Pneumatic Subway New York - New Jersey 1870

Pneumatic Subway  New York - New Jersey 1870

Electricity in the Past - Exibition of Electricity in Paris 1881

The digital age has arrived, which among other benefits has brought digital archives of documents and photos from all corners of the Earth.
Scanning through archives of old photos, you keep catching yourself thinking that you want to write a science fiction novel. But is it really science fiction?
It's pleasant to work with digital archives of Brazil, where censor was not sufficiently motivated. Sometimes you find useful things there. If New Zealand's National Library photos show its roofs cut, which could be seen even with the naked eye in all photos,


This is just an Exposition of electricity in Paris (1881). If you zoom in and look carefuly, you will see that the entire hall is packed with some strange items, most of which do not resemble familiar electricity-generating devices. But for some reason, there are many church-like models, arrays, sticks and other objects that have mini-domes. Strangely enough, a lot of light bulbs are switched on and glow. Could there be some outer power cable or is it just batteries? Some speculative fiction. But what if those mini-domes like in the photo below are the energy source?

 

Apparently, they were massively molded on poles, giving our trams the power to move. But then something happened, and the trams were switched to another type of power supply, as you have already seen in this photo. But the mini-domes were still standing for some time after that, probably hidden in the nearby houses where they could still be used, or maybe someone just forgot to dismantle them. It happens. How can we be sure about anything if even the public toilets looked like they were taken from an exhibition?

Such fantastic countries, where there was no need to extract oil and wage wars for it, could be found on all continents where civilization existed, until a narrow circle of people came up with an ingenious way of enrichment.

 Has anybody ever seen spheres on domes made of glass? Probably not. It can't be entangled with lamps this way either. So how could this sphere glow like a giant light bulb?

Moreover, the brightness of the sphere in the first photo even smoothly decreases, which contradicts all physical laws. Some science fiction again. But this is all garbage compared to a generator that would have enough energy to simultaneously power all those illuminations.

Most likely, if there were incandescent lamps, the power would be considerable. Let's mentally return to the picture from the electric exhibition. Were there any generators of sufficient power that could convert atmospheric electricity into usable energy, for example for the operation of mechanical devices?

Link
https://www.tart-aria.info/en/science-fiction-or-not/