Born of a soldering iron and some unfaithful screws

[sovay]

I know my knowledge of the American nineteenth century is like most people with the Russian Futurists, but can somebody explain to me why it still took me until this afternoon to hear about John Murray Spear's New Motor—a mechanical Messiah built by Spiritualists in a barn in Lynn, Massachusetts, mystically birthed by one of its female followers and eventually smashed to pieces by an honest-to-God angry mob? Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.

(Courtesy of Dean Grodzins, who also asked me why I write about ghosts. At first I said I didn't, and then I talked about dybbuks for fifteen minutes straight.)

Comments

[sovay]

The context was that the ninja girl was just recalling that in Sweden they've just recognized a religion revolving around file sharing.

Yep!

(They are clearly the crusading wing of the Pirate Party.)

--I think it was in a "Look and Learn," actually.

I saw George Méliès' Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) for the first time on Reading Rainbow. I didn't know it was famous. I'm not even sure I knew it was (then) eighty-five years old; I might have thought it was just done in that herky-jerky silent style. These things turn up.