Paul St George writes:
Tim. You ask about funding and about Alexander Stanhope… This is just a quick reply because the final stages of construction are throwing up new and surprisingly time-consuming problems. I wish you could see some of the experiments and tests. In fact, why don’t we meet again?
I cannot say very much about funding. It is such a secret world. One of the first conditions of any kind of backing is secrecy.
I can say that most of the support for the tunnel part of the project is not financial. There are many tunnels under London and New York, and probably many other transatlantic tunnels. Much of the help that I have received has been access to some of these tunnels. Other help has been expertise.
However much money I raised, I could not have paid for either of these. The cost would be too high and the people with the keys are not for sale.
Perhaps the people who backed me plan to use the tunnel for their own purposes as soon as it is built. Perhaps I am just being used in some way. No matter, I just want to complete the tunnel and install the two Telecroscopes. I have inherited this dream.
I found a photograph of my great grandfather when he was only nine years old.
He was with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, just before the launching of his Great Eastern. It makes me happy to see this picture. I can see what inspired Alexander Stanhope to invent and to design. He had seen how great men could change the world.
Just before the Great Eastern and just before the London New York Telectroscope...
The photograph also makes me sad. He was torn out of the photograph just as he was erased from most of the history books. I hope to restore his reputation.
I have also found a record of what, at first glance, looks like Alexander Stanhope’s ‘Eureka’ moment.
The drawing shows a tunnel from London to New York and has some objects
that could be rough sketches of the Telectroscope.
But I am not sure, the drawing is not dated or signed and there are many anachronisms.
The Union Flag seems to have too many stars, I am not sure the Statue of Liberty was around then and, if it was, whether it was a symbol for America. The man in America is in daylight, but has the light on. Did they have such lights at the end of the nineteenth-century?
Perhaps it was not drawn by my great grandfather, but could have been produced by some money people who had heard about the idea or who were trying to raise funds to produce the project. But, whatever the provenance, it is a great drawing because it shows the idea behind the Telectroscope in an amazingly simple and persuasive way. Maybe I too can use it for pamphlets or posters.
I have found an etching that I know to be authentic (see left).
The drawing is part of Alexander Stanhope’s un-filed Patent.
One of the wretched people who copied ASSG’s idea did file a Patent.
I know Szczepanik copied from AS St George because he has unknowingly included the spurious reference to Selenium.
Alexander Stanhope had written to Szczepanik for technical help and, to identify plagiarism, he included the false information as a form of forensic watermark. Szczepanik copied but did not know to remove the false information.
Only someone who really understands the Telectroscope would know that Selenium is useless for this purpose.
Even then, Szczepanik did not succeed in his deception. He claimed to have demonstrated his Telectroscope to the Central Committee of the Paris Exposition sometime before 1900.
"Seeing by wire", Pearson's Magazine, 1899, pp. 490-496.
Though, at the time, ‘The Institution of Electrical Engineers’ revealed that no such committee existed!
Well, the more I say the less I do so I will get on now. There are only a few weeks left...
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