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Abstract

Using Edison’s electric pen as a case study, this article examines the role of media narratives in determining the ways in which a new medium is finally judged a success or failure. By challenging the narrative of the electric pen as a failed technology, it maintains that oppositional criteria such as new/old, winner/loser and successful/obsolete are counterproductive to a meaningful understanding of technical media. Instead, this article seeks to reposition and reappraise the electric pen, not as a study in failure and obsolescence, but as a site for the implementation of powerful cultural narratives that helped to define individuality and human agency in the beginnings of the modern age.

Keywords

Biographies of media duplication Edison electric pen electrification handheld devices machinic ecologies media narratives obsolescence old and new media predigital media

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‘An Extremely Useful Invention’: Edison’s electric pen and the unravelling of old and new media

Abstract

Keywords

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