In the great span of human history, there is no other era as revolutionary as the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In that time, mankind went from smoky oil lamps to clean electric bulbs, from clopping horses to roaring automobiles, from tap-tapping telegrams to long-distance telephones, from muddy daguerreotypes to clear moving pictures, from earthbound transport to powered flight.
Sometimes the attempts at ingenuity brought ridicule. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1901, a contributor wrote a lengthy article explaining why human flight was so ridiculous and why attempts had failed, concluding, “There is as much likelihood that the granite bowlders (sic) of a dozen states will some day get up and fly back to their original strata, as there is that the Langley and Kress, or any other purely mechanical flying machines will become practical many-carrying realities.” Two years later, the Wright Brothers flew, and a mere 63 years after that, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
All of these marvels were built upon the hard work and far-sighted vision of countless folks over many hundreds of years, but it was at this time that a million “aha” moments occurred around the world, and all that discovery became things we could feel, see, touch, and use. It was a marvelous, mad time.
If you’d like to delve further, here are a few links for you to explore.
The Seattle Municipal Archives
Museum of History and Industry
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection
The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History
The American Museum of Radio and Electricity (in Bellingham, WA)
Tesla Memorial Society of New York
The Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum
United States Early Radio History
Library of Congress, American Memory
- (if you enter “Seattle Edison” in the search box, you’ll find an 1898 Edison film of First Avenue in Seattle, as well as some 1897 films of ships leaving Seattle docks for the Klondike.)
- Not a site for historical information, but a fantastic place to explore. “Bill is an electrical engineer, my go-to science guy, my favorite mad scientist. He explains things in a way that my brain can grasp.” Bernadette Pajer
