The railway pointsman was the vigilant employee shifting tracks and posting signals to route hurtling trains safely on their way. In a twelve-hour shift in 1880, a pointsman might pull two thousand levers. (1) Their daily life was governed by "reliability, service, and coolness." (2) The power of the railway pointsman began in his disciplined mind and ended in the placement of his hands on the correct levers. In this, he replicated a critical assumption of Victorian religious and social thought: conscious free-will. As the human body would only act when prodded to do so by the soul, the signalman would move physically only after deliberate decisions

Quote James Clerk Maxwell



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