The Universal Private Telegraph Company, Limited was formed in 1861 to exploit Professor Charles Wheatstone’s 1858 Universal Telegraph. The company was to "carry out a system by which banks, merchants, public bodies and other parties may have the means of establishing a telegraph for their own private purposes from their houses to their offices, manufactories or other places". The company's first directors were Charles Wheatstone and William Fairbairn, CE, the Manchester ironmaster. It employed Thomas Page, engineer, Lewis Hertslet, secretary, and Nathaniel Holmes, electrician.