Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Stimuli Entwined Histories of Wireless Signals and Plant Ecologies

" Bose invented and used “dielectric lenses, a horn antenna (‘funnel’), wave guides, and polarisers” (Shepherd 2012) to measure very small movements of plants (see figure 1ab). His work creating millimeter wave and microwave technologies from 1894 to 1899 was highly regarded by many physicists including Bose’s former teacher Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge. Bose was extending the work started by James Clerk Maxwell and other scientists on understandings of electromagnetic fields." {Credits 1}

" Based on his experiments, Bose characterizes human sense organs as acting like “antennae” responsive to wireless signals, thereby arguing that impulses within the body vibrate and interfere with electromagnetic fields. At another point, Bose notes that his findings clearly suggest that plants are sensitive to invisible electromagnetic rays, which leads him to intuit that plants have “nervous” (nerve) impulses and not merely automatic biomechanical movements (Bose 1929; 1926)." {Credits 1}

{Credits 1} 🎪 Mukherjee, Rahul. 2020. “Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Stimuli: Entwined Histories of Wireless Signals and Plant Ecologies.” Media+Environment 2 (1). © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.