do you believe in the telectroscope?

The Telectroscope Kid by Ashwin Tharoor-Menon

This is a true story that I wrote that was published in the India Currents Magazine in the USA. I was 9 years old when this happened.

In the 19th Century, a man read in the newspaper about something called an Electroscope. He thought it was called a Telectroscope and he misunderstood the meaning of what it was.

He thought it was a giant tunnel that goes under the ocean and when you look through it you can see people on the other side of the ocean. Nobody ever invented it but on 2nd June 2008 I went to Tower Bridge in London to see an amazing thing called a Telectroscope.

It is a giant webcam so when you look into it you can see across the ocean to see people next to Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

When I looked into it there were lots of people on the other side. I saw Brooklyn Bridge in the background. In London it was really sunny with blue skies but in Brooklyn it was raining but normally it is the other way round!

People on both sides of the Telectroscope had whiteboards to write on to communicate to each other. There was one boy who looked about 10 years old holding up a board with his mobile phone number on it. My mum texted him and he texted back! I found out that his name was Andres and he lived in Manhattan. When we texted each other he gave me his dads email address and I gave him mine. I was really excited because I had made a friend across the ocean through a Telectroscope. My Mum and I were laughing and smiling because I had made a friend in an amazing way.

Over the next weeks Andres and I exchanged many emails. I found out many things about Andres such as his hobbies and his family. I got to know that he likes a lot of sports like basketball, American football and soccer. I found out that he had a baby sister and that he lived on 45th street between 8th and 9th in Manhattan. 

I told him about my hobbies and my family and I told him that I was coming to NY in the summer so I might be able to meet him.

When I went to New York, it took a long time to find him because I didn't have access to my email and he told me where he lived and his phone number on one of his emails. I called him and we made a date to see each other. We agreed to meet at 2pm outside Wall Street Station . It was a Saturday. On the tube to Wall Street station, with my mum and my brothers, I was feeling nervous and excited about meeting Andres.

When we got out of the tube station we were walking to find him. I couldn't remember exactly what he looked like because I had only seen him for 3 or 4 minutes. I was hoping he would recognize me. He did recognize me. Andres and his dad waved to me as soon as we got there. When I was walking towards them I was feeling tense but when I met him my tension left me because he was very friendly. He talked to me a lot about different things in New York. 

His dad took all of us to where he works. It was on a very high floor of a building and there was an amazing view of Brooklyn Bridge and the river that separates Manhattan and Brooklyn. His dad showed all of us where the other end of the Telectroscope used to be. After that we went back down and took a water taxi to Brooklyn. While we were on it there was a marvellous view of the Statue of Liberty and all the tall buildings in Manhattan. 

When my mum was my age, living in India she had a pen pal in America and they used to write letters to each other and it used to take 3 weeks for letters to reach them. Now I have an e-pal in America and it takes a few seconds for my letter to get to their computer. It's unbelievable how much technology has changed in the last 30 years.

I asked Andres to maybe get his own email id so he could reply to me more often. I said goodbye to Andres and his family and we got back on the water taxi and went back to Manhattan. It was an overwhelming experience to meet Andres and his family. Just from seeing a boy through a Telectroscope to going to where he lives and actually meeting him was incredible. Maybe one day he might come and stay in my house and I might go and stay in his.

Port

Getting closer!

Coming Home (via the Tunnel!)

Paul St George is coming home after his much feted trip to America. But did anyone out there actually see him on site at the Brooklyn end? If you have any photographs of the great man in the Big Apple please do share them with us. Here he is in London (thanks cowfish!):

I am still unclear BTW as to whether Paul travels via the Tunnel or takes the plane like the rest of us. One has to assume there is some rudimentary form of transport down there.

Just a few weeks ago I might have thought of Paul as Charles Bronson in The Great Escape, tap-tapping with his trowel and being tugged to and fro on a trolley hundreds of metres below the ground. But given the grand scale and fine workmanship of the Telectroscopes, I now see in my mind’s eye a motorised carriage – the kind of thing owners of the early Wild West railways used to live in while the navvies banged out the track in front of them.

Or does Paul travel more ‘Lenin-style’ in something steel plated, fortified with blacked out windows, chuntering along slowly beneath the Atlantic, plotting and co-ordinating his own curious revolution?

But I digress. On a more practical level, it must be assumed that the doorway to the side of the Telectroscope is where Paul will once again surface. My daughter and I tried to open said door the other day, if only to see to see what lay on the other side, but it was firmly sealed.

The pressure gauge upon the door did twitch a bit as we tugged, deviating slightly from its typical range of 2 to 4 bar. Which begs more questions: how is Paul managing the extraordinary fluctuations in pressure that must occur in his subterranean world?   And how is the light, being squeezed, travelling and bending its way across the Atlantic, still producing such fine images?

An Account of a Visit to the Telectroscope

Benjamin Carnys has very kindly sent me a link to his entertaining and informative article about a visit to the Telectroscope. It starts thus:

"London is a town of many patient wonders. The architecture of a thousand years gives the city a chaotic, hapharzard quality; as a visitor, you can never be sure what marvels you might find waiting around the next corner.

It was, therefore, considerable good fortune with which I learned how the serendipity of the City might lie in wait on the banks of the River Thames, a stone’s throw from the Tower Bridge. There may be found the Telectroscope, a wonder almost unparalleled, even among all the great cities of the Earth."

The full article can be read here>>

Journey to America

Paul St George writes:

Tim, I am going to the Brooklyn end of the tunnel tomorrow. Perhaps we can wave at each other? Would anyone like to meet me in Brooklyn? I would like to see people trying some more experimental ways of communicating through the Telectroscope. Perhaps this week?

Horace Sprocket

Paul St George writes:

I have just this moment received this from Stephen Herbert. His Uncle Horace has seen the photograph of my great-grandfather.

My dear Paul, Stephen has kindly allowed me to send this electronic mail message on his computing machine:

"The airbrushing of the Brunel image is of course one of the great arts/history debates of recent times. Should we 'tidy up' history in this way?

The photograph of your great-grandfather as a boy prompted me to dig out my only photo of him - a treasured ambrotype taken a few years later during his apprenticeship. His inclination to bore holes was already evident.

Pleased to see the project progressing. Re: Digging a tunnel to the moon - technically feasible, but to create a vortex that long is hardly necessary. Most debris is relatively near to the earth. A tunnel a few hundred miles in length would take a vessel past the most dangerous area. I well remember Arthur C. Clarke's proposals for such a thing sixty years ago, even before his 'preposterous' plans for an artificial communications satellite. I would like to see my oldest friend, who lives in New York, for one last time. Perhaps you would allow my wheelchair into the Telectroscope?

With kind regards, Horace Sprocket (Uncle Horace - perhaps you remember - Christmas 1979?)"

I notice that the ancestor appears to be holding a drill !!!! The tunnel to the moon is something that Paul Conneally asked about. The question of wheelchairs is not for me - everyone will be welcome and catered for.