How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Tracks! Tracks! It seemed to the visionaries who wrote for the popular magazines that the future lay at the end of parallel rails. (13.1)
With subways and the expansion of railways, the future did indeed seem to be linked with the railroad, whether you were transporting people or materials. It's fitting that the couple that most freely embrace modernity (Tateh and Mother) end up in California… way at the end of the railway line.
Quote #2
…an engineering miracle was taking place, the construction of a tunnel under the East River from Brooklyn to the Battery. [...] The work was dangerous. (13.1)
Modernization, whether it was building skyscrapers, bridges or tunnels, was dangerous work that cost many men their lives. The process of modernization seems to help the affluent way before its beneficial effects reach the poor and the working-class.
Quote #3
The machine lifted off the ground. He thought he was dreaming. He had to willfully restrain his emotions, commanding himself sternly to keep the wings level, to keep the throttle continuously in touch with the speed of the flight. He was flying! (13.5)
The first powered flight occurred in 1903 with the Wright Brothers. This passage shows Houdini taking his first flight in a French plane only a few years later, when flying was still a novel idea. Here we see the thrill of new technology: Houdini is freaking flying!
Quote #4
Exactly six minutes after the car had rolled down the ramp an identical car appeared at the top of the ramp, stood for a moment pointed at the cold early morning sun, then rolled down and crashed into the rear of the first one. (18.1)
This is the moment that Henry Ford successfully creates a car made by assembly line, which is of course how we make cars today. At that moment, his Model T becomes inexpensive enough for the average Joe to own a car.
Quote #5
Has it occurred to you that your assembly line is not merely a stroke of industrial genius but a projection of organic truth? (20.5)
J.P. Morgan recognizes the fact that the assembly line will change the world as we know it. He also thinks that it makes cars as naturally as organisms reproduce. Ironically enough, Ford came up with the idea of the assembly line by examining slaughterhouses: it's not reproduction that inspires him; it's death.
Quote #6
Physicists all over the world were discovering waves, the man told him. There was a tremendously important theory from abroad in which it was supposed matter and energy were but two aspects of the same primal force. (27.10)
Houdini is still searching for a way to the afterlife. Despite advances in technology, there are no answers to how to contact the dead. But they're still using pretty science-y phrases to talk about their magic tricks.
Quote #7
Grandfather's doctor, who had submitted him to the latest orthopedic procedure for broken hips, a metallic pin implanted like an internal splint, advised them that he should be on his crutches or in his chair as much as possible... (31.3)
Who knew they were implanting pins in hips way back then? One of the obvious advantages of technology are medical advances, which would be especially necessary after the carnage of World War I… a carnage that was brought about by advances in weaponry. Vicious circle, eh?
Quote #8
For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting, and, forgive me, embracing each other. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. (33.10)
Technology isn't limited to planes, trains and automobiles. Here Tateh explains movies and why it's blossoming into a big business: because film technology allows humans to experience frozen time.
Quote #9
Morgan's intention in Egypt was to journey down the Nile and choose a site for his pyramid. [...] He expected that with modern construction techniques, the use of precut stones, steam shovels cranes, and so forth, a serviceable pyramid could be put up in less than three years. (40.12)
It's kind of hilarious that the richest man in the world wants to use all the modern technology at his disposal to build something that was made thousands of years ago.
Quote #10
In the year and a half of his life before his emigration, Younger Brother invented seventeen ordnance devices, some of which were so advanced that they were not used by the United States until World War II. (40.19)
Don't think it's a coincidence that Doctorow makes Younger Brother—an inventor of weapons—anti-social and a lost soul. When he's happier, he makes celebratory fireworks, but when he's miserable he makes explosives.