Temporal Energy

The electromagnetic impulses at the heart of Samuel Morse’s telegraph flow through the confluence of different modes of time. The telegraph operates through the creation of isolated, measurable moments—of signal and... [ view full abstract ]

The electromagnetic impulses at the heart of Samuel Morse’s telegraph flow through the confluence of different modes of time. The telegraph operates through the creation of isolated, measurable moments—of signal and silence—out of the mysterious current of “galvanic fluid” racing along the wire. In the discrete clicks of Morse code, time as continuous flow is transformed into time as distinct units. However, the telegraph alerts us to a deeper layer of time inherent in nineteenth-century thinking about electromagnetic energy. Electromagnetism was identified with spiritualist belief systems; the movement of a magnet or the illumination of a bulb by energy acting across a distance summons the temporality of the nonhuman, the supernatural or differently animate. This paper will explore the complex representations of energetic time in relation to Morse’s work as both spiritualist author and as inventor and technical writer. Morse’s writings illuminate the role of electromagnetism in an economy of energy in which the imperial domination of time was obtained through the circulation and consumption of the mysterious nonhuman temporality of the galvanic fluid.