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19th Century: Ninth Decade
Gallery
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Twin-lens reflex
camera, 1881

Disguised spy
camera, Germany
1885


Folding camera
England, 1885


Magneto crank
phone, Sweden
1885


Gramophone
pl,ayed flat discs, 1887
Van Gogh's Cafe
Vincent Van Gogh's
Sidewalk Cafe, 1888
1880-81
1880: Civil War General Lew Wallace's novel, Ben Hur.
1880: Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope projects photographic images in motion.
1880: Advertising copywriter becomes an occupation.
1880: Tchaikovsk's 1812 Overture.
1880: Emile Zola's realistic novel, Nana.
1880: Telephone pay stations are opened in New York.
1880: Sculptor Auguste Rodin begins Gates of Hell, never completes it.
1880: A halftone photograph, "Shantytown," appears in a newspaper.
1880: Offenbach dies before completing Tales of Hoffmann.
1880: France's Leblanc theorizes transmitting a picture in segments.
1880: Antonin Dvorak's 1st Symphony.
1880: First parcel post.
1880: The U.S. has about 50,000 telephones.
1880: From Italy, Carlo Collodi's tale for children, Pinocchio: the Story of a Puppet.
1880: Dostovesky's The Brothers Karamazov.
1880: Birth of Helen Keller, who will learn to communicate by sign language.
1880: John Powers, the first skilled ad copy writer.
1880: Richard Strauss, age 16, wins acclaim with Symphony in D Minor.
1880: A dispatch is telegraphed from a field of battle (the Second Afghan War).
 
1881: Brahms completes the 2nd Piano Concerto.
1881: Paris Exposition lets visitors listen to opera over telephone headsets.
1881: Bell and Tainter's graphophone has better sound than Edison phonograph.
1881: Selford Bidwell sends electronic image by telegraph using photoelectric cell.
1881: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D.
1881: The Los Angeles Times.
1881: The first photographic roll film.
1881: The Electric Telescope, a book about television, intrigues readers.
1881: In London, the Savoy Theater is built to house Gilbert & Sullivan's operas.
1881: Women enter the business world via the typewriter.
1881: A revised edition of the New Testament is published.
1881: Business offices begin to look modern.
 
1882-84
1882: Mark Twain's novel, The Prince and the Pauper.
1882: Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta, Iolanthe.
1882: Wagner's final opera, Parsifal.
1882: Emma Lazarus' sonnet is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
1882: In England, the first wirephotos.
1882: Etienne-Jules Marey designs a rifle-like camera that shoots 12 photos per second.
1882: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is banned in Boston.
 
1883: Brahms' 3rd Symphony.
1883: After many rejections, Anton Bruckner succeeds with 7th Symphony.
1883: Annie Besant, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, exposes industrial poverty.
1883: Edison stumbles onto "Edison effect"; later, basis of broadcast tubes.
1883: Stevenson's Treasure Island.
1883: Pulitzer buys the New York World from financier Jay Gould.
1883: Buffalo Bill Cody opens his Wild West Show.
1883: Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra,
1883: Brahms' 3rd Symphony.
1883: Mark Twain's recollections, Life on the Mississippi.
1883: Henrik Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People.
1883: Thomas Edison invents the light bulb, a significant aid to communication.
 
1884: In Germany, Paul Nipkow's scanning disc, early version of television.
1884: People can now make long distance phone calls.
1884: The electric tabulator.
1884: The Stebbing Automatic Camera, first production model to use roll film.
1884: Jules Massenet's opera, Manon.
1884: Lewis Waterman designs a practical fountain pen that doesn't blot.
1884: The letter "A" of the Oxford English Dictionary is finished; volume published.
1884: Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
 
1885-86
1885: Fingerprints are used for identification.
1885: Dictating machines are bought for offices.
1885: American Bell Telephone Co. creates AT&T for its long distance business.
1885: H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines.
1885: Brahms' 4th Symphony.
1885: Mail rates for publications drop to a penny a pound.
1885: Transparent film negatives are sold.
1885: Tainter and Bell "graphaphone" uses wax-coated cylinders for better sound.
1885: U.S. Post Office offers special delivery.
1885: Franz Liszt completes 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.
1885: Tchaikovsky's Manfred symphony.
1885: Vincent van Gogh paints The Potato Eaters.
1885: Richard Burton's The Arabian Nights sets imaginations aflame.
1885: Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta The Mikado. It will infuriate Japanese.
1885: Trains are delivering newspapers daily.
1885: "Nellie Bly" begins career as exposé reporter.
1885: Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and Prince Otto.
1885: William Dean Howells' novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham.
 
1886: Sapphire stylus improve sound.
1886: Mark Twain's The Adventure's of Huckleberry Finn.
1886: Little Lord Fauntelroy, a novel by Francis Burnett.
1886: One-third of all books published in U.S. are cheap paperbacks.
1886: Pointillist painter George Seurat, Bathing at Asni�res.
1886: Tokyo's Imperial University is founded.
1886: Berne Convention sets up international copyright agreements.
1886: Thomas Hardy's novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge.
1886: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
1886: Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped.
1886: Rudyard Kipling begins a long writing career with "Departmental Ditties".
1886: Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype at the N.Y. Tribune ends setting type by hand.
1886: Amos Dolbear gets patent for wireless communication using induction.
 
1887-89
1887: Cellulose photographic film is developed.
1887: William Randolph Hearst gets his first newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner.
1887: Montgomery Ward mails out a 540-page catalog.
1887: Annie Sullivan meets Helen Keller; will develop touch teaching for the blind.
1887: St. Nicholas Magazine, best of early children's magazines; will publish until 1943.
1887: Berliner gets music from a flat "gramophone" disc stamped out by machine.
1887: Thomas Edison assigns engineer W.L.K. Dickson to create a motion picture camera.
1887: Comptometer multi-function adding machine is manufactured.
1887: Impressionist Pierre Renoir, The Bathers.
1887: Alexander Borodin dies before finishing his opera, Prince Igor.
1887: Arthur Conan Doyle writes his first short story about Sherlock Holmes.
1887: In Chicago, with a broomstick and an overstuffed ball: softball.
1887: Ads appear in magazines.
1887: International parcel post system established.
1887: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, calls for heroic morality, supermen.
 
1888: A new magazine: National Geographic.
1888: Wisconsin telegraphy teacher George Parker designs a new pen.
1888: Cesar Franck composes the Symphony in D Minor.
1888: Lehigh Valley Railroad adopts wireless telegraph; used induction coil.
1888: "Kodak" box camera makes picture taking simple. The "snapshot" is born.
1888: In London, the Financial Times.
1889: Eleven years after getting patent, Edison mass produces a phonograph doll.
1889: William Dickson reportedly synchronizes motion pictures with phonograph.
1889: John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March" honors the newspaper.
1888: Considered an office machine, the phonograph is franchised in territories.
1888: Edison tries to record movies on a wax cylinder like his phonograph.
1888: A mortician, Almon Strowger, develops automatic phone switching exchange.
1888: Richard Strauss' tone poem, Don Juan.
1888: Printer's Ink, a magazine for the advertising industry.
1888: McGraw-Hill begins book publishing.
1888: Heinrich Hertz proves that radio waves exist.
1888: Experimental motion pictures are recorded on sensitized paper rolls.
1888: The first beauty contest is held in Spa, Belgium.
1888: The Kodak box camera, $25, takes 100 pictures on a roll.
1888: The coin-operated public telephone, patented by William Gray.
1888: Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony.
1888: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's tuneful symphonic suite, Scheherazade.
1888: Edison's phonograph is manufactured for sale to the public.
1888: Oberlin Smith sets forth theory of magnetic recording.
 
1889: Andrew Carnegie, "The Gospel of Wealth"; endows 2,800 libraries, much else.
1889: Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
1889: Eastman's cellulose film can be bought on a roll.
1889: The Wall Street Journal.
1889: Coin-operated phonographs are placed in bars, arcades, the first jukeboxes.
1889: Richard Strauss' tone poem, Death and Transfiguration.
1889: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae.
1889: Columbia Phonograph Co. issues one-page music record catalog.

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Copyright © Irving Fang and Kristina Ross, 1995-1996. All rights reserved.