Telectroscope's Suppression of Absence

Telectroscope started out as a dream of digging a transatlantic tunnel that turned into a terrifying and tragic nightmare. An eccentric 19th century inventor, Alexander Stanhope St. George began with the grand scheme to build a two-way tunnel connecting London to New York.

According to Alexander's plan, once the tunnel had boroughed through Altantic shore and the earths core, an amplifying set of mirrors and lenses would act as a giant telescope to transmit an image (almost like a fiber optic cable) from the City of London to the Brooklyn Bridge or from one side of the world to the other, so tells Paul St. George.

As legend has it, after raising some capital, Stanhope St. George hired a workforce of unemployed laborers from Liverpool and began digging the tunnel to America. Eventually, tragedy struck when on March 5th, 1892, the Atlantic ocean breached the tunnel roof and 15 men lost their lives.

As most visionary inventors would do in the face of tragedy and even death, despite all reasonable laws of physics, the unyielding Stanhope St. George vowed to soldier on and persevere with his dream. However, fearing for their lives his workers mutinied and Alexander, filled with shame from failure, died in a asylum in Bethnal Green after suffering deteriorating mental health in 1912.

What began as an idea for a “device for the suppression of absence” as Alexander wrote in his resurrected journal complete with elaborate drawings and plans, and then seemingly ended in a tragedy searching for a lesson, fell into the hands of Paul St. Goerge, Alexanders grandson. Where would Stanhope St. George legacy lead?



Paul St. George a professor of 19th-century chronophotography at London Metropolitan University picked up where his grandfather left off and with grants totally over $700 thousand from the British government, private sponsors and Artichoke has built the Telectroscope connecting the Brooklyn and London's Tower Bridge via visual amplification (transatlantic fiber optic cable perhaps?), arriving in time to celebrate the 125 anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Okay, so this story is almost true but not quite. Why let the truth get in the way of some elaborate and expensive fun? You may experience Paul St. George's Telectroscope at the Brooklyn Bridge in New York or the Tower Bridge in London from May 22nd through June 15th, 2008 or visit the telectroscope's flickr group.