The Railway Journey

• Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986. Print.
• With the support of quotations and resources of the time, Schivelbusch recounts the evolution of human perception after the introduction of the rotary steam engine and follows these changes through its implementation in the railway system. He describes how this new mode of transportation caused a compression of space and time for the human perspective and narrates the different ways in which European and American societies assuaged the unique problems they confronted in the phenomena of railroad travel. Schivelbusch explains the lineage of the carriage, how it corresponded to the world which so rapidly passed by a passenger's window, as well as the effect its various arrangements had on a passenger's psychology and behavior. Through his insights we can see how radical a shift was required by the human constitution in order to accommodate forms of sensory input which were made possible only by the invention of entirely mechanized (i.e. beyond the body) output.