The Times, London October 1856

I’ve been reading about the dawn of the telegraph and electricity and how these inventions were received with skepticism and intrigue by people when they were first introduced. The general public opinion of the origin’s and meaning of electricity and how it would affect their relationship to nature and each other are all accurate in my opinion. People feared that their lives would accelerate and the cycles of nature, including our own as individuals, would scramble . New York was the first city to light up the night and one of the first to send and receive constant messages around the globe, so I painted it.

The continued outreach from New York of signals, satellite’s and lights into the night sky seems to me to be a reflection of the milky way.

Heres another quote written during the dawn of electricity:

“It has been the medium of all communication between mind and matter, brain and muscle, brain and brain; and in the phenomena of mesmerism and of pseudo-spiritualism, there is at least some reason to believe that, along air-lines and for indefinite distances, thoughts and words are sent with as unerring fidelity as marks their transmission on the artificial lightning-path. By the connection now established between distant cities and opposite hemispheres, we have but arrested, for a special subdivision of one among its many departments of service, a force which throbs from zone to zone, leaps from sky to earth, darts from earth to ocean, courses in the sap of the growing tree, runs along the nervous tissue of the living man, and can be commanded for the speaking wires simply because it is and works everywhere”.

North American Review 1858