How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon by Iwan Rhys Morus

Author:Iwan Rhys Morus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

The promises made for Deptford were a sign that electricity was the coming thing. The Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 was ablaze with electric lights. Electricity powered the enormous Ferris Wheel and the ‘beautiful little boats’ that shuttled visitors back and forth across the lagoons. On top of the Manufactures Building at the centre of the grounds was a massive electric searchlight visible, supposedly 100 miles away.67 In the world outside the exhibition, electricity was increasingly ubiquitous. Electric street lights were becoming a common sight in towns and cities across Europe and North America. Electric trams carried passengers between suburbs and city centres. The middle classes were turning their homes electrical in increasing numbers. The electrical engineer Arthur Kennelly boasted that ‘the adoption of electrical household appliances is daily becoming more widespread, here adding a utility, and there an ornament, until in the near future we may anticipate a period when its presence in the household will be indispensable’.68 Electricity was beginning to be used on a large scale to power industry too. In 1889, Britain’s Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury – who had already electrified his own estate – even predicted that once ‘in the house of the artisan you can turn on power as you now turn on gas’, the growth of electric power would reverse the evils of the Industrial Revolution as cities emptied and workers returned to simpler lives and times.69

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