Techne…Psyche…Edison…Baird and endeavours of the autobiographical Baird and of L’Isle- Adam’s protagonist, a fictional Thomas Edison, that several Nils Runeberg writers have thought some influence, unconscious or otherwise, all but certain. Even Theodor Adorno, when considering the medium’s capacity for hitherto ‘undreamed of psychological Technical Notebooks 1920 to 1926, by John Logie control’, poses the android Eve as the personification, so to Baird, edited by Albe Manuensis, Ventriloquist Press, speak, of the ‘autonomized reactions’ and ‘weakened forces of 474 pp, £20.00, ISBN 1 906548 12 9 individual resistance’ that the misused medium could effect. His * 1954 article, How to Look at Television, goes on to suggest that it is this automaton, rather than ‘autonomous individuals’, that Baird and his fellow inventors had in mind as they contrived Things are not invented by any one person at any one those early broadcasts. time. Such is the case for television: it was developed What has particularly convinced commentators of the incrementally by hundreds of scientists, in both Europe and appeal of Future's Eve to Baird is its rendering of his hero, America, with schemes for ‘seeing by telegraph’ proposed as Thomas Edison. Baird saw Edison’s invention of the early as the 1880s. A good number of the patents were filed, phonograph and motion picture apparatus as precursors and however, by the Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird; and it was inspiration for his own work, and liked to think of himself as Baird, who in January 1926 gave the first public demonstration something of Edison’s successor. Indeed, when in the 1920s of ‘true’ television. Baird attended a séance it was Edison’s spirit that appeared to Since then commentators have disputed television’s him. The encounter coincided with Baird’s attempts to film in place not only within the history of mass media, but also within the dark using infra-red radiation; Edison, communicating by fields of what might be called ‘unconscious influence’ - those Morse code, told him unannounced, subterranean forces that impel action and ‘I have been experimenting with noctovision in my invention. One oft-recurring question in this regard is that of home on the astral plane, and I am convinced that it will in time whether Baird had read or had knowledge of the proto-science prove of great use in assisting communication between the living fiction novel Future's Eve, written by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam in and those who have passed over, but the time is not ripe, and to 1886. So many are the correspondences between the characters attempt to use it now would incur grave danger. I am however I speak a great disparity between soul and body. While the latter continuing my research and will communicate with you when is without doubt of perfect beauty, the former appears to have the time comes to use noctovision.’ strayed into a body that it didn’t belong to. To see her is to see a Baird's conception of what divides the technological temple profaned by ostentation, hypocrisy and superstition. Oh, and supernatural was already vague; the séance experience only if only that soul were to be removed from that body! If only – blurred it the more, while further persuading biographers that but it is mere fantasy. Baird’s Edison was by way of L’Isle-Adam. Now, with the recent discovery and publication of EDISON: It is not. I can do just as you wish, by making a double Baird’s notebooks from the industrious period prior to 1926, it of the woman, and in place of her repellant soul, instill another seems that their speculations can come to an end. Among the that will give rise to impressions a thousand times more beautiful sketches and technical notes there indeed appear extensive and elevated. Quell your surprise – such transformations are passages, copied in Baird’s careful handwriting, from Future's made with ease by today’s science, where instruments for Eve. copying have achieved perfect precision. We are able to realize Two in particular – both exchanges between Edison and powerful phantoms, mysterious mixed presences whose his wealthy sponsor Ewald – are worthy of special attention as conception alone was beyond our precursors. they bear a striking resemblance to an anecdote in Baird's memoirs (an anecdote which, perhaps not coincidentally, was At this point Baird moves forward to a later passage, read by his wife Margaret to the congregation at his funeral). In where Edison is preparing the blank automaton for animation. the first of these dialogues, from near the beginning of the book, Peering into her mechanical viscera, Ewald cannot understand Ewald is telling the inventor about a young woman with whom how it is that the automaton will be able to respond to him, by he is enamoured: means only of two phonographs and a cylinder embossed with twenty hours of speech. EWALD: In every living creature there is an indelible, essential inner being. This gives all of that creature’s ideas, even the EWALD: For this to succeed you must have foreseen what I vaguest ones, and all her impressions, regardless of any possible shall ask or answer the Android. How can that be? Whatever it external modification, the aspect or quality through which she is is, it’s my freedom of thought, my love itself, I would be permitted to experience or reflect. Let’s call that substrata the deprived of if I submitted my spirit to its encounter. soul, if you wish. Alas, Eminson, there is in the person of which EDISON: What does it matter, if it guarantees the reality of your dream? And who is really free? Only the angels of old legend, delivered as they are from temptation, for having seen the abyss wherein have fallen those who willed to think.

EWALD: If I understand you correctly … It would be necessary that I myself learn the role of my questions and answers?

EDISON: Words are vague, with strange intellectual elasticities. That is the great kaleidoscope of human speech: everything can answer anything. The charm and depth of words depends simply on the question they answer! Thus, unlike a living woman, there will never be a dissonance between your words and hers. You need never fear being misunderstood.

EWALD: And what about improvisation, what about spontaneity?

EDISON: There is no such thing. Don’t you know that you just recite? Aren’t all worldly conversations like the complimentary close of a letter? Really, any speech can only be something repeated. You don’t need this Eve to have tete-a-tetes with a phantom.

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