Quotes:Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood

Zirkoff, Boris

Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood. Electrical engineer, b. at Kentish Town, London, England, April 6, 1828; d. at Cromwell House, Bexley Heath, Kent, Sept. 2, 1883. He was the son of Cornelius Varley, watercolor-painter, and was named after two of his ancestors, Oliver Cromwell and General Fleetwood. He was educated at St. Saviour’s, Southwark. After leaving school he studied telegraphy, and was engaged in 1846 by the Electric and International Telegraph Co. in whose employ he remained until 1868, when he retired, spending much of his time producing new inventions.

The first improvement he introduced in telegraphy was the “killing” of the wire by giving it a slight permanent elongation; next he devised a method of localizing the faults in submarine cables; in 1854, he patented the double current key and relay, by which it became possible to telegraph from London to Edinburgh direct; then came the polarized relay, and his translating system for use in connection with the cables of the Dutch lines. In 1870, he patented an instrument called cymaphen, for the transmission of audible signals, and it is claimed for him that it contained the essentials of the modern telephone. Thus, one year before the date of the Bell patent, namely in 1870, music was transmitted by this instrument from the Canterbury Music Hall in Westminster Bridge Road to the Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre over an ordinary telegraph wire with complete success.

Varley’s name is chiefly remembered in connection with the Atlantic cable; the first cable, laid in August, 1858, was a failure. Varley conceived the idea of making an artificial line composed of resistances and condensers, which should exactly represent the working conditions of a submarine cable. This paved the way to further and successful attempts at Trans-Atlantic telegraphy. In 1871, Varley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of various technical papers on electricity, etc., mainly in the Philosophical Transactions and the Electrician.

By his first wife, from whom he was divorced, Varley had two sons and two daughters; his second wife was Jessie, daughter of Captain Charles Smith of Forres, Scotland. His two brothers, Frederick Henry and Samuel Alfred, were also inventors. Varley was buried at Christ Church, Bexley.

530 Varley’s interest in Spiritualism dates from about 1850. He undertook experiments which showed that the phenomenon of table-rapping was not due to any detectable electrical or magnetic force. He later developed an electrical control designed to detect any attempt by the medium to leave his or her assigned position under cover of séance-room darkness; this was used in the investigation of Florence Cook and other mediums (see The Spiritualist, London, March 20, 1874); Varley maintained in this connection that his apparatus showed that Miss Cook was not only in the dark chamber while “Katie King” was in sight, but also perfectly quiescent. Varley testified before the Dialectical Society in 1869, relating his positive success with D. D. Home. He himself experienced numerous psychic manifestations in his own home, believed himself to be possessed of mesmeric healing power, and observed a number of apparitions. His wife demonstrated clairvoyance and prophetic trance.

(Rf.: Times, Sept. 3 and 11, 1883; Engineering, Sept. 7, 1883; Telegraphic Journal, Sept. 15, 1883; Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, etc. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1871, pp. 157-72.)

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 1, pp. 529-530

Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood (1828-1883). See Vol. I, pp. 529-30, for biographical data.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 3, p. 535