Fighting Ghosts, Playing Whist, and Fencing with Fire: Three Technologies of Illusion in Performance in Nineteenth-century London

Technologies of illusion are technologies used to evoke an emotional response in an audience by producing an effect that seems to violate the laws of physics; for example, conjuring apparatuses and special effects are technologies of illusion. Traditional histories suggest that audience members value technologies of illusion for their mystery: when they understand the mechanism responsible for an effect, they lose interest in that technology. This view is empirically unsupported. Instead, technologies of illusion should be considered not as apparent violations of nature but as representations of violations of nature. Like all representations, their effectiveness hinges not on the deception of the audience by the performer but on collaboration between both parties to establish the illusion within the socio-cultural contexts that give it meaning. The analysis of three case studies, each of which embodies one of the main fields in which technologies of illusion were used in performance in nineteenth-century London, supports this understanding. The ghost illusion jointly developed by Henry Dircks and John Henry Pepper in 1862 and presented by the latter at the Royal Polytechnic Institution is representative of technologies of illusion used in popular-science demonstrations. Likewise, the card-playing pseudo-automaton Psycho developed by conjuror J. N. Maskelyne in 1875 is representative of technologies of illusion used in performances of secular magic, and the electric sword duel in Sir Henry Irving’s 1885 production of Faust is representative of technologies of illusion used to produce theatrical spectacle. Microhistories of each technology based on primary sources and informed by tacit knowledge gained through performance experiments demonstrate that secrecy of mechanism alone did not guarantee popular acclaim. Despite widespread knowledge of the mechanisms responsible for each illusion, these performers worked with their audiences within the conventions of their respective fields to construct meaning for their effects and achieve success for each technology.Ph