Scrambled Messages: The Telegraphic Imaginary 1857-1900

1857年至1866年间，公众的注意力被多次试图铺设横跨大西洋的海底电缆以传输电报信息的戏剧性事件所吸引。在随后的几十年里，一系列技术限制导致了协调一致的科学努力，以克服电子信息发送方面的障碍。这个项目借鉴了对21世纪世纪数字文化及其极限点的讨论，以确定为什么信息的混乱对于维多利亚文化来说与发送完美信息一样重要。我们的假设是，新技术所产生的愉悦和兴奋在文学写作和美术中产生了新的文化形式。这些文化形式同时采用了轻率的、抽象的技术爱好者特有的情感曲目，以及与不安地认识到不确定的物质性有关的情感曲目。这种探究将在物质对象和概念观念之间移动。我们要问的是，电报通信所产生的特殊实践和感觉是什么。我们会问英国公众评论和图形图像的范围是什么，以回应与电报相关的戏剧和发展中的技术。对维多利亚插图和图形报告文学（嵌入在研究项目中）的博士研究将为我们参与新闻和信息问题提供一个特定的维度。第二个嵌入式博士研究的短篇小说将解决一般问题的缩写和序列。除了对科学和通信技术的公众评论外，该项目还将研究科学论文、电报所用仪器的原理和形式以及推动电报的科学调查。该项目将改变由KCL持有的科学论文和仪器的惠斯通收藏的编目和网络演示。惠斯通（1802-1875）是电报技术的先驱。我们将考虑仪器和仪表，如感应继电器、检流计、伏打电池和电报发射机和接收机，以及铠装电缆本身的功能和材料。我们将利用与电报发展有关的档案材料。发明家和技术人员所面临的问题将为我们提供一系列相反的术语，我们可以用这些术语来研究维多利亚时代的文化，例如接近性/距离和传导性/阻抗，我们将问艺术形式本身是否受制于我们通过关键术语确定的某些过程和参数。比如说，压缩、拉伸或拼接，对于小说或短篇小说来说意味着什么？在神话绘画或风景画的例子中，序列、连续性或热的产生意味着什么？我们将探讨维多利亚晚期艺术中装饰性的转向，问它是否可以被视为一种新的序列性逻辑的证据，这种逻辑是以电报的一次一条信息的能力为基础的。在电报时代的文学和艺术文化中，顺序加密和解密的可能性是常规采用的吗？关注电报所伴随的联想和隐喻，将使我们作为学者能够承认体裁的区别，并关注不同媒体和受众的特殊性，但同时也能发展出对维多利亚文化具有广泛意义的跨学科论点。

Between 1857 and 1866 the public's attention was caught by the drama of the repeated attempts to lay a submarine cable across the Atlantic for the transmission of telegraphic messages. Over subsequent decades, a range of technical constraints led to concerted scientific endeavour to overcome obstacles in the sending of messages electronically. This project draws on discussions of twenty-first century digital culture and its limit points to establish why it is that the scrambling of messages was as significant for Victorian culture at large as the sending of flawless messages. It is our hypothesis that pleasures and excitements produced by the new technology were productive of new cultural forms in literary writing and fine art. These cultural forms adopt at one and the same time the emotional repertoire proper to heedless, abstract technophilia and that associated with an uneasy recognition of recalcitrant materiality.The enquiry will move between material objects and conceptual ideas. We will ask what were the particular practices and sensations generated by telegraphic communication. We will ask what was the range of British public commentary and graphic imagery produced in response to the drama and developing technology associated with the telegraph. A doctoral study on Victorian illustration and graphic reportage (embedded in the research project) will lend a specific dimension to our engagement with issues of news, and information. A second embedded doctoral study on the short story will address general questions of abbreviation and seriality. In addition to the public commentary on science and communications technology the project will work with scientific papers, the principles and forms of the instruments used for telegraphy and the scientific investigations that drove telegraphy. The project will transform the cataloguing and web presentation of the Wheatstone Collection of scientific papers and instruments held by KCL. Wheatstone (1802-1875) was a pioneer in the technologies of the telegraph. We will consider apparatus and instruments such as the induction relay, galvanometers, voltaic batteries and telegraph transmitters and receivers, and indeed the armoured cable itself in terms of their functions and materials. We will draw on archival materials associated with the development of the telegraph. The problems exercising inventors and technicians will offer us sets of opposing terms with which to look into Victorian culture such as proximity/distance and conductivity/impedence.We will ask whether the artistic form itself is subject to some of the processes and parameters that we have identified by means of key terms. What would compression, stretchiness or splicing, for instance, mean in the case of the novel or in the case of the short story? What would sequence, seriality or heat production mean in the case of mythological painting or landscape examples? We will approach the turn to the ornamental in late Victorian art asking whether it can be taken as evidence of a new logic of seriality predicated on the one-message-at-a time capability of the telegraph. Is the possibility of sequential encryption and decryption routinely adopted in telegraph-age literary and artistic culture? A focus on the associations and imaginings attendant on the telegraph will make it possible for us as scholars to acknowledge genre distinctions and attend to the specificities of different media and audiences but at the same time to develop interdisciplinary arguments of broad significance about Victorian culture.