• Iced Raktajino@startrek.website
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    1 day ago

    Lol electric lighting was the 5G of the late 1800s.

    Surprised we don’t have signs like that now. Not that we’d notice them for all the other hundred warning labels on everything.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldM
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          5 hours ago

          It links to this image:

          @[email protected] could have just inserted it inline.

          Edit: I can’t believe I forgot to jump at the chance to display some nerd cred, but this is an illustration from James Thurber’s autobiography, My Life And Hard Times. It accompanies a story about an elderly aunt or similar who is not quite up to speed on how electricity works and goes around tightening all of the light bulbs because she’s afraid it’s going to “leak.”

          During the initial electrification of the world, a lot of people apparently didn’t understand electricity. Instead they stuck to paradigms that they already knew, which at the time would have been gas or kerosene lamps which can indeed leak — with results that may or may not end in a fireball chasing someone down a hallway. It makes sense in a strange sort of way, but it’s also a fascinating case study on just how bad people have been at grasping abstract concepts for centuries and that’s not just a recent dumbing down of the populace.