It was the dawn of a new scientific century, sweeping away the age of superstition and alchemy that had come before. The flame of progress had crossed the Atlantic from Europe to the New World, but there was still darkness enough in the cities. Even the recent invention of electrical lighting could only weakly illuminate a tiny part of the gloom. Evil spirits ran free in the world, and even the Mad Man's menacing inventions had an air of the supernatural and uncanny. Let us call it the Twilight Age.

Electricity, photography, phonography, moving pictures, X-rays; the typewriter, the automobile, the spinning machine... Each of these inventions would go on change the world, but for each one there were many others that entered the world to fanfare and applause, enjoyed popularity for a time, and faded away again unnoticed. The rapid and trusting adoption of some inventions had tragic, even fatal results for some unfortunate victims of the age.

A time of shining hope, yes, but also of dark pessimism. Cautionary tales were told by those who saw an eerie, unsettling future ahead. The Twilight Age
was a fascinating and always startling era,
and the Mad Man's Murderous Machines
were truly of their time. Eerie and tragic, they
emerged full-formed from the crepuscular
gloom only to vanish into it again like ghosts.