In 1881, the Barcelona businessman Tomàs Dalmau spent an exhausting August. At the end of April, together with the engineer Narcís Xifra and other partners, he had founded the first Spanish company dedicated to the production and sale of electricity. They aspired to illuminate all of Barcelona. The Spanish Electricity Society made history, it arrived too soon and had a short life, but Dalmau did not know that yet.
A newspaper born that same year, La Vanguardia, reported on its intense summer. In a few weeks he brought electricity to Comillas so that his marquis could receive a visit from Alfonso Graham Bell's telephone, Werner von Siemens' electric tram or Trouvé's electric car.
On August 10, La Vanguardia received two telegrams from the Spanish Electricity Society from Cantabria. In one, its founder said that the tests were going well. In the other, the Marquis explained that “the electric lighting installed by Mr. Dalmau has greatly pleased his Majesties and Highnesses; I am extremely satisfied with him and very recognized for the intelligence and activity with which he has fulfilled his task.” “We congratulate the aforementioned gentleman again for the victory obtained in Comillas,” the newspaper published enthusiastically. Another telegram sent on the 29th at 6:20 p.m. confirmed that “the lighting by electric incandescent lamps in the royal rooms and the Güell house” had worked.
On August 30, the columnist for La Vanguardia in Paris celebrated the success of the Spanish pavilion at the Expo and “the advantages of electric light and its indisputable usefulness for all kinds of uses and applications.” About room thirteen, destined for the Dalmau electricity company, he wrote that “it was brilliant and deserved very flattering phrases for the Spanish industry.”
Since its inception, La Vanguardia covered the technological developments of the second industrial revolution, an accelerated and optimistic era – unlike ours, equally dizzying but pessimistic. Once the railway was established, it accounted for the advances in the diffusion of electricity, just as it would do with telephony. Later came everything else: the airplane, electronics, the tractor, the mass media, the conquest of space, the atomic bomb, computers, the Internet, mobile phones. Even the way of consulting the newspaper would change.
When reviewing what has happened in these 142 years, some axioms of technology are revealed. For example, although advances are concentrated in certain times and people, they never reach everyone at the same time, and their implementation is usually slower and more uneven than it seems. If Alfonso electrical.
The dark part of development, so present in current discourse, was also planned at the time. "Century of the lights! Lots of steam, lots of electricity! And God, what is electricity and true steam?... the railroad brings corruption to the most hidden valleys,” wrote Miguel de Unamuno retrospectively in Paz en la guerra. “The failure of the construction company of the railway line from Tudela to Bilbao had reached almost every corner of the town, the panic was great, and many mourned the loss of savings made by selling two quarters of parsley, or anything worth it. . The shares of one hundred duros had dropped to five and soon, it was said, they would only serve to wrap jam,” he continued, in a paragraph that could describe the dotcom crisis of 2000 or the crypto crash of 2022.
Despite the passage of time, the press continues to try to balance enthusiasm and criticism of technology in order to describe its changes, focusing on its pioneers and those disinherited from progress. Preserving a newspaper archive where the history of modernity is followed from its first spectacular times to the present day allows a unique perspective.
Now, 142 years after the birth of La Vanguardia, the world faces a new industrial revolution, with anxiety precipitated by ChatGPT opening to the public in November. “The age of artificial intelligence has arrived,” proclaimed Bill Gates and reported in this newspaper. Since then, journalists have rushed to tell how the balances of power in the world are changing, who their protagonists are, what their risks are, what fabulous opportunities are opening up.
Experts predict radical changes in the world of work, in the economy and in every imaginable sector, from education to medicine, communication and computing. McKinsey has estimated that generative AI could add between $2.6 and $4.4 trillion in annual productivity worldwide... although it won't be today or tomorrow: they believe that half of current work activities could be automated, but that will happen between 2030 and 2060. As with light, we will have to continue counting.
