David Peat

x Prefacemotion had been confirmed by generations of scientists, and it explainedeverything from the orbits of the planets to the times of thetides, the fall of an apple, and the path of a projectile. What’s more,during the preceding decades James Clerk Maxwell had established adefinitive theory of light. Taken together, Newton’s and Maxwell’s twotheories appeared to be capable of explaining every phenomenon inthe entire physical universe.Yet the cusp of the twentieth century presents us with an irony.1900 was a year of great stability and confidence. It saw the consolidationand summing up of many triumphs in science, technology, engineering,economics, and diplomacy. As Senator Chauncey Depew ofNew York put it, “There is not a man here who does not feel 400 percentbigger in 1900 than he did in 1896, bigger intellectually, biggerhopefully, bigger patriotically,” while the Reverend Newell DwightHillis claimed, “Laws are becoming more just, rules more humane;music is becoming sweeter and books wiser.” Yet, at that very momentother thinkers, inventors, scientists, artists, and dreamers, includingMax Planck, Henri Poincaré, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi,Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, Bertrand Russell, Paul Cézanne,Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford, andHerman Hollerith were conceiving of ideas and inventions that wereto transform the entire globe.1900 was the year in which flash photography was invented andspeech was first transmitted by radio. Arthur Evans discovered evidenceof a Minoan culture and the United States backed its paper currencywith gold. Once the Gold Standard had been adopted, was thereanything that could stand in the way of a greater degree of confidencein the future of their world?1900 also represents the culmination of a period of rapid discovery.In the two previous years the Curies had discovered radium andJ. J. Thomson the electron. Von Linde had liquefied air and Aspirin hadbeen invented. Edison’s Vitascope together with the magnetic recordingof sound heralded the age of the movies.Thanks to Nikola Tesla’s inventions in alternating current, the cityof Buffalo was receiving electrical power generated by Niagara Falls.Count von Zeppelin constructed an airship, the Paris Metro opened,