In 1834, the English scientist Charles Wheatstone attempted to measure the speed of electricity by observing the timing of sparks at opposite ends of a long wire at King's College in London. Though his specific numerical result was later shown to be incorrect due to experimental limitations, Wheatstone's experiments demonstrated that electrical signals traveled at enormous but finite speed along wires. Conducted in the laboratories of King's College on the Strand in London, this work was an important early attempt to quantify the velocity of electrical propagation.

Wheatstone's attempt to measure the speed of electricity raised profound questions about the nature of electrical transmission that entered the literary imagination of the Victorian period. If electricity had a finite speed, then no communication could be truly instantaneous, a realization that subtly undermined the fantasy of perfect, immediate connection that the telegraph would later inspire. Wheatstone, who was also a pioneer of the concertina and deeply interested in acoustics and music, embodied the Victorian ideal of the scientist as a man of broad culture, and his work at King's College placed him at the intersection of London's scientific and literary worlds.