When Old Technologies Were New by Marvin Carolyn;

Author:Marvin, Carolyn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2015-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Special Powers of the Body and the Body Inscribed

Just as the power of witchcraft was imputed to exceptional or marginal individuals in other cultures, in popular electrical culture superstitious fear and respect were accorded those whose bodies were said to be invested with special electrical powers. In 1886 the Electrical Review reported the story of eleven-year-old Willie Brough of Turlock, California, whose neighbors in the San Joaquin Valley believed he could set objects afire by gazing intently at them.86 After five unexplained fires had broken out in Willie’s schoolhouse one afternoon, the school-master forbade his return and declared Willie a victim of supernatural agencies. Social pariahs, Willie’s family moved to a remote cottage in the cottonwood timber across the valley. Investigation determined that Willie, “an extremely nervous boy . . . with a largely developed head,” was actually “overcharged with electricity.” Sparks appeared when he snapped his fingers, and Willie admitted seeing sparks fly around him in the darkness of his bedroom.

Such faculties were thought to result from unusual encounters with lightning, or with some other powerful electrical force. This was the explanation given for the strange powers of Henry Luegeman, a Bennetsville, Indiana, farmer struck by lightning while peeling tanbark:

Whenever a storm is about to approach Luegeman becomes highly charged. Flies which happen to alight upon him drop to the floor dead, while such things as small particles of iron or steel cling to his fingers. During a recent storm he drew the blade of a case-knife between his forefinger and thumb, which so thoroughly magnetized it that heavy iron particles could easily be raised with it. When placed in a dark room thousands of tiny sparks are emitted from the man’s body, and his eyes shine as brightly as if they were incandescent lights. Luegeman claims that he feels no inconvenience from his peculiar gift, but will go near no moving locomotive or heavy iron machinery in a storm for fear of being drawn against it and killed.87

Extraordinary encounters with electricity were magical partly for their capriciousness. Anyone might be selected by nature for a first hand experience as profound as anything trained men of science could devise and reserve to their own exclusive realm of experience. Such experiences also seemed superior to the plodding efforts of experts to capture predictable phenomena in their elaborate nets of explanation. Remarkable encounters with nature required no learned preparation, and bestowed a special mark of esteem, being born of a terror and dread no scientific investigation could approach. Popular Science News reported that Mrs. Charles Conover of Nanuet, New York, sitting in a piazza chair during a severe thunderstorm, had been shocked into unconsciousness for seven hours. The village doctor who examined her claimed that the shock had turned her heart upside down, in spite of which she was as well as ever.88 A New Salem, Vermont, family, roused from slumber by a terrible crash of lightning, discovered that their cat had been electroplated with silver stripped from a Revolutionary sword hanging over the sofa where the cat had slept.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.