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19th Century: Last Decade
Gallery
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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1891: Herman Melville writes the tragic novel Billy Budd, unpublished until 1924.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.

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Sources for the timeline and accompanying information.

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