Wallpaper

In 1941, following his release from internment in the United Kingdom as an enemy alien, Austrian engineer Paul Eisler convinced a British lithography company with a focus on sheet music to invest in his idea of printed circuitry. The company sensed the promise of sleek conductive pathways printed onto insulating substrates, which would dramatically debulk the manually soldered wires of electronic equipment, and immediately drew up a contract. As a gesture of good faith, Eisler signed without reading, and inadvertently handed over all rights to his invention for one pound sterling.

Despite Eisler’s best efforts to place printed circuit boards within a non-military sector, they were soon co-opted by the United States for use in proximity fuses—the detonator component of electronic explosive devices that brought down aircraft and V1 rockets more efficiently than mechanical ordinance. While his estranged invention was changing the course of World War II, Eisler took out patents for peripherals whose narrow, limited applications of printed circuitry failed to capture the civilian market’s imagination. Even his heated wallpaper, seemingly a goer at first, would soon be toast. The discovery of natural gas in the North Sea and the development of domestic boilers were about to ignite a central-heating takeover of Britain’s homes.

Wallpaper, electrical and otherwise, hums quietly in the background: a visual pedal note. If it is loud at first, trumpeting floral or geometric airs, it retreats, on repeated exposure, into the thrum of sheer presence. Once settled back in its rightful place, it plays the supporting role of everyday trivial ubiquity, though the backdrop might step to the fore once again in exceptional circumstances. In times of scarcity, newspapers have been printed on the back of wallpaper, for instance. The 2 July 1863 edition of The Daily Citizen in Vicksburg, Mississippi, published its reports on the US Civil War on the back of decorative whimsies and vague botanicals. In 1982, the year of Sotheby’s publication of Jean Hamilton and Charles Oman’s Wallpapers: An International History and Illustrated Survey from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and of a French translation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story and feminist classic “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Adele Rose wrote one of the most controversial storylines of the British soap opera Coronation Street. Deirdre Barlow, already bored by her recent marriage to Ken Barlow, began an affair with Mike Baldwin. Ken ignored her, she complained. Mike made her feel alive. Eventually confessing all to Ken, she said she felt like “the wallpaper, or a piece of furniture that’s been around forever.” In an unscripted move, Ken, enraged, grabbed Deirdre by the throat and began to throttle her. Actor Anne Kirkbride did not need to act Deirdre’s shock.