Time Machines Telegraphic Images In Nineteenthcentury France Richard Taws by Richard Taws 9780262049184, 026204918X instant download after payment.

A riveting exploration of the relationship between art and telegraphy, and its implications for understanding time and history in nineteenth-century France.

In Time Machines Richard Tawsexamines the relationship between art and telegraphy in the decades following the French Revolution. The optical telegraph was a novel form of visual communication developed in the 1790s that remained in use until the mid-1850s. This pre-electric telegraph, based on a semaphore code, irrevocably changed the media landscape of nineteenth-century France. Although now largely forgotten, in its day it covered vast distances and changed the way people thought about time. It also shaped, and was shaped by, a proliferating world of images. What happens, Taws asks, if we think about art telegraphically?
Placed on prominent buildings across France—for several years there was one on top of the Louvre—the telegraph’s waving limbs were a ubiquitous sight,...