Science & Technology

Knobs or Points?

Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans. 

The First Live-Streaming

The théâtrophone premiered in Paris, at the International Exposition of Electricity, on 11 August 1881.

Love on the Wire

The advent of telecommunications gave rise to a new literary genre through which female telegraphers and writers found social freedoms.

The Battle of the Gauges

The railway revolutionised Victorian Britain, but were its trains on the right track? It was difficult to gauge.

Governing Goliath

In order to tackle the power of ‘Big Tech’, President Biden’s administration draws lessons from America’s ‘Gilded Age’.

More Heat and Light

The varied social, economic and institutional conditions that shaped science over more than two centuries.