The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [97]
A dazzling flood of images cascaded over the screen: exhibition halls filled with gargantuan manufacturing displays; dynamos, hydroelectric power, models of machines from the new Golden Age of Science. An entire building full of turbines and generators, seemingly the work of a race of giants. Steam-powered fire engines. Horseless carriages. The latest advances in luxurious rail travel; gloriously appointed sleeping cars with silk curtains and silver washbasins. In its central chamber, a tower of electricity reached to the roof of the vast steel hall, the words "Edison Light" flashing around its pinnacle—as he stood beside them, Doyle watched the flickering shadows play off Edison's face, marveling at the riches of inspiration that must animate his mind; godfather to the march of progress they were witnessing.
A separate pavilion displayed Edison's Inventions of Tomorrow, machines predicted to better the lives of every man, woman, and child; vacuum cleaners, laundry machines, refrigerated ice boxes. And most astonishing: the Telectroscope, a viewing tube, like a telescope, that when perfected would allow a man in New York to see the face of a friend in Chicago as if they were standing side by side.
Rising from an amusement area called the Midway, a gigantic wheel of light carried passengers in swinging baskets, up, down, and around in a fiery circle—invented by a local man named George Washington Ferris, Edison told them—as if a wonder from Mount Olympus had fallen among the mortals. One dizzying shot demonstrated the point of view of someone sitting in the revolving chairs; from its apex the fairgrounds spread out beneath the wheel like the dawning of a new civilization.
"Two hundred and fifty feet in the air: Our cameraman nearly fainted and fell to his death," said Edison.
Now pictures documented groups of men and women gathered on stairs in front of various Fair pavilions; in wide-angle shots, a banner in their center announced the group's identity—Pan American Association of Horse Breeders; the Chicago Club; United Women's Congress—followed in each instance by closer shots of the camera slowly panning across each stationary membership, most of them, used to posing for still photographers, standing as rigidly as statues with unwavering smiles on their faces.
This is all very interesting, thought Doyle, on the verge of asking: What was the point?
Then came the Parliament of International Religions: one of the largest groupings, a swell of clergy populating the steps around their banner and a second sign that read: Not Men, but Ideas. Not Matter, but Mind.
Lionel Stern leaned forward in his seat. The closer examining shots began: bishops, cardinals, deacons, vicars, Protestant and Catholic in their clerical collars standing shoulder to shoulder with rabbis, both Orthodox and the more contemporarily outfitted Reform....
"There, there he is, there's my father," said Lionel Stern, leaping forward to the screen and pointing at a briefly glimpsed angular figure in the center of the group. "Is there any way to stop the picture?"
"I'm afraid not," said Edison.
The camera continued to slip to the right across the congregation; Lionel watched anxiously as Jacob's grainy image drifted to the edge of the screen and disappeared. Now the many races and religions of the East made their appearance, eyeing the camera with more variety of expression—from quiet humor to outright suspicion—all wearing their distinctive traditional vestments: clusters of draped and turbaned Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists in dark saffron robes, ascetic Confucianists, Coptic Christians, Tibetans, elegant Shinto priests, forbidding Eastern Orthodox patriarchs.
As the camera