Charles Tilston Bright was the third son of Brailsford and Emma Charlotte Bright. Tilston was his mother's maiden name. His father is described by the Dictionary of National Biography as a "druggist". He was born in Wanstead, London, on June 8, 1832, less than a year after Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction and in the same year that Morse had his first thoughts about electric telegraphy.
Though later he was to mix with university professors of world renown there was to be no university education for Bright. At the age of 15 he went straight from the Merchant Taylors' School into the employment of the Electric Telegraph Company, the company formed to exploit the Cooke and Wheatstone patents. He had joined the oldest telegraph company in existence: it had been formed just two years earlier.
After about five years he moved to the rival Magnetic Telegraph Company. His brother Edward, also an engineer, became manager. In this post, Bright helped to wire up Britain, laying an extensive network of land-based telegraph lines, with thousands of miles of underground wires between major centers including London, Manchester and Liverpool. After becoming Engineer-in-Chief of the company he got his first taste of submarine telegraphy, laying a six-wire cable between Portpatrick in Scotland and Donaghadee in Ireland. Under the Bright brothers, the Magnetic Company prospered.
This cable between Britain and Ireland came after earlier failures. The water was deeper and the currents faster than in previous operations. Bright took charge of the cable-laying machinery. The whole cable was manhandled out of the hold of a steamer, over a pulley, round a drum which measured the speed, and then several times round a brake drum before passing into the sea. It was laid on May 22, 1853, and had a long and successful life. Bright stayed with the Magnetic Company as chief engineer until 1860 and served a further ten years as consultant.
Patents
During his time with the company he received a number of patents concerned with improving telegraph equipment. Two are particularly noteworthy. One awarded in 1855 suggested replacing visual indications at the detector with acoustic ones using two bells, which became known as Bright's Bells. One had a high tone, the other a low one and they were used on the West Indies network. The other, earlier, patent was awarded jointly to the brothers in 1852 and contains what seems to be the first suggestion of a resistance box for giving a variety of fixed resistance values. This patent covered 24 distinct inventions and marked the arrival of the brothers, and especially Charles, as important figures in telegraph engineering.
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