Media History Timeline: 1850s

19th Century: Sixth Decade

Gallery

George Inness'
landscape, 1855:
The Lackawanna
Valley

Honoré Daumier's
lithograph, c. 1850s:
Plead Not Guilty

Currier & Ives'
Across the Continent,
c. 1850s

1850-1859

1850: Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Sonnets from the Portuguese.

1850: Mathew Brady publishes collection of photographs of famous Americans.

1850: Auguste Comte, French philosopher, founds discipline of sociology.

1850: In China, foreign nations operate the postal systems.

1850: Alfred Lord Tennyson's lyrical poem "In Memoriam" is published anonymously.

1850: P.T. Barnum sets a razzle-dazzle tone with newspaper ads and handbills.

1850: Olive Gilbert's Narrative of Sojourner Truth, former slave, is published.

1850: Number of U.S. public libraries triples in 25 years.

1850: A new use for paper, the paper bag.

1850: Jean-Franois Millet paints The Sower.

1850: Robert Schumann's 3rd Symphony, the Rhenish.

1850: The New York Times founded as the Daily Times.

1850: Ballroom dances divided into "round dancing" and "square dancing."

1850: Antonio de Torres Jurado invents the modern guitar.

1850: Submarine cable briefly connects England and France.

1850: "Songs of Labor of New England," arguably John Greenleaf Whittier's best work.

1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.

: 1851: Herman Melville's novel of the obsessive search for the great whale, Moby Dick.; 1851: Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables.; 1851: In the U.S., paper is made from wood fiber.; 1851: Sojourner Truth gives "Ain't I a Woman" speech in face of jeers by hostile men.; 1851: Soap is mass marketed.; 1851: In Japan, type molds are designed to replace traditional wood printing blocks.; 1851: The Erie railroad depends on the telegraph.; 1851: Archer invents wet-plate photography process.; 1851: In England, Talbot takes a flash photograph at 1/100,000 second exposure.; 1851: Newspaper postage cut in half; free distribution within county.; 1851: In London, Frederick Bakewell demonstrates fax machine to send pictures.; 1851: The Reuters news agency.; 1851: Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Rigoletto is staged.; 1851: Fire damages the Library of Congress.
: 1852: Peter Mark Roget assembles his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.; 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin increases abolitionist support.; 1852: Postage stamps are widely used.; 1852: In the U.S., stamped envelopes.; 1852: E.P. Dutton, book publisher.; 1852: Charles Dickens' Bleak House.; 1852: Verdi's Il Trovatore.; 1852: Telegraphic fire alarm system adopted in Boston, will spread worldwide.; 1852: Massachusetts is first state to enact compulsory education law.; 1853: London Stock Exchange sets up first pneumatic tube message delivery.; 1853: Duplex system doubles telegraph wire capacity.; 1853: European optical signalling system has 556 stations.; 1853: Envelopes are made by a paper folding machine.; 1853: Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor changes the structure of the sonata.; 1853: Verdi continues his operatic magic with La Traviata.
: 1854: Telegraph brings news of the Crimean War.; 1854: In Paris, Le Figaro.; 1854: Thoreau publishes Walden.; 1854: Bourseul in France builds an experimental telephone.; 1854: Carte-de-visite process simplifies photography.; 1854: Dickens' Hard Times.; 1854: Wagner's opera, Das Rheingold.; 1854: Curved stereotype plate obviates column rules; wide ads follow.; 1854: George Boole develops logic system that future computers will depend on.; 1855: The Bondwoman's Narrative, a novel apparently written by a former slave.; 1855: Prepayment of letters made compulsory in the United States.; 1855: Walt Whitman publishes, at his own expense, Leaves of Grass.; 1855: In London, the Daily Telegraph.; 1855: First edition of John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.; 1855: French diplomat Joseph Gobineau publishes racist book on Nordic supremacy.; 1855: The stopwatch.; 1855: Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha."; 1855: Registered letters enter service.; 1855: Charlotte Bront‘ dies in childbirth before completing Emma.; 1855: Dickens' Little Dorrit.; 1855: Publication of the collection of legends known as Bulfinch's Mythology.; 1855: U.S. postal service adds registered mail, compulsory pre-payment of postage.; 1855: A privately owned newspaper is published in Sierra Leone.
: 1856: Poitevan starts photolithography.; 1856: Origin of Rand, McNally.; 1856: Electric clocks.; 1856: Photographer Mathew Brady starts trend with large-type newspaper ads.; 1856: First full-page ad runs in a newspaper, the New York Ledger.; 1856: Photojournalism begins with pictures of the Crimean War.; 1856: Portugal gets a railroad and a telegraph line.; 1856: Blotting paper replaces sand boxes.; 1856: Another Wagnerian opera, Die WalkŸre.; 1856: Machine folds paper for books, newspapers.
: 1857: Johannes Brahms composes his Piano Concerto No. 1.; 1857: A machine to set type is demonstrated.; 1857: Currier & Ives prints go on sale.; 1857: Harper's Weekly magazine features engraved illustrations.; 1857: Reports from Germany's Neanderthal Valley: bones of a pre-modern man.; 1857: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary leads to immorality trial; he is acquitted.; 1857: Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days.; 1857: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "novel in verse," Aurora Leigh, praised, attacked.; 1857: In France, Scott's phonautograph is a forerunner of Edison's phonograph.; 1857: Anthony Trollope's novel Barchester Towers.; 1857: "Les Fleurs du mal," the only poetry published during Charles Baudelaire's life.; 1857: Matthew Arnold, new professor at Oxford, writes poetry and literary criticism.
: 1858: Mailboxes appear on American streets.; 1858: First effort at transatlantic telegraph service fails.; 1658: Work begins on the Oxford English Dictionary.; 1858: Eraser is fitted to the end of a pencil.; 1858: In London's Covent Garden, an opera house goes up.; 1858: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) writes Adam Bede, first of eight novels.
: 1859: Camera gets a wide-angled lens.; 1859: The telautograph is another precursor to recorded sound.; 1859: Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayy‡m.; 1859: Telegraph reaches from Atlantic to Pacific.; 1859: A novel by an African-American woman, Harriet Wilson, is published.; 1859: Gounod writes an opera about the legend, Faust.; 1859: Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.; 1859: Jacques Offenbach's opera, Orpheus in the Underworld.; 1859: Tennyson's Idylls of the King.; 1859: Wagner's opera, Tristan und Isolde.; 1859: George Meredith's novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.; 1859: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species sells all copies in one day, but creates fury.; 1859: John Stuart Mill's On Liberty is a far-seeing liberal exposition.