Anticipation

(I probably should have run this yesterday and yesterday’s post today, but whatever.)

From 1896, a view of the use of high tech to announce election results:

The small text below: “The illustration here given presents a marked contrast with that on the opposite page. In the [eighteen] forties election returns were not flashed over the wires, as now, and none of the improved methods of announcing them had come into vogue. Then, sometimes a week passed before the final result was known in the great cities of the country. Now, except in a very close contest, the result is announced by midnight of election day. The interest in the result of the recent election was perhaps more intense than in any contest since 1876. Our picture shows the immense throng which gathered about one of the places where the returns were received and announced.”

We’re looking south at the intersection of Fifth Avenue (on the right, behind the clock) and Broadway (on the left, with the extraordinarily elaborate street-light candelabra). The building with the projectors and the building with the wall being projected were both demolished a few years later for the Flatiron Building site. The clock is still there, the candelabra is not.

The Times was still downtown in 1896, and in a few years would move up to 42nd Street, so this is a show put on by the paper in a location where they thought there would be an audience. I’m sure they had something similar at their building on Park Row, but all the other newspapers were nearby, while here at Madison Square their message stood alone.

In 1896, the projectors were probably electric – my guess is arc lights – but could have been theatrical limelights. But this was the next step in mass communication: you didn’t have to wait for papers to be printed to get the news.