“Upwards of 20,000”: Extrasensory Quantities of Railway Shock

Vibrating materialities: mobility–body–technology relations

“…Far from benign, in the context of nineteenth‐century railway travel Shelley Trower describes how vibration was yet another novel experience that contributed to the sensory ‘overload’ of modernity. At this time, ‘[a]nxieties about railway vibration are said to derive from a new relation between humans and machines’ (Trower 2008, 156), echoing Schivelbusch's depiction of the modernist parcel‐like figure of the passenger. Vibration as a continuous, unrelenting succession of barely isolatable jolts was a shock to the body as it was a very different sensation to the unpredictable jerkiness of the horse and coach that people were used to.…”

“…Or as Trower notes, ‘vibration crosses sensory thresholds in so far that it can be simultaneously palpable and audible, visible and audible’ (2008, 135).…”

“…Turning to the Lancet once more, Trower describes how 19th‐century physicians understood vibration as a danger in that it literally impacted on the physiology of the brain, effecting a progressive weakening similar to that of the carriage shell 6 . Invoking a corporeal materiality that is not dissimilar to the vibrating effects of a machine, the Lancet describes ‘the strange effect of reiterated sound upon the brain‐cells; gently loosening, by its vibrations, the links which bind together the centres of consciousness and sensation’ (24 July 1875, 139 in Trower 2008, 160): a corporeal attrition that could be extended to include other travel maladies including motion sickness 7 . Of course today such transformative effects of vibration might be apprehended as more constructive.…”