An Entertainment for Angels

[Dave Monroe]

Missing things left and right here ...

Fara, Patricia.  An Entertainment for Angels:
   Electricity in the Enlightenment.
   Cambridge, UK/Lanham, MD: Icon/Totem, 2002.

Electricity was the scientific fashion of the
Enlightenment, ‘an Entertainment for Angels, rather
than for Men’. Lecturers attracted huge audiences to
marvel at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks,
pirouetting dancers and electrified boys. Flamboyant
experimenters made chains of soldiers leap into the
air, while wealthy women titillated their admirers
with a sensational electric kiss. Enlightenment
optimists predicted that this new-found power of
nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production,
even bring the dead back to life. 

Benjamin Franklin, better known as one of America’s
founding fathers, played a key role in developing the
new instruments and theories of electricity during the
eighteenth century. Celebrated for drawing lightning
down from the sky with a kite, Franklin was an
Enlightenment expert on electricity who introduced
rods to protect tall buildings, treated paralysed
patients, and developed one of the most successful
explanations of this mysterious phenomenon. But the
study of electricity became intertwined with
Enlightenment politics – by demonstrating their
control of the natural world, Enlightenment
philosophers hoped to gain authority over society. And
their stunning electrical performances provided
dramatic evidence of their special powers. 

Using contemporary illustrations, Patricia Fara
vividly portrays how Franklin and his colleagues
struggled to understand the strange and exciting
effects their experiments were producing. 

http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/book.cfm?isbn=1-84046-348-1

http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/dept/publications.html

And recall not only ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64502&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64516&sort=date

But also ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59962&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64595&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64599&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0209&msg=70538&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0209&msg=70658&sort=date

Apparently already out of print here, but used copies
abound, and still available in the UK, so ...

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