supra tk society patent grey, Mark Twain\'s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur\'s Court provides many parallels between the main character, Hank Morgan, and Thomas Edison. Morgan decides he wants to bring civilization to Camelot and in order to do this he becomes, like Edison, a system builder. To introduce new technological systems, though, Morgan must deal with the way society was organized in the 6th century. In addition, the people living in Arthurian England are not quite ready for Morgan to take them into a new technological age. Morgan\'s efforts as a system builder, his attempt to transform society with technology, and the people\'s reaction to this transformation will be explored in the pages that follow.
In order to make life more bearable in Camelot, Morgan realizes he must institute changes or as he put it, \"invent, contrive, create; reorganize things\" (Twain 81). The first official thing Morgan did was set up a patent office which coincides with building systems because it allows inventors to look at ideas that have been developed to date and incorporate them into systems. The next thing he does is set up a school system for the purpose of standardizing learning so that young minds could be bent toward \"every sort of handiwork and scientific calling\" (Twain 101).
Morgan established a telephone and telegraph system making connections between towns so as to enhance communication around the kingdom. He also had an electric lighting system installed. But, to create systems, Morgan\'s team had supra tk society patent grey to have expertise in many areas which he claims they did, \"[m]y boys were experts in all sorts of things, from the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical instrument\" (Twain 209).
Similar to Edison, Morgan not only invented systems of new technology but, also combined business with science as a mode of operation. To illustrate this, as Morgan is about introduce his miracle of restoring the fountain, he states that \"[a]s a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising\" (Twain 202). This shows that Morgan knew supra tk society patent grey how to use the business arena in conjunction with science in a kind of system.
It was not long before Hank Morgan would realize that it would take some doing to introduce his innovations. In one of his first observations he noted \"that brains were not needed in a society like that, and, indeed, would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry - perhaps rendered its existence impossible\" (Twain 54). The people had inherited the idea that anyone without a title or pedigree was not to be revered. Morgan decides that he can not change the way people revere him but, he is respected and he would be satisfied with that. The only way he could change this ideology and replace it with one based on knowledge was to start a school system. In this way, Morgan said, \"I was training a crowd of ignorant folks into experts\" (Twain 102). Morgan thought the Church was stifling and did not promote free thought. His schools would teach people to be individuals and to believe the way each wanted to believe. Because the Church had \"converted a nation of men to a nation of worms\", it would take time for the people to be converted back to a belief that a man\'s greatness was due to his achievements, not by his birth (Twain 89). In addition, because most people were either farmers or nobility, they were \"awkward people, with machinery...they were totally unused to it\" (Twain 310). They needed to be trained and Morgan\'s way of doing it was by \"turning on [his] light one-candle-power at a time\" (Twain 103).
When it came time to install telegraph and telephone wires, because putting up poles would attract too much attention, Morgan had ground wires strung \"across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns\" (Twain 104). But, once Morgan had defeated knight-errantry and supposedly defeated the entire system that people believed in, he was then able to expose his \"hidden schools, [his] mines, and [his] vast system of clandestine factories and workshops to an astonished world\" and attempt to transform all of Arthurian society (Twain 364).
The reaction to this transformation reflects a society that was not ready for such changes to occur. This was a society that had no gas, no candles, no books, paper, pens, or ink. Their windows were not even filled with glass. From the beginning, Morgan sees that the people have been duped into not only accepting their lot in life, but being proud of it. When he fixed the fountain and rigged some special effects to go along with it, the people were totally taken back by it. As Morgan left the scene, the populace \"fell back reverently to make a wide way... as if [he] had been some kind of superior being\" (Twain 214). Their superstitions kept them from believing in science and reason. The people were used to believing in the black arts, not science and technology. Traditions and ingrained habits die hard and even when Morgan thought the transformation was going well, the Church supra tk society patent grey was able to step in and plunge society back into the dark ages. Morgan thought education would work but, when it fails, his assistant Clarence gets to the heart of the matter, \"[d]id you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?\" (Twain 384). Morgan had underestimated how difficult it is to get people to accept a technological transformation when they \"were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it. It is in their blood and bones\" (Twain 386).
Hank Morgan is much like Thomas Edison in that he worked with systems. He was looking to introduce systems that would better society and make life more bearable in Camelot. He thought that with these systems, he could transform the world as it was known in the days of knights. But, there were issues he needed to deal with like how society was organized in Arthurian England. In the end, the transformation was just too much for the belief system of the people living in the 6th century. Morgan was trying to introduce inventions before their time. Although thirteen centuries later, their would be uncertainties as well, all facets of society would be in a much better position, intellectually, religiously, politically, and socially, to accept the new technologies that were introduced to it.
