PASSING TRAINS, FLEETING GLIMPSES
PASSING TRAINS, FLEETING GLIMPSES

Summary/Abstract: The terms durability and transience imply, above and beyond the persistence of images in the brain and on the retina, the notion of time, and its derivatives, such as speed or velocity. In the Early and Mid Victorian period with which this paper is concerned, there was still confident acceptance of Newton’s concept: ‘Absolute and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external’. The experience of railway travel that burst upon society in the 1830s and 1840s tended, I shall argue, to shake this confidence, to sow seeds of doubt, and to pave the way for a new conception, one which is still with us.

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