Rhythm Analysis: A Heuristic Tool for Historical Infrastructure Research

Infrastructures enable circulation, but the tools to analyze it are lacking. This essay presents rhythm analysis as a heuristic device: a way to research movements in infrastructure. Thus far, infrastructure research has paid little attention to movement and rhythm and instead privileged system building, grid development, and integration. The article proposes putting movement-or rhythm-at the center of infrastructure research by considering three ideal types of rhythm: episodic, cyclical, and linear. The notion of rhythm enables historians to distinguish movements and their impact on infrastructure usage. To operate effectively, infrastructures need to integrate technological, material, and social aspects by shaping and synchronizing different rhythms. Discussing premodern and industrial examples of water, transportation and energy, the article shows how infrastructures transformed natural rhythms. It elucidates the social preference for cyclical rhythms, the impact of the grid's materiality on rhythm formation, and the significance of political and social ordering schemes.