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Allow me to quote to you from a Punch article by E. V. Knox written in about 1930 (collected in "Things That Annoy Me" of 1932):

  The Pylons
  (Being the transcript of an unwritten radiologue, dated A.D. 2129)
  
  Once again we are threatened with a historical calamity. It is proposed to uproot the graceful pylons which adorn the line of the Sussex Downs and are the sole relics of the electricity cable which carried light and power to our forefathers along the Southern Coasts...
Plus ça change...


Aesthetics of public installations has sharply declined since its heyday in the 19th century, so he was probably right.


Does this exist online? When I searched I only found physical copies


I don't think so. He died in 1971 so it's still in copyright though I doubt anyone would care much. I don't know exactly which volume of punch the original article is taken from, and it's possible that that's up there somewhere.

Oh, and I just double checked and my copy was published in 1930; the second edition was 1932. So quite likely the original article was in one of the 1929/1930 run.




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