Description
Book SynopsisDuring the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Londoners were enthralled by a strange fluid called electricity. In examining this period, Iwan Morus moves beyond the conventional focus on the celebrated Michael Faraday to discuss other electrical experimenters, who aspired to spectacular public displays of their discoveries. Revealing connect
Trade Review"A fine book. . . . [It] adds substantially to our understanding not only of the history of electricity but also of a seminal period in the emergence of modern science and technology."
—Bruce J. HuntTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefacePt. 1The Places of Experiment1Introduction: Electricity, Experiment, and the Experimental Life3Ch. 1The Errors of a Fashionable Man: Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution13Ch. 2The Vast Laboratory of Nature: William Sturgeon and Popular Electricity43Ch. 3Blending Instruction with Amusement: London's Galleries of Practical Science70Ch. 4A Science of Experiment and Observation: The Rise and Fall of the London Electrical Society99Ch. 5The Right Arm of God: Electricity and the Experimental Production of Life125Pt. 2Managing Machine Culture153Introduction: From Performance to Process155Ch. 6They Have No Right to Look for Fame: The Patenting of Electricity164Ch. 7To Annihilate Time and Space: The Invention of the Telegraph194Ch. 8Under Medical Direction: The Regulation of Electrotherapy231Coda: The Disciplining of Experimental Life257Notes263Bibliography295Index317
