ABSTRACT
The Great Stuart Street house was the scene of much of Fleeming Jenkin's experimental work during the 1870s, with Alfred Ewing there first as assistant, later graduating to colleague and co-author. A joint paper, 'The Harmonic Analysis of Vowel Sounds' was read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and six articles on the subject by Jenkin and Ewing appeared in 1878, including one in Nature. In 1882 came the last great project, a system of electrical transportation which Jenkin called telpherage – 'the telpherage schemes and dreams which so absorbed his latter years'. The automatic working of telpherage, along with its safety features, Jenkin saw as selling points. The inspiration for telpherage had come to Jenkin from a popular myth that a pair of boots could be sent to a friend by hanging them on a telegraph wire. Jenkin 'was felt by everyone to be the soul of the enterprise'.
