Trapped in the Nineteenth Century In 1851 the English poet Mathew Arnold, only 32 at the time, described his era as “Wandering between two worlds, one dead,/The other powerless to be born”. It could equally apply to our times as we gather the shards of “a dead time's exploded dream”. The 19 th C was a remarkable century. It provided the building blocks upon which the 20 th C was built, with its many inventions from the elevator and escalator to the sewing machine and the vacuum cleaner. The telephone, the light bulb, alternating current and batteries. The first motion pictures, the first gramophone, the first railroads, the motor car, traffic lights, museums and blue jeans, coca cola and the zipper. The first test cricket match, football clubs, new games such as basketball and volleyball and the revival of the Olympic games. The first detective novels, horror stories and science fiction. X rays, vaccines, aspirin and anesthesia. The first steel ships, the unde...