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

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I laughed harder at Pomerabelard, but not by much.

Also, what an extraordinarylooking fellow that is. Good conversation?

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

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 Machine...

I've sometimes thought I had a respectable knowledge of the American nineteenth century: a fair part of my childhood was took up with reading the period's books, visiting its houses and forts, and collecting bits and pieces of its leavings, and later in life I was paid to rob the rubbish pits and fallen down outbuildings of nineteenth century Americans and to process the resulting artefacts for further study, or at least for storage in acid free boxes in a back room somewhere.

But this, this I've never heard of before, either. It's brilliantly odd, and I thank you for the sharing of it.

Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.

Lot of truth, there, although I do still wish I had friends physically proximate who were willing to dress up in a strange parody of Victorian garb and talk about airships.

Actually, it looks to me as if some of John Murray Spear's stuff would be a great jumping-off point for steampunk-ish, or perhaps it's better to borrow a term from the Foglios and say "gaslamp fantasy", alternate history. Levitation via psychic batteries and a worldwide communication network in the 1840s... if one assumes it all somehow works just as Spear would have it, but that humanity continue being our grotty, misbehaving selves, there's all sorts of potential for gritty adventure, para-cyberpunk dystopia, and who knows what else.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

*a mechanical Messiah*

Good grief. This demands a book of its own. I'll chase up that link when I'm next on the laptop.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about the American 19th century, but do you want perhaps to talk about the Russian Futurists instead?

"The Thing Moves!"

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

That's a great excerpt. By a funny coincidence I've just been reading Midnight Rising, a book about John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry. Brown hung out with William Lloyd Garrison and admired his stance on abolition, but couldn't take all the pacifism. Garrison seems to have met everybody remotely interesting in the nineteenth century.

The excerpt doesn't describe the New Machine--off to look elsewhere...

http://whofortedblog.com/2010/08/10/the-new-motor-building-the-god-machine/

OH DEAR YOG. He was taking orders from the ascended spirit of Benjamin Franklin to bring God's word to the world via better technology. History, I adore you, don't you ever stop amazing me:

The final stage of the nine-month long experiment took place on June 29th, 1854 and involved a ritual during which Spear encased himself in a suit made of metal, gemstones, plates and copper strips. He was then brought into gradual contact with the machine before slipping into a deep trance. Clairvoyants present at the ritual reported seeing an “umbilical like cord linking Spear to the machine.”

Perhaps I'm strange or something, but I'm over here going "Awwww!" I'm unilaterally declaring John Spear the (ecumenical) saint of hilarious millennial cults.

(It's not fair: the nineteenth century gets the spiritualists and the Shaker revival and John Murray Spear and that woman who decided she was the Messiah and could walk on water and tried and fell through. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had their cults but they've all been much shorter on delightful silliness, and much longer on death and violence.)

[obzor-inolit.livejournal.com]

I didn't heard about it either.... okay, I'm no expert, but such a thing would be a terrific touristic attraction (maybe too terrific and not for the puritanic).

[alankria.livejournal.com]

Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.

Ehehe. I am still amused that no one (that I can tell) has taken on the steam-powered vibrators. I am so putting those into a story this year.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Too amazing. Can't wait to read the link.

I'd like to see this illustrated by Kate Beaton!

aughh! The annoying Wakanomori

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

had heard of this when I was telling him about it.

This conversation was just had at the wanderer's hut. The context was that the ninja girl was just recalling that in Sweden they've just recognized a religion revolving around file sharing.

W: I'd heard of that guy in Lynn, that you were saying Sovay mentioned, by the way.

A: No! You're kidding! Oh, the wonders of the Oxford education.

W: No, I think it was as a kid--

A: Aughhh! English education!! It's so superior to American education!

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

Such an annoying man.