Dark Light : Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray

Rating:
Summary: "Mesmorizingly" Good Book!!
Review: Dark Light is a great intro to a subject that we all take for granted, but whose scientific and cultural origins are a mystery to most of us, including me before I read the book. If you want to discover how the western world looked at the new scientific and commercial force of electricity, this book is perfect! From the early days of SB Morse and the telegraph,(artist turned inventor and promoter), to some weird "New Age" (for the time) ideas about electricity and health, the incredible carrers of Edison, Tesla (the overlooked genius), among many others, this book scores a bull's eye. Plus a nice trip into the 1892 Chicago Columbian exhibition, through the controversial electric chair, and into the x-ray, plus a lot more. There is not too much about how the nation was wired up, and how the utility companies were formed, but this may be the author's next project!

Rating:
Summary: "Mesmorizingly" Good Book!!
Review: Dark Light is a great intro to a subject that we all take for granted, but whose scientific and cultural origins are a mystery to most of us, including me before I read the book. If you want to discover how the western world looked at the new scientific and commercial force of electricity, this book is perfect! From the early days of SB Morse and the telegraph,(artist turned inventor and promoter), to some weird "New Age" (for the time) ideas about electricity and health, the incredible carrers of Edison, Tesla (the overlooked genius), among many others, this book scores a bull's eye. Plus a nice trip into the 1892 Chicago Columbian exhibition, through the controversial electric chair, and into the x-ray, plus a lot more. There is not too much about how the nation was wired up, and how the utility companies were formed, but this may be the author's next project!

Rating:
Summary: When Electricity Was Scary
Review: Today we worry about stem cell research, and cloning, and viruses that shut down computers. They are technological and scientific problems that we are trying to grope our way around because we have never had to face them before. We all take electricity for granted now, but a hundred years ago, electricity and the electrification of businesses and homes were scary new worlds. In _Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-ray_ (Harcourt), Linda Simon has written a social history of the early days of electricity. Simon points out that we now use electrical metaphors to describe ourselves: we are shocked, or wired, and we plug into new ideas, perhaps ideas from the latest "human dynamo." This level of familiarity was hard in coming. There was a time when "electricity was a force stronger in the imagination than in reality" and the imagination brought forth worries. There were rosy speculations, of course, about electric lights that had no flame to catch curtains ablaze, and electric sewing machines and carpet cleaners. "Electric light is safe," went one advertisement, because the public had to be convinced. They knew about accidental electrocutions (even of technicians who were supposed to know about electricity) and explosions from sparks near gas mains which made headlines. People were reluctant to invite the force of lightning into their homes. Simon has provided an entertaining, desultory explanation of the mostly negative public view of electricity in the last half of the nineteenth century.

Thirty years after Edison invented a successful lightbulb, only ten percent of American homes were wired. Edison could not conquer the public fear that "nature would extract retribution for harnessing its power." Oddly enough, though there was fear about household electricity, the healing force of electricity was quickly accepted. Electrotherapy seemed a better alternative than the nostrums or diets that doctors might prescribe. Thus physicians (and quacks) began manufacturing and recommending electric baths and teething rings and brushes, electrified corsets, and electrical probes for any body cavity to dispense the charge right where it was needed. The scientists often did not help their own cause. The famous disagreement between Edison and his former employee Nikola Tesla (and George Westinghouse, with whom Tesla came to work) over what kind of current would be safest could only fuel suspicion that if experts disagreed, there was no reason to accept the new technology as safe. The alarmists on both sides of the direct versus alternating current debate predicted terrible disasters if the other side had its way. (A physician at the time wisely said the arguments against electrification were the equivalents of those against illuminating gas or railroad trains a century before.) Edison cheerfully lent space and equipment for experiments on electrocuting animals by the alternating currents he opposed, and then practiced a bit of skullduggery to get New York to accept alternating current as the force for the new electric chair. He favored "to Westinghouse" as the new term for legal infliction of death by electricity.

Simon has drawn on forgotten fiction works, some by famous authors like L. Frank Baum and Edgar Allen Poe, to examine how people were accepting the new ideas about electricity. Mark Twain, in a futuristic mode, envisioned a "Phonograph for the application of stored Profanity". She concludes with the discovery of the x-ray, which like so many medical effects of the new technology was widely and eagerly accepted, and people were thrilled to get a peep at their own insides. Even so, other people saw this as a new menace against privacy, and one company sold X-ray-proof underwear. When people finally learned about radiation burns and sickness, many must have felt that the worries over the new forces had been justified. Simon has, with an amused eye, brought together plenty of stories of electrification to show how electrical technology affected society and increased the realms of anxiety before familiarity bred contentment.