David Edward Hughes: inventor, engineer and scientist

Abstract
David Edward Hughes (1831–1900) was born in London. He was educated, and spent a short time working in America, where he developed and patented a novel form of printing telegraph. The telegraph was adopted first in America and then throughout Europe, and the resulting patent royalties provided a comfortable income for the rest of Hughes's life. Once the printing telegraph was established in America, Hughes left and settled in London in 1857. He spent the next 20 years working on the general improvement of telegraphs and became an expert in identifying and curing interference due to electromagnetic crosstalk. At the end of this period he invented two further devices, the microphone and the induction balance. By then he was concerned with gaining recognition not just as an inventor but as a scientist, and he presented these two instruments accordingly. As a result he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1880 and awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. Later he was made President of the Institution of Telegraph Engineers(later the IEE), created a manager of the Royal Institution and awarded the Albert Medal of the Society of Arts. Nowadays he is also remembered for some initial work in the field of wireless telegraphy.

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