An international research team led by Lancaster University has corrected a 178-year-old historical record about one of the earliest documented cases of solar activity disrupting electrical technology.
In 1871, an anonymous author published an account in Nature describing a "very intense magnetic disturbance" that supposedly delayed a train in Exeter, England on October 18, 1841. If accurate, this would have been the earliest known instance of space weather affecting human technology.
However, investigators from Lancaster University, RMIT University, the British Geological Survey, Natural Resources Canada, Baylor University, and RAL Space discovered a critical error. The Exeter-to-Starcross railway line mentioned in the original report did not open until 1846, five years after the alleged event.
"In this study, we effectively investigated what had to be a typo in a Nature paper from 1871. We know it was a typo because the Exeter-to-Starcross train line mentioned in that paper didn't exist until 1846, which is 5 years afterwards," Associate Professor Brett Carter of RMIT University said.
By comparing railway timetables, newspaper reports, aurora observations, and digitized magnetic field measurements, the team determined the train delay actually occurred on October 18, 1848, exactly seven years later than originally reported. The research appears in the American Geophysical Union journal Space Weather.
This revision moves the Exeter incident from first to second place in the historical record. An earlier documented incident involving telegraph interference on Britain's Midland Railway in March 1847 now holds the distinction of earliest credible example.
"What this research highlights is that space weather is not a new threat but a long-standing natural hazard. Society has been experiencing the effects of space weather on technology for almost as long as electrical technologies have existed," Professor Jim Wild of Lancaster University said.
The 1840s marked the emergence of electrical telegraph networks and early railways, creating infrastructure vulnerable to solar disturbances. The Exeter case demonstrates how solar activity affected critical systems even in technology's infancy.