Media History Timeline: 1890s

19th Century: Last Decade

Gallery

Telephone wires
in Manhattan, 1890

"Opera" camera
France, 1890

Kodak combined
roll film and plate
camera, 1897

Magnetic wire recorder
recorded on steel
piano wire, 1898

1890

1890: Herman Hollerith counts the U.S. population with punch cards.

1890: A.B. Dick markets the mimeograph.

1890: William James' Principles of Psychology moves the field toward science.

1890: Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov complete Borodin's opera, Prince Igor.

1890: Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is serialized in Lippincott's Magazine.

1890: Typewriters are in common use in offices.

1890: In Germany, Ferdinand Braun invents the cathode ray tube.

1890: James Frazer's The Golden Bough draws parallels between myth and Christianity.

1890: In Paris, Theatrophone subscribers can hear live performances by phone.

1890: First juke box: coin-operated cylinder phonograph with 4 listening tubes.

1890: In England, Friese-Greene builds the kinematograph camera and projector.

1890: In France, Branly's coherer conducts radio waves.

1890: How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis alerts public to life in city slums.

1890: Tchaikovsky's ballet, Sleeping Beauty.

1890: Emily Dickinson's first book of Poems.

1890: Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria Rusticana.

1891

1891: Large press prints and folds 90,000 4-page papers an hour.

1891: Diazotype put photographs onto fabric.

1891: Telephoto lens is attached to the camera.

1891: Guy de Maupassant goes insane after writing novels, plays, 300 short stories.

1891: An international agreement on copyright.

1891: Founding of precursor to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

1891: J. Walter Thompson, first advertising account executive.

1891: Edison's assistant, Dickson, builds the Kinetograph motion picture camera.

1891: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

1891: Edvard Grieg, Suite from Peer Gynt.

1891: Photographers can load camera film in daylight, not just in a darkroom.

1891: Impressionist Claude Monet, Haystacks.

1891: Herman Melville writes the tragic novel Billy Budd, unpublished until 1924.

1891: Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler.

1891: American Express issues travelers cheques.

1891: The first international phone call via submarine cable, London - Paris.

1892

1892: Edison and Dickson construct the peep-show Kinetoscope, 46 frames per second.

1892: Parker Pen Company begins business, based on patent for a new fountain pen.

1892: 4-color rotary press.

1892: Frederick Ives invents natural color photographic system.

1892: Artist Mary Cassatt, The Bath.

1892: Sears mails 8,000 postcards with imitation handwriting; gets 2,000 orders.

1892: Ladies Home Journal decides to refuse all ads for patent medicine.

1892: Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan, is a success.

1892: Portable typewriters.

1892: Paul Cézanne paints The Card Players.

1892: Invented in Iowa, the Addressograph enters the office.

1892: Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker.

1892: Ruggiero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci.

1892: Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads are published.

1892: Arthur Conan Doyle's stories published as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1892: Chicago editor's "Who or what? How? When? Where?" advice may be 5W start.

1892: Automatic telephone switchboard comes into service.

1892: The Ladies' Home Journal decides to refuse ads for patent medicine.

1893

1893: Dickson builds a motion picture studio in New Jersey.
1893: Brazilian priest Landell de Moura allegedly invents voiced radio.
1893: Finnish composer Jean Sibelius writes The Swan of Tuonela.
1893: Jacob Riis' Children of the Poor shakes complacent New Yorkers.
1893: Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, The Scream.
1893: Coca:cola is registered as a trademark by a pharmacist in Atlanta.
1893: Dickson's Kinetograph camera uses perforated film to sync with shutter.
1893: Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, David Balfour.
1893: Dvorak's final Symphony No. 9, From the New World.
1893: On a Paris stage, the striptease.
1893: U.S. Post Office sells commemorative stamps.
1893: Englebert Humperdinck's opera, Hansel and Gretel.
1893: Tchaikovsky conducts premiere of Sixth Symphony (Pathetique).
1893: Antonin Dvor�k's Fifth Symphony in E Minor (The New World).

1894
1894: Emile Berliner sells 1,000 gramophones, 25,000 records.
1894: Kipling's The Jungle Book.
1894: The word "spaceship" appears in print.
1894: In New York City, Edison opens a Kinetoscope movie parlor.
1894: Wilde succeeds again with another play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
1894: English satirist Max Beerbohm writes letters in the style of Oscar Wilde.
1894: George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.
1894: Claude Debussy's Prelude to Afternoon of a Fawn.

1895
1895: Stephen Crane's short novel, The Red Badge of Courage.
1895: Frederic Remington's sculpture, Bronco Buster.
1895: E.A. Wallace Budge translates Egyptian Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani.
1895: France's Lumi�re brothers' portable movie camera can also print, project films.
1895: In Italy, teenager Guglielmo Marconi sends a radio signal more than a mile.
1895: Richard Strauss, Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and Thus Spake Zarathustra.
1895: Vitascope adds intermittent motion loop to movie projector.
1895: In Berlin, Max and Emil Skladanowsky show a 15-minute motion picture.
1895: In a Paris cellar, a paying audience sees Lumi�re's motion pictures projected.
1895: In Louisville, Ben Harney introduces ragtime music.
1895: E.A. Wallace Budge translates Egyptian Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani.
1895: Artist Francis Barraud paints His Master's Voice, with Nipper listening.
1895: Hearst takes over the New York Morning Journal.
1895: In England, Friese-Greene invents phototypesetting.
1895: William Butler Yeats, lyrical Irish poet, publishes The Lake Isle of Innisfree.
1895: Gustav Mahler's 2nd Symphony.
1895: Thomas Hardy's novel, Jude the Obscure.
1895: Dial telephones go into Milwaukee's city hall.

1896

1896: Underwood model permits typists to see what they are typing.
1896: The monotype sets type by machine in single characters.
1896: In London, the Daily Mail begins publishing.
1896: Hilaire Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts.
1896: Giacomo Puccini's opera, La Bohème.
1896: Alfred Nobel creates the Nobel Prize.
1896: John Philip Sousa pens Stars and Stripes Forever.
1896: The oldest surviving film company, Gaumont, is founded.
1896: Electric power is used to run a paper mill.
1896: Adolph Ochs buys dying New York Times, begins path to greatness.
1896: Edison Vitascope, designed by Thomas Armat, brings film projection to U.S.
1896: Edison's Kinetoscope comes to Japan.
1896: An estimated 150,000 typewriters are in use in the U.S.
1896: The first comic strip, The Yellow Kid, in the New York American.
1896: In Britain, the motion picture projector is manufactured.
1896: Trading stamps.
1896: Hollerith founds the Tabulating Machine Co. It will become IBM in 1924.
1896: X-ray photography.
1896: Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook.
1896: Anton Chekhov's The Seagull barely survives disastrous opening night.
1896: To date, 450,000 typewriters have been manufactured.
1896: Rural free delivery (RFD) inaugurated.
1896: Hard resinous shellac phonograph disks replace hard rubber.
1896: Nikola Tesla invents a spark radio transmitter.
1896: English poet A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad.
1896: Turned down by Italy, Guglielmo Marconi takes radio gear to England.

1897

1897: The term "public relations" is used in book, Year Book of Railway Literature.
1897: In England the Marconi Company is set up for wireless telegraphy business.
1897: In Germany, Braun improves the Crookes' tube with fluorescence.
1897: Newspaper comic strips are collected and sold, precursor to comic books.
1897: Eldridge Johnson patents an improved, inexpensive disk gramophone.
1897: Music record sales grow; mostly classical and Tin Pan Alley songs.
1897: In England, postmen deliver mail to every home.
1897: Edison patents a movie projector.
1897: The Katzenjammer Kids begin cartoon antics.
1897: Bram Stoker's horror novel, Dracula.
1897: Fire kills 125 people watching a motion picture in a Paris theater.
1897: Cyrano de Bergerac, a play by Edmond Rostand.
1897: A new book publishing firm starts, Doubleday.
1897: General Electric creates a publicity department.
1897: Dracula, the novel, sinks its fangs into readers.
1897: World's first cinema is built in Paris.
1897: Kipling's novel Captains Courageous.
1897: Paul Gaugin in Tahiti paints Nevermore.

1898

1898: Newspapers, led by Hearst and Pulitzer, help push U.S. into war with Spain.

1898: Lumière boasts a catalogue of more than one thousand short films.

1898: Émile Zola's article, "J'Accuse" shakes France.
1898: H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds brings the Martians.
1898: Rodin sculpts The Kiss.
1898: Peking University is founded.
1898: Henry James' short novel, The Turn of the Screw.
1898: Photographs taken by artificial light.
1898: A loudspeaker is invented.
1898: Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible urges suffragist cause.
1898: World total of working telegraph wire: near three million miles.
1898: New York State passes a law against misleading advertising.
1898: Notre Dame professor sends a wireless telegraph message for one mile.
1899: Marconi radio equipment installed in British warships.
1899: Economist Thorsten Veblen coins the term "conspicuous consumption."
1899: American Marconi Company incorporated; forerunner of RCA.
1899: Nathan Stubblefield claims to transmit voice by radio, but he will die in poverty.
1898: Oscar Wilde, out of prison, writes "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
1898: Sound is recorded magnetically on wire by Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark.
1898: Rodin's sculpture, The Kiss.

1899

1899: Edward Elgar composes The Enigma Variations.
1899: Marconi radio gear installed in British warships, signals across English Channel.
1899: Telephone company reorganizes; AT&T takes over parent American Bell.
1899: California passes law to regulate political cartoons.
1899: Western Union boasts nearly one million miles of wire, 22,285 offices.
1899: Debussy composes Nocturnes.
1899: Scott Joplin popularizes ragtime music; starts the first dance craze.
1899: Cakewalk dance is popular, grows out of black slave ridicule of white dancing.
1899: The first Japanese-made film.

Sources for the timeline and accompanying information.

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