Sir William Preece, engineer-in-chief of the British Post Office, was a busy man. He stared down at the drawings and the description scrawled across the pages in front of him. Foolishness and an incredible waste of a brain, he thought to himself. What was he supposed to do with this garbage now? They said he needed to review it and provide a definitive statement. He sighed, dipped the nib of his fountain pen into the pot of ink and wrote “The electric light, a submission by Thomas Alva Edison, is an absolute ignis fatuus, a fairy tale”.