Report on an engineering hero - Assignment Example

Engineering Hero Engineering Heroes Cromwell Fleetwood Varley One of the highly renowned engineering figures of all time is Cromwell Fleetwood who started by operating in the field of spiritualism during the period of 1850 and was even recognized for his attachment with one of the greatest communication companies named Atlantic Telegraph Company and was even associated with the renowned power company named Electric and International Company (Shepard, 1991, p.1764). One of his greatest achievements was the exploration of the hypothesis that electric energy was the force that caused the outcome of table rapping.

He is even popular for having psychic abilities such as the power of healing the ill, which he tested on his own wife. An instance of his psychic power was that he experienced almost three shocks of revelations and later he went to find his wife where he found that the nurse of his wife experienced intoxication and his wife was found in a scared state (Pebblesspiritualcave.com, 2014). While he was associated with the field of spiritualism he made several contributions which are upheld and studied during present times.

During the period of 1869 he proved that hearing spiritual voices was not a result of an individual’s imagination and they actually occur. To prove this he stated that he experienced three raps and later he received a letter from D.D. Home which stated that the sender of the letter was informed by the spirits that Varley had experienced three raps and thus he concluded that spirits do exist (Andriopoulos, 2005). Later on he went to prove the phenomenon of life after death. To prove his phenomenon he conducted a study in New York which was based on voices that were created by people who were already dead.

He hypothesized that these voices were not created due to electricity or even magnetism and he concluded that after death, an individual’s spirits still exist but in a different world and they communicate with the humans on earth. Even though Varley continued to promote his findings in the field of spiritualism but he faced severe criticism. He was not only connected with the field of spiritualism, he even made ample amount of advancement in the field of communication. He started off by joining a new startup company named Electric Telegraphy during the period of 1846 and within a span of only 6 years he managed to occupy the position of chief engineer and by the end of 1861 he was running the entire company.

During his stay with the telegraph company he identified several ways to find out issues with devices in order to enhance the performance of the telegraph. He is even recognized for patenting a telegraph that had the ability to transfer speech and this telegraph was recognized as cymaphen (Jeffery, 1997). Later he was even involved in a committee that was created to investigate the failure of the very first telegraphic cable that was spread on the level of transatlantic. In the period of 1865 he and the committee created a new cable and the new cable stood out to be successful (Jeffery, 1997).

ReferencesAndriopoulos, S. (2005). Psychic Television. Critical Inquiry. 31, 618-637.Jeffery, J. V. (1997). The Varley family: Engineers and artists. Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 51, 263-279.Pebblesspiritualcave.com. 2014. History of Spiritualism. [online] Available at: http://www.pebblesspiritualcave.com/HistoryOfSpiritualism.html [Accessed: 25 Feb 2014].Shepard, L., Spence, L., & Fodor, N. (1991). Encyclopedia of occultism & parapsychology. Detroit, Gale Research Inc.