Science and the seance

The world's most eminent scientists are not usually associated with the dim-lit surroundings of a clairvoyant's parlour. But some of science's biggest names have not only dabbled in, but been entirely convinced by the world of the seance.

Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird are familiar to most for the household indispensables they invented. But the attraction to spiritualism they all shared is definitely not part of the GCSE science syllabus.

All three men, and many other Victorian scientific pioneers, became involved with the religion, which depended on strange forces being demonstrated through bizarre phenomena.

The deevelopment of the telegraph made the possibility of communicating with the dead seem in the realm of the possible. "If people could communicate over the telegraph, why couldn't this world and the next world communicate?"