Rejection of Electrical Telegraph

Date: August 5, 1816 • Location: Beijing, China

Sir John Barrow, secretary at the Admiralty, rejected a proposal to use Francis Ronalds's electrical telegraph, deeming it "wholly unnecessary".

Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet was an English geographer, linguist, writer and civil servant. He partook in the Macartney Embassy to China, then worked and studied in South Africa, and served as the Second Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 until 1845. Barrow wrote the memoir The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of HMS Bounty (1831), which is considered the classic account of the Mutiny on the Bounty.