For those fortunate enough to be in New York city, or London between now and Sunday – you may want to check out the Telectroscope.
All credit goes to Leo Laporte and Dick DeBartolo for introducing me to this story on twitlive.
Think art meets technology. In a nutshell, an artist named Paul St George discovered sketches that belonged to his great-grandfather, an engineer, Alexander Stanhope St George. The sketches were of the Telectroscope.
= an enormous telescope with mirrors and lenses – that allowed people to see one another from either side of a drastically long tunnel. And so we get Paul’s envisioning of his great-grandfather’s sketches, with a Telectroscope reaching from New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, to London’s Tower Bridge.
The actual technical information behind the machine can be found in the link previously posted. But I just wanted to comment more about how awesome this idea and envisioning is. Obviously no sound can travel through it, but from the conversation Dick and Leo had on the show – random people were simply pointing at each other and jumping around to make their presence known.
While many would say that this is far from the most useful application of technology, I personally think it’s a great application/presentation of art.
When I first heard the story, I literally thought that a walk-able tunnel was dug underneath the Atlantic, and I was disappointed to find out otherwise. (Imagine an underwater movator stretching across the cities.)
Nonetheless, Telectroscopes are still awesome – go see it if you have the chance.
Telectroscopes today, Teleportation tomorrow.
Filed under: random, technology | Tagged: art, london, new york, technology, telectroscope, travel
