Also, Axial Age in History, more resonance

[Michael Bailey]

On 1/29/08, grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
> My earlier posting might not have been read by this thread, so I'll add
> this here. It's text from TRP III's Chemical Forces.
> 526
> "When the rapid motion of a wheel results in producing great heat in the
> axle, there is a great retardation in the motion of the wheel, exactly
> equivalent to the degree of heat excited in the axle."
>

so, rather than a structure - or in addition to -
the visualization appropriate might be History as a chariot
or Juggernaut?

> As I read the http://tinyurl.com/28l62z text from the p522-530 or so I saw
> words lifted out and put into the middle chunk of the novel, from "vital
> force" elan vital to Leclanche cells to other apparatus and assumptions
> about science...
>


the bit about the "torpedo" (electric eel) in _Mason & Dixon_
plays with one of the earliest instances of that type of thinking.

Then Frankenstein and Mesmer, Galvani with the twitching frog's
leg...and Dvindler with his F.I.P. ...

back then they didn't just run to the corner store and buy
batteries.  When I was a kid, a lot of the hobby books
I read about chemistry & such referred to "dry cells"
(as opposed to "wet cells" such as car batteries, which
themselves have evolved to mostly a closed system)

the F.I.P. is a point on a curve of accelerating progress
and modernity.

In M&D, Franklin had to use an actual animal
and what he was doing was crude shock.
(also, of course, what he did with lightning was
equally crude and shocking...not far from nature)

By Dvindler's time, electricity had been tamed down
a lot...and could be used for decadent pleasure
(like imipolex G) but still involved preparations
and things like chemicals and bubbles and wires

The devices we use today (for business, medicine and
pleasure, such as electric massagers, for instance,
the phone system - which still uses wet cells, largely -
and computers) involve an even more managed form of electricity.