this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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HistoryPhotos

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Telephone tower in Stockholm, Sweden, ~1890 (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 week ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historyphotos@piefed.social
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[–] calliope@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Apparently this cartoon was made a couple weeks after a specific electrical accident.

First of all, I never caught that electricity is a spider.

Note: Cover. Anti-electricity cartoon. Electricity is portrayed as a spider with a cobweb of electrical wires for trapping its human victims.

On October 11, 1889 John Feeks, a Western Union lineman, was high up in the tangle of overhead electrical wires working on what were supposed to be low-voltage telegraph lines in a busy Manhattan district. As the lunchtime crowd below looked on he grabbed a nearby line that, unknown to him, had been shorted many blocks away with a high-voltage AC line. The jolt entered through his bare right hand and exited his left steel studded climbing boot. Feeks was killed almost instantly, his body falling into the tangle of wire, sparking, burning, and smoldering for the better part of an hour while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below.

Notes from Ohio State University library.