Workshop 2: Wireless: Oliver Lodge, Science, and Spiritualism

location: Royal Society, London
date: 24 April 2014
registration: closed
programme: download here

Lodge’s scientific reputation had been established through his work detecting signals transmitted through the ether and this interest places Lodge at the heart of a number of key cultural concerns. The ether was a cultural metaphor: a medium that was posited in order to account for connections between people of various kinds. Studying Lodge’s spiritualism provides a new way of understanding his physics, but also a way of approaching broader communication networks, occult or otherwise, of the period.

The poster and programme for the event are available to download here (pdf).

Programme:

09:00 Registration and coffee
09:30 Welcome and opening remarks, Graeme Gooday, Jim Mussell, and Richard Noakes
10:00 (Chair: Richard Noakes) Elizabeth Bruton, ‘“The Arch Builders of Wireless Telegraphy”: the roles of Oliver Lodge, William Preece, and Guglielmo Marconi in early wireless history’
J. Patrick Wilson, ‘Oliver Lodge’s Contributions to Technology’
11:30 Tea and coffee
12:00 (Chair: David Hendy) Christine Ferguson, ‘The Case of Fletcher: Shell Shock, Spiritualism, and Lodge’s Raymond; Or Life and Death (1916).’
Richard Noakes, ‘Completing Modern Physics: Oliver Lodge’s Imperial Science of the Ether’
13:30 Lunch
14:30 (Chair: Christine Ferguson) David Hendy, ‘Lodge, The Ether and the Public Airwaves’
Peter Bowler, ‘Etherial Evolution for Everyman: Oliver Lodge’s Campaign for Liberal Religious Values’
16:00 Rountable discussion featuring Liz Bruton, Peter Bowler, Christine Ferguson, Graeme Gooday, David Hendy, Richard Noakes.
16:45 Closing remarks, Graeme Gooday
17:00 Workshop ends

2 thoughts on “Workshop 2: Wireless: Oliver Lodge, Science, and Spiritualism

  1. Pingback: Workshop 2: Registration open | Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940

  2. Pingback: Wireless: Oliver Lodge, Science, and Spiritualism | C19 Mad Men

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