Fascination with what lies beneath the earth seems to have been shared by many different cultures. In the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, however, the emergence of new technologies made it possible for the first time to dig into the earth on a scale that had been previously unimaginable. Whether undertaken in the service of science or in the name of public works, these colossal excavations dispelled many longstanding myths. Nevertheless, the subterranean imagination did not simply disappear. Instead, it reconfigured itself around a new set of ideas, fantasies, and fears.
In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams, Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology at MIT, examines how actual and imaginary underworlds shaped our attitudes toward the manufactured environments that we inhabit. Sina Najafi spoke to Williams by phone.
