7/31/2023 0 Comments Seance and science brigadeThe author of Spirit Communication, Roy Stemman, says Marconi concluded these were from the spirit world. Only the source of these, if you believe the medium, were different.Īt the end of the 19th Century when Guglielmo Marconi was experimenting with the first radio signals, he was shocked when he started to receive signals. Not only did he claim to have communicated with the spirit of US scientist Thomas Edison, but after visiting a seance in 1926 he wrote: "I am convinced that discoveries of far reaching importance remain waiting along these shadowy and discredited paths."īut Logie Baird was trying to do exactly what mediums of the day were doing - transmitting sounds and images through space. Logie Baird, who built on Crookes' work to create television, was also persuaded by his seance experiences. "So Crookes reckons he got the traces of a psychic force in operation."Ĭrookes went on to invent the cathode-ray tube, pioneer research into radiation effects, photography, wireless telegraphy, electricity and spectroscopy. How can you hypnotise an instrument?" says Dr Noakes. "Here's an instrument Daniel Dunglass Home can't possibly mesmerise because it's not a living being. He devised a machine he called a radiometer to measure the "invisible forces" the medium appeared to be tapping into.Īnother gave a reading when the maestro appeared to move a lever without touching it. Science historian at Cambridge University, Dr Richard Noakes, says scientists leapt to the task.ĭaniel Dunglass Home was accused by some of being a hypnotist Messages from the dead were spelt out using lettered cards while strange voices were mumbled in the dark.īut it was in the search for proof these phenomena were real and not cons, that the world of the spiritualist and the scientist came together. This gave the sisters' claims greater legitimacy, she says.Īs the spiritualist craze grew people from every level of Victorian society crammed into dingy parlours, where knocks and raps indicated the presence of spirits. "If people could communicate over the telegraph, why couldn't this world and the next world communicate?" Science was challenging the old certainties about life - making the impossible, possible.Īccording to the biographer of the Fox sisters, Barbara Weisberg: "There was so much that was exciting and so much that wouldn't have been thought possible two decades before. The Spiritualist craze spread in Victorian society Just four years earlier a communication of a very different sort - the first electric telegraph - was sent across the Atlantic. When the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York State - widely considered to be the founders of modern spiritualism - first claimed to have communicated with the dead, the world was awash with scientific endeavour. To some, it was simply down to chronology. But the attraction to spiritualism they all shared is definitely not part of the GCSE science syllabus.Īll three men, and many other Victorian scientific pioneers, became involved with the religion, which depended on strange forces being demonstrated through bizarre phenomena.īut how did the world of certainty and precision collide and, in some cases, fuse with that of levitating spiritualists and voices from the "other side"? Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird are familiar to most for the household indispensables they invented. The world's most eminent scientists are not usually associated with the dim-lit surroundings of a clairvoyant's parlour.īut some of science's biggest names have not only dabbled in, but been entirely convinced by the world of the seance. Two S&S Brigade members, Henry and Suzanne, were investigating the lighthouse when Area X began to form.The Fox sisters, founders of Spiritualism, used code of knocks The Séance and Science Brigade showed a deep interest in both lighthouses on the Forgotten Coast. The lighthouse is typically light only at night for half the week, based on commercial shipping traffic. The most recent lighthouse keeper was Saul Evans. The beacon was eventually sent north before appearing again at Island X on the Forgotten Coast. It was shipped to the lighthouse prior to the American Civil War, and was buried in sand to prevent either the Union or Confederacy from taking control of it. The beacon is a four-ton lens that is over a century old and can be adjusted in hundreds of ways. Prior to the formation of Area X, the lighthouse had a rich and mysterious history, much of which is featured in a book called Famous Lighthouses.
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