do you believe in the telectroscope?

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.

A Triumph in Transatlantic Telectroscopic Relations

Saturday was a triumph in international telectroscopic relations with steampunks of various stripes and colour gathering at both ends of the tunnel. Very good descriptions of events have been published by mlleviolet and andyravensable

Without the aid of pens & whiteboards (curiously absent) the persons concerned still managed to conduct an experiment and make a connection.

Watch the video carefully. At both ends of the tunnel there appears to be a man in matching flat hat, waistcoat and trousers:

How does Paul St Geoge manage to be at both ends of the tunnel at once?

I Believe in the Telectroscope

So I have been and I have seen. I believe:

Now the only big question is what the hell do we use this exciting device for? Scribbling short messages on whiteboards surely cannot be the total sum of our endeavours.

Admittedly, some enterprising individuals have attempted synchronised dancing (to YMCA by the Village People?!) and one Englishman has tried to start a Transatlantic fight. But I'm looking for something more meaningful, somehow life-transforming! Am I asking too much?

I read somewhere recently that you can tell a new technology is reaching a level of acceptance and maturity when someone uses it to get married. History is littered with examples of the first marriage by telephone, the first marriage on TV, the first marriage on the Internet etc etc.

I am already married. So that is an experiment others will have to try. Me, I'd be keen to initiate some kind of game.

Telectroscopic chess anyone?

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?

A Trip To Paul's Workshop

It was with some trepidation that I set out for deepest darkest Millwall in search of Paul St George’s workshop. But amazement took the place of fear when I finally found him, sitting inside his Telectroscope! Or was that simply an image of him sitting at the other end of his Tunnel!?

The device itself is a lovely confection of brushed metal, shiny pipes, valves and stops and lenses. The drawings that we’ve seen previously are actually surprisingly accurate. I assumed Paul’s great grandfather had perhaps used a bit of artistic license but it turns out that what he’d imagined in his head is pretty much what Paul has built.

       

As for the Tunnel, everything is on course. Although Paul won’t commit to a precise date, he’s adamant that he will break through to the surface by the end of May.

So stay alert! If you spot any signs in or around the Tower Bridge area of seriously unofficial excavations, be sure to alert me here at the blog.

Walking the line

I appear to have touched a nerve with my old golfing partner Paul Conneally:

Hi Tim, It's really interesting how by chance we both find connection with tunnels. The piece I collaborated with Maurice Maguire on 'Walk the Line' saw us taking residents on a walk following the line of a canal tunnel that passes under the 3 Estates in Kings Norton.

It formed part of Maurice's bigger piece 'Changing Landscapes' where he surveyed the route of the canal and marked it on the surface through the estate with blue markers - many showing the depth below of the actual canal.

Many people on the estate had no idea that the canal ran under them and those that had a notion that it did didn't know it's actual route. There are so many 'tunnels' of all kinds right under our feet and if we consider the drains, and cable conduits the amount is hard to come terms with.

I became fairly obsessed at one time with marks on pavements and roads made by gangs of labourers and egineers to guide workmen in digging to lay digital cables. I was struck by how much of the digital revolution was being built on the traditional skills of men with shovels - just like the canals, roads, and train tracks.

All that's best, Paul

april fool or genius (or both)

Meet Paul, a crazy but rather lovely man I met at my London club:

Paul is obviously an expert storyteller. We were accidentally sharing a table one lunchtime and he started telling me about his tunnel: a rather big one that he ‘inherited’ from his great grandfather. And when I say big, I mean a tunnel that stretches most of the way between America and the UK.