{"id":116645,"date":"2025-09-10T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=116645"},"modified":"2025-09-10T14:25:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T18:25:34","slug":"techno-humanist-manifesto-chapter-9-section-1","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/the-material-world\/techno-humanist-manifesto-chapter-9-section-1","title":{"rendered":"We used to celebrate science and innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following is Chapter 9, Section 1, from the book\u00a0The Techno-Humanist Manifesto<\/a>\u00a0by Jason Crawford, Founder of the Roots of Progress Institute. The entirety of the book will be published on Freethink, one section at a time. For more from Jason, subscribe to his Substack<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a fine day late in May, 1883, hundreds of thousands of people gathered along the East River in New York City for a grand celebration.1<\/sup> Perhaps a hundred thousand came from outside the city: by train, by boat, by wagon from the country. \u201cThe streets leading to the river were packed solid with people. \u2026 Every available rooftop and window was filled and along the river front there was scarcely a place left to stand.\u201d Ships and boats gathered in the river in \u201ca great, elongated flotilla\u201d; the North Atlantic Squadron of five warships had been called in for the occasion. All the major hotels sold out by midday. President Chester A. Arthur was in attendance, along with then-governor Grover Cleveland, the mayor, and other officials. Many schools let out, federal courts were closed, most businesses were empty, and the floors of several exchanges were closed at noon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were not celebrating a war hero, a centennial, or a political inauguration. They were celebrating the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendors were hawking bridge buttons, commemorative medals, sheet music about the bridge, and facsimiles in metal, wax, or confection. Decorations were everywhere. \u201cVirtually every single house and building downtown had a flag flying from its rooftop or hung from a window.\u201d Buildings were covered in streamers and bunting; the dome of the courthouse was \u201cgorgeous in its dress of flying colors.\u201d The house of Washington Roebling, the Chief Engineer, \u201cwas covered with flags, shields, flowers, and the coat of arms of New York and Brooklyn\u201d; the President would soon be received there. Framed portraits of Roebling hung in store windows. Some of the decorations were elaborate and creative: \u201cA jeweler had made a miniature bridge with gold chain for the cables. A florist had made a bridge eight feet long, complete with bridge trains and boats passing below, all of flowers.\u201d One decoration in City Hall Square depicted the growth of Brooklyn from a small village up to the completion of the bridge, and envisioned that a century in the future (that is, 1983) there would be a hundred bridges spanning the East River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ceremony began with a procession from Brooklyn: \u201cThe Twenty-third Regiment band in bright-red coats, followed by the Twenty-third Regiment in white helmets and blue coats, followed by a detachment of Fifth Artillery from Fort Hamilton and Marines from the Navy Yard, who in turn were followed by two hundred and some city officials, bridge trustees, and special guests, all in a body, led by the young mayor in a tall silk hat and followed by Mrs. Washington Roebling and her party in carriages.\u201d The entire parade route was lined with crowds and people watching from rooftops. A brass band played and guns boomed from the Navy Yard as the President himself walked onto the bridge from the New York side. Then:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

[Brooklyn Mayor] Seth Low made the official greeting for the City of Brooklyn, the Marines presented arms, a signal flag was dropped nearby and instantly there was a crash of a gun from the [warship] Tennessee.<\/em> Then the whole fleet commenced firing. Steam whistles on every tug, steamboat, ferry, every factory along the river, began to scream. More cannon boomed. Bells rang, people were cheering wildly on every side. The band played \u201cHail to the Chief\u201d maybe six or seven more times, and as the New York Sun<\/em> reported, \u201cthe climax of fourteen years\u2019 suspense seemed to have been reached, since the President of the United States of America had walked dry shod to Brooklyn from New York.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, more than a thousand guests visited Roebling\u2019s house, including the President, the governor, and the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. Elsewhere, people partied all evening: \u201cEvery street on the Heights looked like a carnival. \u2026 No traffic was moving anywhere near the river. Uptown New York and the inland sections of Brooklyn were all but deserted. \u2026 The Times<\/em> estimated there were 150,000 people just in the neighborhood of City Hall.\u201d Around 8 p.m., \u201cfourteen tons of fireworks\u2014more than ten thousand pieces\u2014were set off from the bridge\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

It lasted a solid hour. There was not a moment\u2019s letup. One meteoric burst followed another. Rockets went off hundreds at a time and were seen from as far away as Montclair, New Jersey. \u2026 Meantime, innumerable gas balloons were being sent aloft. They were fifty feet in circumference and loaded with fireworks and as they swung into the sky, one by one, they scattered balls of colored fire over the river. \u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the middle of the bridge now came great thunderclap reports as zinc balls, fired from mortars, burst five hundred feet up, fairly illuminating the two cities, like sustained lightning.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And finally, at nine, as the display on the bridge ended with one incredible barrage\u2014five hundred rockets fired all at once\u2014every whistle and horn on the river joined in. The rockets \u201cbroke into millions of stars and a shower of golden rain which descended upon the bridge and the river.\u201d Bells were rung, gongs were beaten, men and women yelled themselves hoarse, musicians blew themselves red in the face.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of thousands of people were watching, and \u201cnobody, in all his days, had ever seen anything like this.\u201d At midnight, the bridge was opened to pedestrians, and thousands of people walked across it. \u201cPeople poured across the bridge through the entire night and were still coming with the first light in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone, we might suppose, loves a party and a spectacle. But this was something more. The bridge had great spiritual and moral meaning. According to the speakers that day:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

The bridge was a \u201cwonder of Science,\u201d an \u201castounding exhibition of the power of man to change the face of nature.\u201d It was a monument to \u201centerprise, skill, faith, endurance.\u201d It was also a monument to \u201cpublic spirit,\u201d \u201cthe moral qualities of the human soul,\u201d and a great, everlasting symbol of \u201cPeace.\u201d The words used most often were \u201cScience,\u201d \u201cCommerce,\u201d and \u201cCourage,\u201d and some of the ideas expressed had the familiar ring of a Fourth of July oration. \u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[E]very speaker that afternoon seemed to be saying that the opening of the bridge was a national event, that it was a triumph of human effort, and that it somehow marked a turning point. It was the beginning of something new, and although none of them appeared very sure what was going to be, they were confident it would be an improvement over the past and present. \u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The bridge was a vindication, a heroic and monumental end result of modern industrialism, of labor and capital, of democracy, of new \u201cmethods, tools and laws of force\u201d\u2014of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Bridge was called the \u201cEighth Wonder of the World.\u201d It was likened to the pyramids, the Acropolis, and the hanging gardens of Babylon; Roebling was compared to da Vinci. Mayor Low said: \u201cNot one shall see it and not feel prouder to be a man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parade, the fireworks and the speeches were exemplary of the spirit of progress that imbued that era. The mainstream view was that progress was real, important, and good: that science, technology and industry had improved human life and society, and would continue to do so. This belief was strongest before World War 1, but lasted in some form through the 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This spirit enthusiastically celebrated inventive and industrial achievements. The Erie Canal was completed in 1825, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. The event, which came to be known as the Wedding of the Waters, was greeted with an \u201cavalanche of lavish entertainments and ceremonies that consumed New York State as it greeted a dream coming true.\u201d2<\/sup> Celebrations began on October 26 and continued for well over a week as the governor and lieutenant governor rode a boat from Buffalo to New York City, stopping at more than twenty towns for ceremonies featuring guns, lights, parades, and fireworks. An allegorical painting was made showing Hercules resting from his labors in building the canal and Neptune, the god of the sea, astonished to see its locks opening before him. Artillery was lined up all along the route, each gun within hearing distance of the next, sending a signal down the line from Buffalo to Sandy Hook, NJ and back, a round trip which took more than two hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The welcoming committee in Albany included the Secretary of State and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The festivities that evening included \u201can elaborate theater performance of odes, a full drama, and a canal scene with locks, including horses and boats actually passing across the stage.\u201d As they approached Manhattan, they were met by a brand new steamboat \u201ccovered with the most elaborate kinds of decorations, flaming torches, and sculptured figures celebrating George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, agriculture, commerce, and even the whole globe of the earth.\u201d (Lafayette himself had visited the canal four months earlier on a tour of the US.) In New York, the governor ceremonially poured a keg of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic. The parade that followed stretched more than a mile and a half, the largest in America up to that time. Some in attendance had been at an 1815 celebration of the defeat of Napoleon, but this spectacle \u201cso far transcended\u201d that one \u201cas scarcely to admit of a comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
A View of the Magnificent and Extraordinary Fire Works Exhibited on the N.Y. City Hall, on the Evening of the Celebration of the Grand Canal, November 4th, 1825. Richard Willcox. NY Public Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858, the celebrations \u201cbordered on hysteria\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

There were hundred-gun salutes in Boston and New York; flags flew from public buildings; church bells rang. There were fireworks, parades, and special church services. Torch-bearing revelers in New York got so carried away that City Hall was accidentally set on fire and narrowly escaped destruction. \u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tiffany\u2019s, the New York jewelers, bought the remainder of the cable, cut it into four-inch pieces, and sold them as souvenirs. Pieces of spare cable were also made into commemorative umbrella handles, canes, and watch fobs.3<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, creating the first high-speed transportation link between the East and West coasts, and turning a hazardous six-month journey by ship or wagon into a comfortable seven-day ride by rail. It, too, was called the \u201cEight Wonder of the World\u201d (evidently there was no official List of Wonders to keep the numbering straight). \u201cThe building of the road was compared to the voyage of Columbus or the landing of the Pilgrims. It was said that the road was \u2018annihilating distance and almost outrunning time.\u2019 The preacher at the Golden Spike ceremony, Dr. John Todd, called it \u2018the greatest work ever attempted.\u2019\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The western cities, now connected to the great hubs of commerce and culture in the east, were especially jubilant:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

At 5 A.M. on Saturday, a Central Pacific train pulled into Sacramento carrying celebrants from Nevada, including firemen and a brass band. \u2026 The parade was mammoth. At its height, about 11 A.M. in Sacramento, the time the organizers had been told the joining of the rails would take place, twenty-three of the CP\u2019s locomotives, led by its first, the Governor Stanford,<\/em> let loose a shriek of whistles that lasted for fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, the parade was the biggest held to date. At 11 A.M., a fifteen-inch Parrott rifled cannon at Fort Point, guarding the south shore of the Golden Gate, fired a salute. One hundred guns followed. Then fire bells, church bells, clock towers, machine shops, streamers, foundries, the U.S. Mint let go at full blast. The din lasted for an hour.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In both cities, the celebration went on through Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.5<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the country, too, was celebrating the achievement:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

Across the nation, bells pealed. Even the venerable Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was rung. Then came the boom of cannons, 220 of them in San Francisco at Fort Point, a hundred in Washington D.C., countless fired off elsewhere. It was said that more cannons were fired in celebration than ever took part in the Battle of Gettysburg. Everywhere there was the shriek of fire whistles, firecrackers and fireworks, singing and prayers in churches. The Tabernacle in Salt Lake City was packed to capacity, with an astonishing seven thousand people. In New Orleans, Richmond, Atlanta, and throughout the old Confederacy, there were celebrations. Chicago had a parade that was its biggest of the century\u2014seven miles long, with tens of thousands of people participating, cheering, watching.6<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1909, the Wright brothers returned from a tour of Europe, where they had been demonstrating their airplane.7<\/sup> They were greeted as heroes. Harbor whistles blared and reporters and photographers mobbed them when they arrived in New York; back home in Dayton, Ohio, they were greeted by cannons, factory whistles, cheering crowds, and children waving flags. President Taft invited them to the White House and presented them with gold medals for their \u201cgreat step in human discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cgigantic\u201d two-day celebration was planned in Dayton. A massive parade portrayed the history of the region from the earliest times, culminating in a float titled \u201cAll the World Paying Homage to the United States, the Wright Brothers, and the Aeroplane\u201d; the procession stretched two miles.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

On Main Street a \u201cCourt of Honor\u201d was being created reaching from Third Street to the river, white columns lining both sides of the street and strung with colored lights. \u2026 Soldiers, sailors, and the Fire Department would march, bands play. Some 2,500 schoolchildren dressed in red, white, and blue would be arranged as a \u201cliving-flag\u201d on the Fair Grounds grandstand and sing \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Wrights were presented with the keys to the city, given \u201claudatory speeches in abundance,\u201d and were said to have shaken hands with more than five thousand people, until only \u201cthe instinct of self preservation compelled them to cease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dayton Daily News<\/em> ran an editorial at the time of the event, stating:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

It is a wonderful lesson\u2014this celebration. It comes at an auspicious time. The old world was getting tired, it seemed, and needed help to whip it into action. There was beginning a great deal of talk about man\u2019s no longer having the opportunities he once had of achieving greatness. Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world\u2019s problems had been solved. \u2026 Money was beginning to tell in the affairs of men, and some were wondering whether a poor boy might work for himself a place in commerce or industry or science.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This celebration throws all such idle talk to the winds. It crowns anew the efforts of mankind. It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved or that the avenues of hope have been closed to those who would win new worlds.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

It was an era in which such optimism was expressed unabashedly and unironically. Years earlier, on January 1, 1901, the New York World<\/em> ran an editorial stating that they were \u201coptimistic enough to believe that the twentieth century \u2026 will meet and overcome all perils and prove to be the best this steadily improving planet has ever seen.\u201d8<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an era in which inventors such as the Wrights were lionized with medals, parades, statues. Samuel Morse, known as \u201cfather of the telegraph,\u201d had \u201chonors heaped upon him by the nations of Europe\u201d:9<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

He was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III; he was awarded gold medals for scientific merit by Prussia and Austria; he had further medals bestowed upon him by Queen Isabella of Spain, the king of Portugal, the king of Denmark, the king of Italy; and the sultan of Turkey presented him with a diamond-encrusted Order of Glory, the \u2018\u2018Nishan Iftichar.\u2019\u2019 He was also made an honorary member of numerous scientific, artistic, and academic institutions, including the Academy of Industry in Paris, the Historical Institute of France, and, strangely, the Archaeological Society of Belgium.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1871, a bronze statue was made of Morse and \u201cunveiled in Central Park amid cheering crowds, speeches, and the strains of a specially composed \u2018Morse Telegraph March.\u2019\u201d It had been funded not by one wealthy backer but by donations sent in from telegraph operators all over the country. A \u201chuge banquet was held\u2026 followed by numerous adulatory speeches\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

The telegraph and its inventor were praised for uniting the peoples of the world, promoting world peace, and revolutionizing commerce. The telegraph was said to have \u2018\u2018widened the range of human thought\u2019\u2019; it was credited with improving the standard of journalism and literature; it was described as \u2018\u2018the greatest instrument of power over earth which the ages of human history have revealed.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Morse was called a \u2018\u2018true genius\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2018America\u2019s greatest inventor,\u2019\u2019 and \u201ccongratulatory messages flooded in over the telegraph network from all corners of the United States and the rest of the world: from Havana, from Hong Kong, from India, from Singapore, and from Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another inventor who was memorialized with a statue was James Watt, famous improver of the steam engine. The meeting in 1824 to start a fund for this monument, according to a contemporary report in The Chemist<\/em>, was \u201ccalled by some of the first men of the land\u201d; attendees included the First Lord of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, two earls, several MPs, Humphrey Davy, Charles Babbage, and Josiah Wedgwood II.10<\/sup> The report said the monument would be \u201ca memorial of his stupendous genius, and of our gratitude to that Power which made him the instrument of bestowing almost immeasurable benefits on the whole human race.\u201d The statue was placed in Westminster Abbey with an epitaph that praised Watt for having \u201cenlarged the resources of his Country, increased the power of Man, and rose to an eminent place among the most illustrious followers of science and the real benefactors of the World.\u201d It said that the monument had been raised to show \u201cthat mankind have learned to know those who best deserve their gratitude.\u201d11<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who, exactly, best deserved mankind\u2019s gratitude? The Chemist<\/em> stressed that it was not that common subject of monuments, the warrior, whose victories are destructive ones; rather it was men like Watt:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

His were the conquests of mind over matter; they cost no tears, shed no blood, desolated no lands, made no widows nor orphans, but merely multiplied conveniences, abridged our toils, and added to our comforts and our power. \u2026 Henceforth men will perceive the folly of encouraging the shedding of human blood; will recognise the wisdom of uniting glory with usefulness; and will only erect monuments to those in whose labours there is no alloy of misery and mischief.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A similar contrast was made around this time by Samuel Smiles, the author who in this era invented a new genre: industrial biography. In the introduction to one of his books, he quoted a \u201cdistinguished living mechanic\u201d\u2014that is, an engineer\u2014as having said to him:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

Kings, warriors, and statesmen have heretofore monopolized not only the pages of history, but almost those of biography. Surely some niche ought to be found for the Mechanic, without whose skill and labour society, as it is, could not exist. I do not begrudge destructive heroes their fame, but the constructive ones ought not to be forgotten; and there IS a heroism of skill and toil belonging to the latter class, worthy of as grateful record,\u2014less perilous and romantic, it may be, than that of the other, but not less full of the results of human energy, bravery, and character.12<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The pinnacle of the inventor as popular hero was Thomas Edison, \u201cthe Wizard of Menlo Park.\u201d In 1879, when he unveiled his electric light, the New York Herald<\/em> ran \u201ca full-page story headlined EDISON\u2019S LIGHT\u2014THE GREAT INVENTOR\u2019S TRIUMPH IN ELECTRIC ILLUMINATION\u2014A SCRAP OF PAPER\u2014IT MAKES A LIGHT, WITHOUT GAS OR FLAME, CHEAPER THAN OIL\u2014SUCCESS IN A COTTON THREAD.\u201d13<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

Each subsequent afternoon and evening, flocks of electricity sightseers crowded off specially scheduled Pennsylvania Railroad trains or pulled up in the crudest of farm wagons and the most luxurious of broughams, carriages equipped with coachmen and gleaming pairs. There, as the freezing December evening enveloped the snow-clad Jersey countryside, and clouds scudded across the black night sky, the visitors would head through the dark toward the bright laboratory, there to push through and gaze in awe at the magical display. The official public unveiling was December 31, 1879, New Year\u2019s Eve. And that evening, as the 1870s became the 1880s, three thousand people poured in to Menlo Park, ignoring the stormy weather, to see the miracle of incandescence.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Edison had continual visitors, including at one point the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who \u201cjumped all over the machinery\u201d and \u201cwanted to know everything\u201d about what she saw in the lab. \u201cWhen the great inventor flashed the hundreds of outdoor lights on and off in the pitch dark of the early morning, on and off, on and off, she clapped with pure Gallic delight. \u2026 \u2018C\u2019est grand, c\u2019est magnifique!<\/em>\u2019 she exclaimed in that world-famous voice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The march of progress not only amazed the public, it inspired artists. As one historian put it, in the late 1700s at least:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

industry was still romantic and factories still regarded as the harbingers of a better future\u2014artists painted them, scientists eulogized them, poets were inspired by them. \u2026 Paul Sandby saw nothing incongruous in painting a coalmine; Wright of Derby thought Arkwright’s mill by moonlight a subject well worthy of his brush; and Erasmus Darwin trumpeted his approval of Etruria in many a ponderous couplet.14<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Imagine an artist painting an iron forge, or worse a lead mine. What do you envision? Something dark, foreboding, malevolent? Sandby depicted them as gentle structures that integrate harmoniously with their natural surroundings and co-exist peacefully with people and animals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The Iron Forge between Dolgelli and Barmouth, Merioneth Shire. Paul Sandby, c. 1776. The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Lord Hopetoun’s Lead Mines. Paul Sandby, 1751<\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Joseph Wright took the same approach to painting cotton mills\u2014contra Blake, dark and Satanic they are not:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Arkwright’s Mills. Joseph Wright of Derby, c. 1795\u20136. Wikimedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Positive depictions of the industrial continued through the 19th century. Here\u2019s an 1885 painting of an iron foundry, by a Danish artist. The molten metal lights up the scene but does not scorch the men; the foundry and the workers are not dirty; the men are calm and in control:15<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Workers
Fra Burmeister og Wains jernst\u00f8beri (\u201cThe Iron Foundry, Burmeister and Wain\u201d). Peder Severin Kr\u00f8yer, 1885. Wikimedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Or take this depiction of a workshop, by a French painter, 1888. The room is clean and well-lit, the machines are human-scale. The master and the apprentice are intent on their work; one can imagine a paternal affection between them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Un Patron, or: The Lesson of the Apprentice. Jean-Eug\u00e8ne Buland, 1888. Wikimedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Poets, too, were inspired by progress and optimistic for the future. Walt Whitman, perceiving that the world was being connected by railroads, canals, and telegraph cables, again likened these achievements to the wonders of the world:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

Singing the great achievements of the present,
\nSinging the strong light works of engineers,
\nOur modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
\nIn the Old World the east the Suez canal,
\nThe New by its mighty railroad spann\u2019d,
\nThe seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lo, soul, seest thou not God\u2019s purpose from the first?
\nThe earth to be spann\u2019d, connected by network,
\nThe races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
\nThe oceans to be cross\u2019d, the distant brought near,
\nThe lands to be welded together.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A worship new I sing,
\nYou captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
\nYou engineers, you architects, machinists, yours\u202616<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Whitman describes the Suez canal with its \u201cprocession of steamships,\u201d \u201cthe workmen gather\u2019d\u201d and the \u201cgigantic dredging machines\u201d; and \u201cthe Pacific Railroad, surmounting every barrier,\u201d with \u201cthe locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle\u201d whose \u201cechoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world\u201d (again we see industrial infrastructure portrayed as existing in harmony with the natural environment). He puts the accomplishment in grand historical context, as the culmination of a dream held by sailors and explorers for centuries, and extols it as \u201cthe marriage of continents, climates and oceans!\u201d Whitman\u2019s ultimate focus is spiritual: the highest purpose he sees for these technological accomplishments is not \u201ctrade or transportation only,\u201d but to connect us to the past, to tradition, to ancient wisdom, and to God; much of the poem is devoted to the religious journey he anticipates for the soul. But it is significant that he sees science and technology supporting rather than degrading the soul, and the scientists, \u201cnoble inventors,\u201d and \u201cgreat captains and engineers\u201d all preparing the way for the poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1871, Whitman was also commissioned to write a poem for an industrial exposition.17<\/sup> The resulting \u201cSong of the Exposition\u201d extols \u201c\u200b\u200bthe spirit of invention everywhere,\u201d likens the \u201cjoyous clank\u201d of blacksmiths\u2019 sledges to a \u201ctumult of laughter,\u201d and praises \u201c[s]team-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum\u201d as \u201ctriumphs of our time,\u201d again elevated over the ancient wonders.18<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tennyson\u2019s \u201cLocksley Hall\u201d is written in the voice of a scorned lover who, at one point, wishes he could escape his sorrow by contemplating the wondrous age he lives in and the exciting prospects for the future, which in his youth made him feel \u201cwild pulsation.\u201d He seems, in 1835, to be prophesying air travel and airborne trade:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
\nSaw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
\nSaw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
\nPilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales\u202619<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

(Famously, he also foresees the horrors of airborne warfare, but hopes that eventually there will be world union and peace between nations.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byron, in Don Juan<\/em>, praises Newton for his discoveries and his method, which he calls:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

A thing to counterbalance human woes:
\nFor ever since immortal man hath glow’d
\nWith all kinds of mechanics, and full soon
\nSteam-engines will conduct him to the moon.20<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

An acquaintance of Byron\u2019s wrote that in 1822, after receiving reports of experiments with air travel by balloon, he asked \u201cWho would not wish to have been born two or three centuries later? \u2026 Where shall we set bounds to the power of steam? \u2026 We are at present in the infancy of science.\u201d Byron even imagined that in the far future, if a comet threatened the Earth, we might use mechanical power to \u201ctear rocks from their foundations \u2026 and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass.\u201d21<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rudyard Kipling wrote a long ballad, \u201cMcAndrew\u2019s Hymn,\u201d in the voice of a Scottish engineer on a passenger steamship. When a snooty first-class passenger complains to the engineer that steam power spoils the romance of sailing, McAndrew laments that poets have spent so many words on love and have ignored the engine, praying \u201cLord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o\u2019 Steam!\u201d He calls the engine an \u201corchestra sublime,\u201d and lovingly describes the harmony of the crank-throws, feed-pump, and link-head, with every part \u201csingin\u2019 like the Mornin\u2019 Stars for joy that they are made.\u201d To him, the engine represents a moral lesson: \u201cLaw, Order, Duty an\u2019 Restraint, Obedience, Discipline!\u201d\u2014and he wonders whether perhaps, when the machine was forged, it was given a soul.22<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the pre-WW1 era, contrary to the fears that would arise decades later, there was outright pride in the growth of the population. In 1890, the US completed a census, and the nation eagerly awaited the result. However, the census director\u2019s announcement \u201cthat the population of this great republic was only 62,622,250 sent into spasms of indignation a great many people who had made up their minds that the dignity of the republic could only be supported on a total of 75,000,000.\u201d The news sent up a \u201chowl\u201d of \u201cfrantic disappointment.\u201d23<\/sup> The \u201cindignation\u201d was such that many people blamed the automatic tabulating machines, in use for the first time, for \u201cslip shod work\u201d that had \u201cspoiled the census.\u201d24<\/sup> Americans were proud<\/em> of being the fastest-growing country: a large and growing nation was a healthy nation, prosperous and secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As there was pride in growth, there was also pride in rebuilding after disaster. In 1871, when a historic fire devastated Chicago, no sooner had the blaze gotten under control than the Tribune<\/em> ran an editorial headlined, \u201cCHEER UP,\u201d which asserted that \u201cthe people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN. \u2026 As there has never been such a calamity, so has there never been such cheerful fortitude in the face of desolation and ruin.\u201d25<\/sup> Already, it boasted, some rebuilding contracts had been made, and the debris was to be cleared away as soon as the charred material was no longer too hot to touch. San Francisco showed the same spirit in response to the 1906 earthquake and fires; the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition was in part a chance to show off how quickly and how far the city had bounced back.26<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this era, human works were not only seen to blend harmoniously with nature\u2014they were seen as an improvement<\/em> on nature. One of the orators at the Brooklyn Bridge opening spoke of the astounding transformation that had taken place in New York since its \u201cprimeval\u201d state two hundred years prior, when it was undeveloped:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

In the place of stillness and solitude, the footsteps of these millions of human beings; instead of the smooth waters \u201cunvexed by any keel,\u201d highways of commerce ablaze with the flags of all the nations; and where once was the green monotony of forested hills, the piled and towering splendors of a vast metropolis, the countless homes of industry, the echoing marts of trade, the gorgeous palaces of luxury, the silent and steadfast spires of worship!27<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

To this view, untouched nature is a \u201cgreen monotony\u201d; a built-up city is a \u201ctowering splendor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1920s, a German engineer, Franz Westermann, made a pilgrimage to the US to see the American manufacturing system, which was then the envy of the world. The highlight of his trip was the Ford factory complex at Highland Park in Detroit. After seeing it:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t

Westermann wrote that he had always been moved, like so many of his countrymen, by the beauties and romance of nature. He had seen the shimmering surface of woodland lakes on nights of the full moon; he had felt the power of the endless ocean while standing on the tossing deck of a steamer in a storm; and he had been deeply moved by the sight of snow-covered Alpine peaks and dark mysterious valleys. Yet \u201cthe most powerful and memorable experience of my life came from the visit to the Ford plants, where the hand of man had created in a short time a gigantic production complex, which not only through its size and technical characteristics made a staggering impression, but also filled the viewer with the powerful organizing spirit of its creators.\u201d At every turn a new machinescape, \u201ca Bacchanal of work,\u201d stimulated the engineer.28<\/sup><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNatural\u201d was not automatically good, and \u201cartificial\u201d or \u201csynthetic\u201d actually had positive connotations. Virginia Postrel reports that an 1897 newspaper article anticipating the coming of artificial ice looked forward to the day when \u201cnature will be driven from the commercial ice business, and the inventive genius of man will have scored another improvement over his clumsy and antiquated ancestor.\u201d Despite a backlash from incumbents, who tried to claim that natural ice was superior, artificial ice was generally seen as cleaner and healthier; another newspaper reported that \u201ca dutiful mother will have nothing but pure ice for her children.\u201d29<\/sup> When DuPont held a \u201cWonder World of Chemistry\u201d exhibit at the Texas Centennial in 1936, one woman gushed: \u201cNow everything is synthetic,\u201d and found it \u201cwonderful how du Pont is improving on nature.\u201d30<\/sup> (Other visitors were skeptical, but mostly \u201cthe elderly or less sophisticated.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketers of the day found the public receptive to this message. \u201cWonder World of Chemistry\u201d was also the title of a DuPont promotional film, which opened with a title card stating: \u201cThe story of progress is the story of the search for \u2018Better Things for Better Living\u2014Through Chemistry.\u2019\u201d31<\/sup> The film unabashedly showed off insecticides, gunpowder, and dynamite\u2014including several explosions for the purposes of mining, construction, or clearing trees away for farmland. (The only thing they didn\u2019t want to show was munitions: DuPont was trying to escape a reputation as a \u201cmerchant of death\u201d from WW1.) In 1942, the Bakelite Corporation made a similar film titled \u201cThe Fourth Kingdom\u201d which proclaimed that the three natural kingdoms\u2014animal, vegetable, and mineral\u2014had been found \u201cinsufficient\u201d by the modern world, which \u201chas turned elsewhere to fulfill its needs\u2014turned to a fourth kingdom, a kingdom of scientific research, a new domain of man\u2019s own creation.\u201d32<\/sup> One historian describes this as marking \u201ca victory of synthesis over extraction, of the artificial over the natural.\u201d33<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1940s, Seagram\u2019s ran a campaign for its V.O. Canadian whisky in LIFE magazine with the theme: \u201cMen Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow.\u201d The ads featured illustrations of then-futuristic technologies, including moving sidewalks, office computers, wireless phones, video calling, 3D movies, power plants that captured energy from lightning, \u201cfacsimile newspapers\u201d printed from your television, grocery and meal delivery, and desert irrigation powered by nuclear energy.34<\/sup> The only apparent connection to their product was that both new technologies and 6-year aged whisky require advance planning; presumably Seagram\u2019s also simply liked the brand association with progress. In a similar spirit, a 1959 ad in the LA Times<\/em>, placed by a coalition of electric companies, touted the potential for ultrasound dishwashers, automatic bed-makers, and the ability \u201cto dial a library book, a lecture or a classroom demonstration right into your home.\u201d The ad referred without explanation or justification to \u201ctomorrow\u2019s higher standard of living,\u201d and was illustrated with a picture of a flying car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
LIFE, May 12, 1947, p. 142<\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
The Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1959<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The greatest expression of the spirit of progress was the series of grand techno-industrial exhibitions that came to be known as the World\u2019s Fair. Each fair was an enormous event, sprawled out across hundreds of acres, with dozens or hundreds of buildings constructed to house exhibits that showed off both existing technologies and visions of the future. A World\u2019s Fair would typically run for about six months and receive tens of millions of visitors. The tradition began in London with the Great Exhibition of 1851, which built a \u201ccrystal palace\u201d of iron and glass to exhibit industrial technologies and products from around the world.35<\/sup> The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 featured Alexander Graham Bell\u2019s new telephone.36<\/sup> The 1889 Exposition Universelle gave Paris its Eiffel Tower.37<\/sup> The 1893 World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed off electric lighting powered by alternating current.38<\/sup> The 1915 Panama\u2013Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco was a celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, called the \u201cThirteenth Labor of Hercules\u201d; it was marketed as \u201ca complete panorama of human achievement. \u2026 Its sole aim is to show the latest development in human progress.\u201d39<\/sup> Chicago 1933 used the tagline \u201cA Century of Progress\u201d; New York 1939 used \u201cThe World of Tomorrow.\u201d40<\/sup> Visitors left the 1939 fair sporting buttons that proudly proclaimed: \u201cI Have Seen the Future.\u201d41<\/sup> For the 1964 fair in Flushing Meadows, NY, Disney developed an attraction called the Carousel of Progress, for which the Sherman Brothers (songwriters of Mary Poppins<\/em> and The Jungle Book<\/em>) wrote a song: \u201cThere\u2019s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.\u201d42<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n