Stephen Herbert writes:
Not many people know this but Alexander Stanhope St George put an intentional error into his draft Patent application. The red herring is the Selenium. He did this to 'watermark' anyone who tried to copy his invention. Anyone who copied without sufficient knowledge would keep the error in their text.
You will see from the various false versions of the Telectroscope invention that the others all refer to Selenium and that all there so called inventions would not work.
(For more on selenium proposals for distant vision apparatus, see my 3-vol "A History of Early Television" (Routledge 2000)).
Re: David Burder's note - it's doubtful whether the extra expense of a double tunnel would have been viable. There is some evidence that Theodore Brown later tried something similar between Salisbury and Bournemouth (using his stereophotoduplicon -for details of which see my 1997 biography "Theodore Brown's Magic Pictures"), but sadly (as always) Theo ran out of funds.
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