Albert Robida's Military Science Lab, La Vie Électrique c.1890s
Albert Robida, the visionary French satirist whose dense cross-hatched pen-and-ink style rivals his contemporary Jules Verne in prophetic wit, presents a grotesque military scientific tribunal in this chromolithograph from La Vie Électrique. Pompous uniformed generals scrutinize laboratory equipment — flasks, virus jars, and steam apparatus — while an officer presents a thesis on typhus bacteria culture. A framed technical blueprint hangs on the wall, and the scene drips with Robida's signature caricatured cynicism about militarized science.
More satirical H.G. Wells than lurid pulp cover — the menace is bureaucratic and darkly comic rather than visceral, with Robida's biting wit doing the heavy lifting instead of spectacle.
“NE PAS AGITER | VIRUS | Thèse De l'Emploi [?] de l'essaim du Typhus | Réservoir de Nouveau Hid[?] | MODELE 1927”
