ELECTRICITY. In the early 1900s, modern spiritualism arose in the wake of telegraphy and electricity. . An ongoing public discourse began relating these forms of intangible communication."The Morse code, launched in 1844, was heralded as a revolutionary invention verging on the complete disembodiment of the voice. Simultaneously, houses across North America were ‘electrified’ (lit up) through a flow of harnessed energy,"
The fact that these transcendental forms of communications could be proven and trusted scientifically encouraged the spiritualists to seek the same kind of reliability. But the curiosity was two-fold and many scientists working with electricity at the time, including Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, were fascinated with the idea of communicating with the dead.
Edison went as far as to define electricity as "spiritualism put into practical terms ."
|