However, it seems to have attracted scientific and media attention in England in the early 19th century, and by Victorian times the term "keraunography" had been coined to describe numerous unconnected events.
With increasing scientific understanding of electricity and the popularity of photography, the time was right in the 19th century for keraunography, which seems to combine both concepts, to enter the public consciousness.
Lightning, being a dramatic and often-seen (yet mysterious and poorly understood) aspect of nature, has since ancient times been the subject of mythology and folklore regarding its origins, effects, and various ways to ward it off.
Also possibly related to keraunography is the mistaken belief that the last image a dying person sees is burned into their retina, like a photograph taken at the time of death.
No supposed case of keraunography has been investigated by modern science, and unless further evidence is presented, it remains a strange object of 19th-century British folklore.