Discomfort with the menace of electrical technology was elsewhere manifested in apocalyptic theories of disaster. One of the most popular was that excess charge accumulating in the world posed a growing danger to man and nature. “What would that class of theorists do with electricity without that poor, bamboozled and bedraggled word ‘charged?’ “ wondered the Electrical review in 1866. “It is made to do duty on every occasion, when there is uncertainty, perspicuity [sic] or indefiniteness. The ground, the wire, the machine, the air, the clouds, are constantly ‘charged’ ” .Suggestions were put forward that the amount of lightning in the air was increasing as a direct consequence of the spread of telegraph, telephone, and electric light wires across the country. The New York World editorialized:
The proposition is advanced that pretty much everything that will hold electricity is becoming more or less charged. Fears that have not yet assumed a definite expression are entertained by many observing people to the effect that too much of the subtle fluid is being manufactured and kept in store to be consistent with the public safety. It is thought that much leakage is involved and that the earth, especially in the case of large cities, and the houses are being more or less saturated with it. It is time to call a halt before this thing goes any farther. With the telephone, telegraph and electric light plants on the increase, and the electric motor still to come, the situation is serious and demands prompt attention¹
- Marvin, C. (1988). When old technologies were new: Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 119.
¹ “Electrical Review, Mar. 24, 1888, p. 2. Quoted scornfully from the New York World.” p. 248.
