UK Metal Detectorist Claims Discovery

Archaeologists in Somerville MA in the USA have located buried fragments of the telephone line set up in Boston in 1877 between the home of Charles Williams Jr. with his Boston office, and published it as physical proof of the existence of the use of telephones in America 147 years ago.

Not to be outdone, the following year, Russian archaeologists from the V.V. Putin State Hermitage Museum published the information that, after having dug to a depth of 1.10 m in the courtyard of the Winter Palace they had found traces of copper wire in a layer containing fragments of porcelain they claimed dated back to the end of the reign of Catherine II. They came to the conclusion that this proved Russia already had a sophisticated telephone network more than 200 years ago, before the decadent west.

A few weeks later, 'The Time-Searchers of Northern England' society reported the following on their website: "After digging down to a depth of four feet in the Skipton area of North Yorkshire in 2022, metal detectorist and amateur digger William D. Shephard reported that he had found absolutely nothing at all, except a cartwheel penny of George III. He has therefore concluded that 250 years ago, Britain had already gone wireless."