Edward Malone and Tarp Henry arrive at the Zoological Institute's Hall at around 8:30pm to hear what the infamous Professor Challenger has to say. Malone makes an interesting observation to this 21st century reader's ears:
When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than we had expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their little cargos of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched doorway, showed that the audience would be popular as well as scientific.
I was curious to find out what 'electric broughams' were. It turns out they were electric automobiles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I realize The Lost World is fiction from 1912, but I found it interesting that the only automobiles mentioned were electric examples, and not just one as a curiosity, but an entire line of them.
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