do you believe in the telectroscope?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

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?

Re: Stanhope connections

Paul St George replies :

Tim has seen the Wikipedia entry by Likopoulos about my great grandfather.

As well as answering any questions (if I can), I would like help from any genealogists or historians who can tell me more about Alexander Stanhope SG and his work. I have some of his papers, some drawings and a few newspaper clippings, but little more.

makyoh topography

[I have invited Paul to be an author of the blog so that he can directly answer your queries and comments should he so wish. I will mark them in rusty red so that they're easy to spot.]

Paul St George replies :

Ah Stephen, you invoke Makyoh topography. I could stay silent no longer. An arcane science but there are exciting links and coincidences (sufficient to drive one mad). My friends at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have told me all about the magic mirrors and the pigtailed LEDs. Makyoh topography also uses a rather suspect semiconductor (you also know about the red Selenium herring!). Have we met?  

The Selenium Watermark

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.