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05-22-2008, 04:53 PM
Giant 'telescope' links London, New York
The age of video has come full circle.
This could replace ham radio.
Will one be able to obtain a QSL for seeing someone on the otherside?
LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the first splinters of sunlight spread their warmth upon the South Bank of the River Thames this morning, it became clear that after more than a century, the vision of Victorian engineer Alexander Stanhope St George had finally been realized.
In all its optical brilliance and brass and wood, there stood the Telectroscope -- a 37 feet long by 11 feet tall dream of a device allowing people on one side of the Atlantic to look into its person-size lens and, in real time, see those on the other side via a recently completed tunnel running under the ocean. (Think 19th century webcam. Or maybe Victorian-age video phone.)
And all the credit goes to British artist Paul St George. If he had not been rummaging through great-grandpa Alexander's personal effects a few years ago, the Telectroscope might still exist only on paper, hidden away deep inside some old box.
But fortunately St George could not bear that thought -- and thus decided he should be the one to finish what his great grandfather had started. It was quite simply the right thing to do. Plus it would make a pretty cool public art exhibit.
During the twilight hours on Tuesday, massive dirt-covered metal drill bits miraculously emerged -- one by the Thames near the Tower Bridge and the other on Fulton Ferry Landing by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York -- completing the final sections of great-grandfather Alexander's transatlantic tunnel.
The drills were removed on Wednesday night and replaced with identical Telectroscopes at both ends, allowing Londoners and New Yorkers to wake up this morning, look over to the far and distant shore and stare at each other for a while (the telescope-like contraption permits visual but not vocal communication).
full story (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/22/scope.project/index.html)
The age of video has come full circle.
This could replace ham radio.
Will one be able to obtain a QSL for seeing someone on the otherside?
LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the first splinters of sunlight spread their warmth upon the South Bank of the River Thames this morning, it became clear that after more than a century, the vision of Victorian engineer Alexander Stanhope St George had finally been realized.
In all its optical brilliance and brass and wood, there stood the Telectroscope -- a 37 feet long by 11 feet tall dream of a device allowing people on one side of the Atlantic to look into its person-size lens and, in real time, see those on the other side via a recently completed tunnel running under the ocean. (Think 19th century webcam. Or maybe Victorian-age video phone.)
And all the credit goes to British artist Paul St George. If he had not been rummaging through great-grandpa Alexander's personal effects a few years ago, the Telectroscope might still exist only on paper, hidden away deep inside some old box.
But fortunately St George could not bear that thought -- and thus decided he should be the one to finish what his great grandfather had started. It was quite simply the right thing to do. Plus it would make a pretty cool public art exhibit.
During the twilight hours on Tuesday, massive dirt-covered metal drill bits miraculously emerged -- one by the Thames near the Tower Bridge and the other on Fulton Ferry Landing by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York -- completing the final sections of great-grandfather Alexander's transatlantic tunnel.
The drills were removed on Wednesday night and replaced with identical Telectroscopes at both ends, allowing Londoners and New Yorkers to wake up this morning, look over to the far and distant shore and stare at each other for a while (the telescope-like contraption permits visual but not vocal communication).
full story (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/22/scope.project/index.html)