Genre:

Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Park Benjamin Forum

Subjects:

Electricity, Miracle, Technology, Light, Heat, Photography, Electromagnetism, Railways, Telegraphy

    Benjamin's 'provoking' paper, a product of the 'scientific imagination', discusses future uses of electricity. These include distant photographs that appear on a 'sensitive plate in San Francisco', but 'photographically record the event taking place in New York', railway cars that employ 'a series of electro-magnetic coils' and can reach three hundred miles an hour (33), and 'a wall-paper [...] capable of being rendered luminous by electricity, and even sufficiently warm to heat a room!' (34). Notes that miraculous electrical feats such as the 'telegraphic transmission of fac-simile writing' have 'already been achieved' (33).