the 191 page journal that began its life on 25 September 1775, as a "Naam Lyst" or 'name list' for the "Amsterdamsche Societeit;" a late 18th century societal organization based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Nothing is known about the "Amsterdamsche Societeit," other that it was a short lived organization that ceased operation in the year 1781. This is reflected by the fact that the last dated page of the "Naam Lyst" is inscribed "van 1780 - tot 1781." After this last "Naam Lyst" entry page, the rest of the journal pages remained unused and blank of any writings or entries when it was abandoned by the defunct society.

It is not entirely certain as to when exactly William Fothergill Cooke acquired this journal, but it can be narrowed down to the year 1836, approximately sixty-one years after the "Amsterdamsche Societeit" stopped operating. As it came to be, in early 1836, while studying medical anatomical model making at Heidelberg University, Cooke attended a lecture demonstration on the principles of the Pavel Schilling telegraph given by Professor Georg Wilhelm Moncke. Cooke became so moved and inspired by what he had witnessed, that he decided to abandon anatomical model making to start work on perfecting the telegraph. Cooke headed back to England and arrived there on 22 April 1836 and immediately started his work on perfecting the telegraph.

The earliest written journal entry by Cooke is dated "November 30, 1836" - for an astronomy lecture presumed, via certain evidence on one of two pages for this entry - to have been given by Professor William Ritchie at the London University. It was through Professor Ritchie that Cooke would meet his main machinist: Frederick A. Kerby of St. Pancras district, London. Letters on record dated prior to 30 November 1836 that Cooke sent to his mother, documents that he had secured a machinist several months earlier than November 1836, so instructions for initial work given by Cooke to Kerby were done outside of this journal and thus suggests that this journal was acquired by Cooke after he returned to the United Kingdom on 22 April 1836.

Cooke also may have acquired this used journal - whether in a second-hand book shop or it was given to him as a gift - between the time of Professor Moncke's Heidelberg demonstration on the Schilling telegraph early in 1836 and Cooke's arrival in the United Kingdom on 22 April 1836.

When Cooke found or acquired the used gold gilt stamped leather bound journal with a binding measuring 8 3/8" wide x 12 3/4" long x 1" thick, he certainly must have found it to be attractive. Cooke saw that the pages themselves were bordered at all four margins with a beautiful bright red linear design motif and when acquiring the journal, decided to use the remaining blank pages of the journal for a notebook and sketchpad.

Ultimately this journal would be used by Cooke in his creation with co-inventor Charles Wheatstone - of the first perfected commercial electric digital telegraph communications system in the world.

The "Naam Lyst" title page shown for the "Amsterdamsche Societeit" bears wonderful early calligraphy from the year 1775. At the top of the page, Cooke had chose to begin drawing the basic necessities needed to make telegraph instruments: that being an array of screws in "brass" and "steel" formats.

Besides some rudimentary sketches found on the initial "Naam Lyst" pages, the unused pages of the journal Cooke were used to develop the final system details of the Cooke and Wheatstone London and Blackwall Railway telegraph installation that was put in to operation the first week of July, 1840. This installation, as well as that of the Minories and Great Western Railway telegraph installations are also covered in the journal by Cooke. The Great Western Railway was the first experimental system Cooke developed under the auspice of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose ship The Great Eastern several years later began to lay the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable beginning in 1858.

The builder's drawings found in Cooke's journal are for some of the actual artifacts that today are part of the collection of telegraph apparatus in the Science Museum, London, and other museums. Initial correspondence between Richard Warren Lipack, discoverer of the Cooke journal, and the Science Museum, London originally mutually referred to Cooke's manuscript journal as the "Kerby Journal," named after Frederick A. Kerby, the main instruments maker for the Cooke and Wheatstone partnership. Originally, when discovered, it was believed that Frederick A. Kerby was the author of the journal contents, as his name or initials are found on most of the pages. This was later proved to be an inaccurate designation when in early 2011, circumstances finally evolved that allowed for proper authentication to conducted by American historian Richard Warren Lipack and yielded that William Fothergill Cooke was in fact the true author of the journal contents in 1836 and there after. The authentication came about when suitable exemplar holograph letters from the estate of Mrs. Sophia Macnamara Hawes, sister to Isambard Kingdon Brunel were acquired by historian Lipack to complete the authentication by paleography.

Once the journal was authenticated by the paleography process conducted by Richard Warren Lipack, it was found appropriate that the journal be formally named after its discoverer and authenticator and thus was called and has come to be known as "Codex Lipack." The January 2013 issue (Volume 83, No. 1), of the English Newcomen Society's History of Engineering & Technology acknowledged a letter from American Professor Emeritus Thomas Biddle Perera announcing the discovery by Richard Warren Lipack of the discovery in America of William Fothergill Cooke's original and only extant manuscript journal comprising drawings and notes for the invention of the first perfected commercial digital electric telegraph communications system in the world, i.e. the basis of all digital and binary electric communications and the modern Internet system of communications.