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

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.

Electricity had been around for awhile but not many Americans understood or subscribed to having the dangerous lighting in their homes. So, Chicago came to the forefront with hosting the world's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in which the 'white city" of 400 buildings in Jackson Park sparkled and shone with electric lights. George Westinghouse had won the coveted commission to wire the fair, and promised the "greatest electrical display of all time."

Since a World's Fair is only temporary, for a specific purpose and time, those buildings, along a mile of midway with a huge ferris wheel, plazas, and wide promenades, were made of cheap materials but whitewashed. Gleamingly white, they looked like real marble. It was billed as "the third great American event" after the War of Independence and the Civil War. It was a splendid sight, and later the University of Chicago would be built on that site in South Chicago.

Though invented in 1879 by Thomas Edison, the public was hesitant about this potent force to light their worlds. Ms. Simon asks a lot of questions as to why Americans were fearful of this phenomena as to the purpose of her research and resulting book.

Electricity as lighting was a threat to the public who treasured shadows and secrets. It generated widespread anxiety about becoming accidentally electrocuted. There is a picture of a primitive electric chair, the first used in one of the New York prisons, to execute a murderer. Edison espoused the use of hight currents as dangerous to one's health, which created more fear in a public who did not know what electricity could do. They were familiar with the kite and lightning experiment of Ben Franklin and thought that might happen to them. The first electrocution in 1890 was spelled out in detail and it was not what the experiments with animals had projected. It was much harder to kill a man.

Dark Light refers to xrays, very primitively done in the beginning for no medical reason, and the telegraph, phonograph and electric light. Thanks to Edison (and FDR), we now have TVA. She used newspaper accounts, Conan Doyle novels and other sources to tell a good story, almost like the modern history writers. However, Ms Simon who is a college English teacher, lists a lots of resources in the Bibliography and Endnotes. She has previously written biographies.

Dark Light is a surprising book. Although not a professor of history, Linda Simon is associate professor of English at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and it shows. The book is well researched and very informative, but more importantly, it's very readable.

I have to admit it took me a while to figure where we were going in the enterprise. At first the book seems like a biography of Edison. This would hardly be surprising given the subtitle of the book: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the Xray. Edison is almost Mr. Electronics himself. The Wizard of Menlo Park, as he was known at the time, was responsible for major improvements in telegraphy, electric lighting, and phonographic sound, among other things.

The author's jump to Beard, one of Edison's brief partners, lost me a little. This was mostly because I had never heard of the fellow. Reading on in Simon's book, however, was very enlightening. Apparently Beard had been instrumental in expanding US medical practice into the emotional sphere. Rather less famous than the European experiment with it in Freud's work, Beard never the less brought the effects of stress in modern life into public focus with his articles and his own work in physiological cures with the use of electricity. I had no idea the extensive use to which 19th century medicine had put what it referred to as "electrotherapy" in treating anxiety and depression. Most of us know about electroshock therapy in this context, but Beard worked with electric "baths." Simon's discussion of the man's financial interests in this therapy make it sound like the man practiced nothing less than charlatanry, but as many workers in the health care profession know, part of the treatment of any condition involves the patient's own belief in its effectiveness. Furthermore, recent treatments for depression and anxiety have in fact turned to electroshock by "pacemaker" type electrodes placed into selected nerves. Even obesity might one day be treated in this fashion. Makes Beard seem positively psychic.

Speaking of which, the book also delves into the public interest in spiritualism at the time. The subject is never without its proponents in any age, but apparently the 19th century was particularly concerned with the topic. Simon notices the connection between the loss of so many family members by much of society during the Civil War and the introduction of new technologies based on unseen "forces" and "fields." Placing the two in juxtaposition certainly makes the interest seem much more rational than it might. It also explains why figures famous for their scientific contributions or for their scientific training might become involved in the movement in some way. Alfred Russell Wallace, the naturalist who with Darwin was co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, was one such as was Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, who was trained in medicine. Elisha Kent Kane, an arctic explorer and doctor, was involved with Margaret Fox, one of the women who started the movement in this country.

All in all Professor Simon's book is very intriguing and well worth reading. It inspires the reader to look for other books on the 19th century and its culture. What more can one ask from a book?