Years ago I read every issue of Electrical Review magazine from the 1880s and 1890s.
Or at least leafed through. I was in the library anyway (you can prise my British Library reader pass from my cold dead hands) in the middle of a long unrelated project, and sometimes you just need to use the fact there are centuries of STUFF in the stacks you can just ask for, and spend a day like a pig in the proverbial.
The reason being:
I had recently read Carolyn Marvin’s excellent social history When Old Technologies Were New (1988; on Google Books), subtitle: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century.
The 1880s saw the maturity of the electrical telegraph; the 1890s the roll-out of the electric light.
Meanwhile they were (a) understanding electricity as a phenomenon; and (b) inventing wildly to figure out what it could do. Very much like the internet today.
There’s a throwaway comment in the book about, well:
In response to an inquiry about the best word to express “execution by electricity,” the Electrical Review reported a variety of suggestions, including elektrophon, electricize, electrony, electrophony, thanelectrize, thanelectricize, thanelectrisis, electromort, electrotasy, fulmen, electricide, electropoenize, electrothenese, electrocution, electroed, electrostrike, “and finally joltacuss of voltacuss.”
Reference given in the footnotes:
“Which Shall It Be?”, Electrical Review, Aug. 17, 1889, p. 20
(Ultimately, of course, and this is a bit grim, execution is execution. The method is hardly what matters. But watching people figure out naming is always fascinating because you are watching people figure out how to describe and work with the world.)
So I wanted to read the original correspondence.
I didn’t manage to. It turns out there were two Electrical Review magazines. The exchange re executioners was in the US version of the title; I was reading the one from the UK.
YET: time well spent.
What struck me was the mix of content.
In each issue I could find
Industry news: a new telegraph cable laid, new lights turned on
Scientific progress: a new demonstration and some possible fundamental laws
Letters and “parish news” – a place for the community to have a conversation and to network around new ventures and ideas
Who has been hit by lightning this week? Summary news items, including (say) that lightning struck a tree on such-and-such a date near a child. The child was unharmed though a nearby metal bowl left scorched. That kind of thing.
The impression I came away with was that this was a community trying to figure out the world together.
At this time with electricity, it wasn’t clear what datapoints were salient. Was it important that the bowl was scorched in the lightning report? Unknown! So report it anyway! The scientific method: gather observations; taxonomise and hypothesise; predict and iterate. This era was step 1 going into step 2.
It’s obvious to us now that electricity does not thin the veil between this world and the afterlife – but in an era where a power used to replace crankshafts in factories was then used to transmit the written word between continents and then, bizarrely, provide artificial light, well, who is to say what would happen next.
So the boundary of electricity was as-yet undefined. Oversharing was a virtue.
I love this era of a new field. Not just the possibility of surprise round every corner, but the collective, heady nature of the endeavour. We’re making these discoveries together!
And we’re making new discoveries by wildly building new things and reporting back what happened. Theory and practice in a tight and lively knot. The best place to spend one’s days.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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Years ago I read every issue of Electrical Review magazine from the 1880s and 1890s.
Or at least leafed through. I was in the library anyway (you can prise my British Library reader pass from my cold dead hands) in the middle of a long unrelated project, and sometimes you just need to use the fact there are centuries of STUFF in the stacks you can just ask for, and spend a day like a pig in the proverbial.
The reason being:
I had recently read Carolyn Marvin’s excellent social history When Old Technologies Were New (1988; on Google Books), subtitle:
The 1880s saw the maturity of the electrical telegraph; the 1890s the roll-out of the electric light.
Meanwhile they were (a) understanding electricity as a phenomenon; and (b) inventing wildly to figure out what it could do. Very much like the internet today.
There’s a throwaway comment in the book about, well:
Reference given in the footnotes:
“Which Shall It Be?”, Electrical Review, Aug. 17, 1889, p. 20
(Ultimately, of course, and this is a bit grim, execution is execution. The method is hardly what matters. But watching people figure out naming is always fascinating because you are watching people figure out how to describe and work with the world.)
So I wanted to read the original correspondence.
I didn’t manage to. It turns out there were two Electrical Review magazines. The exchange re executioners was in the US version of the title; I was reading the one from the UK.
YET: time well spent.
What struck me was the mix of content.
In each issue I could find
The impression I came away with was that this was a community trying to figure out the world together.
At this time with electricity, it wasn’t clear what datapoints were salient. Was it important that the bowl was scorched in the lightning report? Unknown! So report it anyway! The scientific method: gather observations; taxonomise and hypothesise; predict and iterate. This era was step 1 going into step 2.
It’s obvious to us now that electricity does not thin the veil between this world and the afterlife – but in an era where a power used to replace crankshafts in factories was then used to transmit the written word between continents and then, bizarrely, provide artificial light, well, who is to say what would happen next.
So the boundary of electricity was as-yet undefined. Oversharing was a virtue.
I love this era of a new field. Not just the possibility of surprise round every corner, but the collective, heady nature of the endeavour. We’re making these discoveries together!
And we’re making new discoveries by wildly building new things and reporting back what happened. Theory and practice in a tight and lively knot. The best place to spend one’s days.