The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
“But while much about life would assuredly go on as usual, very much was to be profoundly, irretrievably different.
Change was coming—dramatic, unprecedented change: scheduled Atlantic crossings by steamship in half the time; communication between far-distant points at the speed of lightning; a surprise discovery by a Parisian artist named Louis Daguerre that Samuel Morse, seeing it for the first time, called “the most beautiful” of the age; centuries-old European monarchies brought down by tumu...ltuous political upheaval that began in Paris; and Paris itself transformed on a scale no one could have imagined—and all within less than twenty years.
The year 1838 marked the beginning, when in April the paddle steamer Sirius crossed from Cork to New York, followed closely by another steamship from Bristol, the Great Western. Although both ships had a full complement of sails, both had the “unceasing aid” of steam engines the entire way.
Under steam a ship could now cut a straight furrow at sea, from point to point, with no more, or very little, tacking this way and that at the will of the winds.MoreLess
Change was coming—dramatic, unprecedented change: scheduled Atlantic crossings by steamship in half the time; communication between far-distant points at the speed of lightning; a surprise discovery by a Parisian artist named Louis Daguerre that Samuel Morse, seeing it for the first time, called “the most beautiful” of the age; centuries-old European monarchies brought down by tumu...ltuous political upheaval that began in Paris; and Paris itself transformed on a scale no one could have imagined—and all within less than twenty years.
The year 1838 marked the beginning, when in April the paddle steamer Sirius crossed from Cork to New York, followed closely by another steamship from Bristol, the Great Western. Although both ships had a full complement of sails, both had the “unceasing aid” of steam engines the entire way.
Under steam a ship could now cut a straight furrow at sea, from point to point, with no more, or very little, tacking this way and that at the will of the winds.MoreLess
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