C. F. Varley

Cromwell Fleetwood Varley (6 April 1828 - 2 September 1883) was an English engineer, particularly associated with the development of the electric telegraph and the transatlantic telegraph cable.

Family

Born Kentish Town, London, the second of ten children of Cornelius Varley and the brother of S.A. Varley. His family believed themselves the descendants of Oliver Cromwell and General Charles Fleetwood, hence his given names. The family were Sandemanians, part of the same congregation as Michael Faraday but Varley did not continue his association with the sect into adult life.

Telegraph engineer

Varley joined the newly-founded Electric Telegraph Company in 1846, becoming chief engineer for the London area by 1852 and for the entire company by 1861. He devised many techniques and instruments for fault-finding and for improving the performance of the telegraph. In 1870, he patented the cymaphen, a kind of telegraph that could transmit speech.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable failed in 1858 and Varley was appointed to an investigative committee, set up jointly by the first Atlantic cable in 1858, he was appointed to a joint investigative committee established by the Board of Trade and the Atlantic Telegraph Company.

The committee reported in 1861 and resulted in a second cable in 1865, Varley replacing Wildman Whitehouse as chief electrician. Despite the difficulties of the second cable, it was an ultimate success and Varley developed many improvements in technology. Varley was an astute businessman and the partnership that he formed with William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and Fleeming Jenkin to exploit their respective telegraphic inventions yielded large profits for the three men.

Spiritualism

He was sympathetic to the claims of Spiritualism and carried out investigations with fellow physicist William Crookes using a galvanometer to make measurements to the supposed phenomena.

X-rays

In 1871, he authored a scientific paper suggesting that cathode rays were streams of particles of electricity. Varley believed that cathode radiation was caused by the collision of particles. His belief was based on the idea that because the rays were deflected in the presence of a magnet, these particles have to be considered carriers of an electric charge. This led him to believe that the electrically charged particles should be deflected by the presence of an electric field. He was never able to prove this.

Scandal

On returning from one of his cable-laying expeditions, Varley found that his wife, Ellen née Rouse, had abandoned him for Ion Perdicaris. Married since 1855, the couple were divorced in 1873 and Ellen and Perdicaris emigrated to Tangier where the family subsequently became embroiled in the Perdicaris incident. In 1877, Varley married Heleanor Jessie.

Honours

• Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, (1865);
• Fellow of the Royal Society, (1871);
• Founder member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers which became the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

Bibliography

• Obituaries:
  • The Times, September 5, 1883
  • The Electrician, 11, 397–8
  • Electrical Review, 13, 203–4
  • Engineering, September 7, 1883, 222

---

• Hunt, B.J. (2004) "Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood (1828-1883)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 23 July 2005 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Jeffery, J.V. (1997) "The Varley family: engineers and artists", Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 51, 263–79
• Lee, A.G (1932) "The Varley brothers: Cromwell Fleetwood Varley and Samuel Alfred Varley", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 71, 958–64
• Munro, J. (1891). Heroes of the Telegraph. London: The Religious Tract Society.
• Noakes, R.J. (1999) "Telegraphy is an occult art: Cromwell Fleetwood Varley and the diffusion of electricity to the other world", British Journal for the History of Science, 32, 421–59