Robert Louis Stevenson was a 19th century Scottish essayist, poet, novelist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Treasure Island. Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (1833 -1885) was Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He is known as the inventor of telpherage. Jenkin was an electrician and cable engineer, a lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist. In the spring of 1855, he was fitting out the S.S. Elba for his first telegraph cruise. In 1855, Henry Brett had attempted to lay cable across the Mediterranean Sea. Jenkin was part of the crew hired to retrieve the sunken cable.