retroelectro
Wildman Whitehouse and the twenty-five-hundred- mile-long capacitor Written by David Ray, Cyber City Circuits
Pioneer or pretender?
Figure 1. Whitehouse
Wildman Whitehouse was a medical doctor and a self-taught electrician whose ambition ultimately led to pioneering achievements and significant failures. He put himself in the world of engineers and scientists, but he was neither. You will not find statues of this man. He was not knighted or celebrated. There are no places of honor bearing his name. Within weeks of the cable’s installation, he was exposed as a fraud, a fool, and a con man. Wildman Whitehouse was a nineteenth-century Elizabeth Holmes. His ‘experiments’ sunk the world’s first million-dollar business endeavor, The Atlantic Cable of 1858. The story of Wildman Whitehouse is a story of unchecked arrogance, ambition, humiliation, and disgrace.
Figure 2. Wildman Whitehouse’s Signature
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