Grover Cleveland has just been elected President of the United States; Sir Francis Galton is busy proving the individuality of fingerprints; H. G. Wells is dreaming about The Time Machine; and George Eastman is set to begin manufacturing coated photographic paper.

As we accelerate toward the end of the 20th century, retro-graphers David McDermott and Peter McGough are doing everything they can to evoke and inhabit the end of the 19th. In their latest attempt to create a “perfect time machine,” Messrs. McDermott and McGough have focused on the year 1884, presenting a series of photographs purportedly