In 1913, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed his quantum model of the atom while working at the University of Manchester in England. Bohr's model placed electrons in fixed orbits around the nucleus, with electrons jumping between orbits by absorbing or emitting discrete quanta of electrical energy, the photons predicted by Einstein. This model, developed at the physics laboratory in Manchester, explained the discrete spectral lines of hydrogen and represented the first successful integration of quantum theory into atomic physics, fundamentally changing the understanding of electrical phenomena at the atomic level.

Bohr's model of electrons jumping between fixed orbits by emitting or absorbing quanta of energy provided one of the most influential scientific metaphors of the twentieth century. The image of electrons as particles that exist in one state and then instantaneously appear in another, without traversing the space between, resonated with modernist literature's interest in discontinuity, fragmentation, and the gaps between experiences. T.S. Eliot's poetic leaps between images, Ezra Pound's ideogrammatic method, and the discontinuous narratives of modernist fiction all reflect a worldview reshaped by the quantum understanding of matter that Bohr's Manchester model initiated.