kravietz 🦇Anti-electricity cartoon from 1889.
Electricity is portrayed as a spider with a cobweb of electrical wires for trapping its human victims.
Also features the mandatory skull, dead horse, and a mother with a child killed by the daemon.
Doc Edward Morbius ⭕@kravietz Keep in mind that the stuff was a) pretty dangerous at the time and b) safety measures and knowledge were at best primitive.
Not that you couldn't die from plenty else as well.
Institutional resistance was also likely high.
Absolutely yes — the poster was actually based on a tragic accident of an electrician electrocuted (the person hanging on the wires).
The problem with the poster is however that's it's not a safety warning, but a portrayal of new technology as an absolute evil that cannot be controlled, that appeals to lowest emotions and instincts.
@kravietz Resistance to technological innovation goes back a ways.
See "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations (1937)"
https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39
Berhnard J. Stern's student research assistant would talk of this work later. He went on to use concepts in his own writing. You may have heard of Isaac Asimov.
I've retyped the document in Markdown, available for reading here:
https://rentry.co/szi3g
#BernhardJStern #ResistancesToTechnologicalInnovation #Technology #Luddism #IsaacAsimov
Technological trends and national policy, including the social implications of new inventions. June, 1937 : United States. National Resources Committee. Science Committee : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Prepared by the subcommittee on technology of the Science committee. cf. p. v
This article is so awesome! 😂
> The wide use of electric locomotives has been delayed because of capital loss on old equipment
One of the England's busiest lines (GWR) was electrified only in... 2019! 🤦♂️
@kravietz It really is an underappreciated gem.
I'm delighted I finally managed to track it down. First heard of it in the 1980s, reading Asimov's autobiography.