do you believe in the telectroscope?

Found it

Look at the change of colour. The whiter material shows where the real tunnel entrance has been plugged. Someone has made a hopeless attempt to disguise this as a modern cave with a rectangular doorway.

Port

Getting closer!

The End?

On the last night I took my nephew Shea (son of Paul) down to the Telectroscope since he was keen to see it before its planned closure. The weather in Brooklyn was so bad that there was nobody there to wave at - an omen perhaps.

The Telectroscope then proceeded to break down - something that I don't think has happened before.

I supposed I should not have been surprised. His father may be an engineering genius but Shea is quite the opposite. Last time he came to stay, he managed to disable the London Eye before we had even alighted upon it. The stay before that he caused the Hayward Gallery to be evacuated, ruining three Anthony Gormley installations in the process.

At least Shea got to see *something*:

How apt that my last encounter down the tunnel should be with a mole. The tunnel is being returned to nature and Paul St George, the 'Mole Man' has disappeared  from whence he came. 

The Telectroscope had a natural lifespan after all. It goes back now to being an idea in one man's head, a drawing in a notebook. But we can all attest to its existence.

We believe in the Telectroscope, don't we?

Not One Tunnel, But Many Tunnels!

Before he flitted off to New York again (via the Tunnel presumably), I was lucky enough to bump into Paul St George at a drinks party where he was being much feted by suited business types and mustachioed impresarios.

There was a whiff of Money and Intrigue about the place, fuelled by Paul's revelation that there is not just one Tunnel but many Tunnels!

Apparently it is perfectly possible for a Telectroscope to be 'retuned' as 'twere to connect to locations other than New York. Rumours abounded at the drinks party about plans to open Telectroscopes as far away as Tokyo, Rome - and even Southampton.

It's clear that Paul is attracting the attention of some truly unsavoury types. He seems confident however that he will remain in full control of his fantastical device and not fall prey to base commercial pressures. I left the party wondering if I would ever see Paul again.

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?

Other Telectroscopes, Other Tunnels (And Their Uses...)

The world’s media has gone crazy for the Telectroscope. Already I have bookmarked over 20 different  news items, including reports in German, French and Chinese, as well as over 40 blog posts. I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

One of the more interesting speculations arising from all this attention has been whether more Telectroscopes should be built and for what purpose.

Tom Taylor writes: "I envisioned a telectroscopic network spread throughout the world, connecting all manner of cities, not just London and New York. I imagined simple devices, without the steampunk-esque glamour, perhaps the size of a bus stop advertising horde. They would stand upright, dotted around parks and public spaces, each one forming a permanent connection to its partner thousands of miles away."

Others, such as commenters Ed and Lanalasagna suggest that Telectroscopes could be used to promote global peace.

In the one brief phone conversation I have had with Paul this week he rather breathlessly alluded to requests from national governments for their very own Telectroscopes. Presumably this would also mean many, many more Tunnels. Is this the reason, perhaps, why so many countries including Britain are racing to claim sovereignty over vast areas of the sea bed?

I fear for Paul. The more attention his wondrous device receives, the more likely it is that powerful and avaricious forces may seek to control what he has created. Could the Tunnel be nationalised, I wonder? Would a foreign power have the temerity to steal or appropriate a Telectroscope and perhaps even use it for warlike purposes? Remember the Iraqi supergun?!

As a young boy I was made painfully aware - thanks to my brother Paul - what a magnifying glass on a sunny day can do to a man (and a gerbil) when placed in the wrong hands.

I sincerely hope that Paul has taken steps to ensure that the Telectroscope cannot be reverse engineered.

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?

And tomorrow the telectroscope...

I enjoyed my lunch hour down at the site of the London Telectroscope meeting a couple of fellow believers, who were alerted by my Twitter feed and also via the Facebook group to the possibility of encountering Paul St George.

The surfacing has not been the terrifying experience that the cartoon above suggests.

Rather we all had a very gentle and rewarding social experience.

Tomorrow the drilling will cease and the Telectroscopes will be dragged into place. I wish I could be there to see it.

Perhaps someone else out there will do me the favour of taking some photos or some footage?

Paul has surfaced! The tunnel is complete!

I received a mysterious phone call at 7:00 a.m this morning from Paul St George.

He sounded tired, but elated. He urged me to come down to Tower Bridge to bear witness to the completion of the tunnel. When I arrived, this is what I saw:

Paul has emerged BlackSapper-like from his subterranean world at last.

Tomorrow he will prepare the ground for the Telectroscope and he has agreed to answer any questions that people may wish to pose him about his project.

++I suggest that as many of us as possible converge on the London site at 1pm (21/05/08) and really give him a grilling.++

If you take any photos, please do post them on Flickr and tag them with the word 'telectroscope'.

If you have any videos, please do post them on YouTube and tag them with the word 'telectroscope'

Please do join us tomorrow if you can. 1pm sharp.

Where Paul Is Drilling & When He Will Surface

It's official  - Paul's Telectroscopes will formally open to the public on 22nd May. You can even book an appointment to view rather than queue like the rest of us.

More exciting still, a New York newspaper has let slip that Paul is expected to 'break the surface' in both London and New York some time on Tuesday 20th May. Keep your eyes and ears peeled!

I have been using the somewhat sketchy details that Paul has given me in previous blog entries to add a bit more detail to a map that shows the precise route of the Tunnel.

View Larger Map

There are a few surprises.