TL;DR - the 1897 novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker wasn't just vampire horror, it was also a techno-thriller.
Excuse me, did I just see diaries dismissed as too up-to-date and modern for the atmosphere of "Dracula"?
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) kept a famous diary from 1660-69 and would like to have a word with someone about that.
"Dracula" was first published in 1897, and Bram Stoker had been researching it since about 1890 (he had Other Things To Do) so for my own amusement I went looking for the sort of Excessive Modern Technology that "The Spectator" criticised.
Mina Harker (née Murray) can write in shorthand, which at that time was usually done in pencil. Stenography fountain pens were also popular (Jonathan Harker uses one) but faded away, while steno pencils are still sold to this day.
I have been working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan’s studies, and I have been practising shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practising very hard. He and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad.
She uses two typewriters in the course of the book. The one in England mentioned above and in subsequent chapters is probably a desktop model, perhaps an Underwood or Remington suitable for a solicitor's office...
However, as played by Winona Ryder in the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula", she uses a smaller Oliver...
...whose design, deliberately or by accident, seems to echo Gary Oldman's Dracula hair.
Mina specifically describes the other machine like this:
"I feel so grateful to the man who invented the “Traveller’s” typewriter, and to Mr. Morris for getting this one for me."
This suggests it's a much smaller and lighter portable, probably with a carrying-case; maybe a Blickensderfer like one of these...
...whose ads emphasised its travel utility.
Jonathan Harker keeps his journal in shorthand, and says so:
"Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last."
And he's using a pen not a pencil, because he also says so:
"When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy."
He can't have done that with a regular dip pen and inkwell, so he's carrying something with an internal ink supply and a cap against leaks - in other words, a fountain pen, only finalised in its modern form in 1884.
Whether Harker's had a proper steno nib for shorthand (or whether such nibs had even been invented yet) I don't know, but the pen itself would have been something like this Swan by Mabie Todd, which he'd have filled from a bottle using an eyedropper (modern Opus 88 pens use this filling system even now):
...or maybe a Wirt fountain pen (filled the same way) as praised by Mark Twain:
Finally, Dr Seward's phonograph recorder was probably an Edison like this one...
...powered by a large lead-acid battery of the kind now found in cars. The one pictured has a small close-to-the-mouth "confidential" speaking horn and pneumatic (air-transmission) earphones, appropriate to a doctor using it for confidential patient information.
It made recordings on wax-covered cylinders which could be erased for re-use by shaving off the engraved wax.
"He (Dr Seward) stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax...
I (Lucy) took the cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward: “Let me write this all out now...” He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventh cylinder..."
So "Dracula" is a novel whose plot development depends in several places on state-of-the-art contemporary tech.
That sounds like a "techno-thriller" to me... :->
