Tracing debates about the nature of time, causality, and free will, as well as the introduction of modern technologies—telegraphy, photography, cinematography—Jimena Canales locates the reverberations of the “tenth of a second” throughout culture.

Once scientists associated the tenth of a second with the speed of thought, they developed reaction-time experiments with lasting implications for experimental psychology, physiology, and optics. Revealing the history behind this infinitesimal interval, my talk aims to sheds new light on modernity and illuminate the work of important thinkers of the last two centuries.