Media History Timeline: 1910s

20th Century: Second Decade

Gallery

Giacomo Balla's
Dog on a Leash,
1912

35 mm. camera
Germany
1913

Gramophone recording
Indian songs, 1913

U.S. World War I
recruiting poster, 1914

Fernand Léger's
The Railway Crossing,
1919

1910-1919

1910

1910: Edison's kinetophone attempts to create motion picture talkies.

1910: DeForest’s radio carries Enrico Caruso’s voice from the Met; heard at sea.

1910: U.S. requires radio transmitters on some passenger ships.

1910: Neon tube development will aid mechanical television.

1910: Sweden's Elkstrom invents "flying spot" camera light beam.

1910: Daily newspapers in U.S. peak at 2,200.

1910: Market research begins, targeting audiences.

1910: 24% of adult Americans have less than 5 years of schooling.

1910: 13.5% of Americans completed high school; 2.7% have college degrees.

1910: Gustav Mahler composes Das Lied von der Erde, his best known work.

1910: Nobel Prize in Literature: Johann Heyse, Germany.

1910: Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, helps break down academic painting standards.

1910: The first live remote broadcasts: operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.

1910: Dance music is recorded.

1910: Movie "stars" created when Florence Lawrence becomes "the Vitagraph Girl."

1910: Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica.

1910: U.S. requires radio transmitters on some ships.

1910: Krazy Kat appears in a comic strip. The bricks start flying.

1910: Victor Herbert's operetta, Naughty Marietta.

1910: Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

1910: The start of Hallmark Cards.

1910: Radio hobby craze; Quaker Oats boxes used to build crystal, cat's whisker sets.

1910: DeForest's radio carries Enrico Caruso's voice from the Met.

1911

1911: Rotogravure aids magazine production of photos.

1911: Emma Goldman expresses outspoken credo in Anarchism and Other Essays.

1911: In China, theatres get raised platforms.

1911: Nobel Prize in Literature: playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgium.

1911: A Cincinnati broadcaster gets the first U.S. radio license.

1911: Photoplay, first movie fan magazine.

1911: Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka hailed in Paris premiere.

1911: J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan flies through the air.

1911: Postal savings system established in U.S.

1911: U.S. airmail begins with a route in Long Island, N.Y.

1911: Charles Ives' piano sonata Concord introduces wider public to atonal music.

1911: Keystone Kops' folly delights audiences, especially cop-fearing immigrants.

1911: Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier is staged.

1911: Ambrose Bierce's cynical take on humanity, The Devil's Dictionary.

1911: "Postal savings system" inaugurated.

1911: The Concise Oxford Dictionary is published.

1911: Pablo Picasso's cubist collages challenge traditional art.

1911: The first of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries.

1911: Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, tale of hardship, romance on New England farm.

1911: Early movie star, Danish actress Asta Nielsen, crossed gender boundaries.

1911: Marc Chagall paints I and the Village.

1912

1912: U.S. passes Radio Act to control radio broadcasts; licenses are easy to get.

1912: Carl Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious helps found analytical psychology.

1912: Shaw's updated fable, Androcles and the Lion, considers religious belief.

1912: LifeSavers candy.

1912: Riders of the Purple Sage starts Zane Grey's series of Western potboiler novels.

1912: Motorized movie cameras replace hand cranks.

1912: Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, marked by symbolism, allegory.

1912 The Speed Graphic camera is introduced. It will become newspaper standard.

1912: Maurice Ravel's ballet, Daphnis and Chloe.

1912: Early Cubist artist Juan Gris, Homage to Picasso.

1912: George Moore's Ethics, will influence many modern philosophers.

1912: Nobel Prize in Literature: playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, Germany.

1912: Howard Armstrong's regeneration circuit boosts radio reception.

1912: Universal Pictures Corporation is formed.

1912: First mail carried by airplane.

1912: Titanic sinking leads to U.S. government controls on radio transmission.

1912: A chemist coins the term "vitamine."

1912: Queen Elizabeth starring Sarah Bernhardt is first feature-length movie.

1912: University of Minnesota tries to broadcast football games by wireless telegraph.

1912: Edison records music on cylinders with a diamond stylus for better acoustics.

1913

1913: Armstrong discovers that audion tube can transmit; De Forest didn't know.

1913: Hollywood become America's movie production center.

1913: Painter Georges Rouault, Three Judges.

1913: AT&T pledges universal phone service, expands to rural areas.

1913: Indiana passes law to regulate cartoons.

1913: Matisse coins the term "cubism."

1913: Prentice-Hall book publishing firm is founded.

1913: Movies get longer; Quo Vadis runs for nine reels, about two hours.

1913: Non-European wins Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Rabindranath Tagore, India.

1913: Tagore writes his best known work, Sadhana, echoing sacred Hindu ideas.

1913: The portable phonograph is manufactured.

1913: Radio sound is recorded on cylinders.

1913: In the U.S., parcel post.

1913: Gertie the Dinosaur, the first animated cartoon, requires 10,000 drawings.

1913: D.H. Lawrence's autobiographical Sons and Lovers dwells on physical love.

1913: Billboard magazine publishes its first list of most popular songs.

1913: For professional photographers, sheet film instead of glass plates.

1913: Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps explores dissonant modern music.

1913: George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion; it will one day lead to My Fair Lady.

1913: In the New York World, the first crossword puzzle.

1913: African oral tradition is preserved in a written poem, "Epic of Liyongo Fumo".

1913: Edison starts making disks; cylinder recordings are on the way out.

1913: Records are even thinner (1/4-inch) with Bakelite.

1914

1914: Radio message is sent to an airplane.

1914: Wireless telegraph baseball game by innings: N.Y. Giants vs. Memphis Turtles.

1914: Mack Sennett fills the screen with slapstick and skimpy costumes.

1914: In Germany, the 35mm still camera, a Leica.

1914: In the U.S., Robert Goddard begins rocket experiments.

1914: 1,300 journals, 140 daily newspapers in U.S. targeted to ethnic populations.

1914: From Hollywood, a full-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance.

1914: Underground cables link Boston, New York, and Washington.

1914: World War I opponents make use of mass media for propaganda.

1914: Amateur radio licenses in most countries are suspended when WW I breaks out.

1914: First transcontinental telephone call.

1914: James Joyce's short story collection, Dubliners.

1914: ASCAP founded to protect music copyrights.

1914: Charlie Chaplin creates cinema's most enduring character, the little tramp.

1914: Cliffhanging serials like The Perils of Pauline enthrall movie audiences.

1914: Grand cinema houses replace nickelodeons.

1914: For the first time, no Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded.

1914: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, potboiler novelist's first success.

1914: Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising.

1914: Carl Jung's Psychology examines the unconscious.

1915

1915: Wireless radio service connects U.S. and Japan.

1915: Edith Sitwell publishes book of poetry.

1915: Einstein adds the General Theory of Relativity.

1915: Comstock retires after burning "60 train cars" of books, photos, drawings.

1915: Vacuum tube amplifiers aid coast-to-coast phone transmission.

1915: Sonar.

1915: The 78 rpm record.

1915: Telephone calls can be made from coast to coast.

1915: Hollywood begins star system. Charlie Chaplin goes from $125 to $10,000 weekly.

1915: Americans average 40 phone calls a year.

1915: Long distance phone lines connect New York and California.

1915: Radio-telephone carries voice from Virginia to the Eiffel Tower, Paris.

1915: Nobel Prize in Literature: Romain Rolland, France.

1915: Somerset Maugham's partly autobiographical novel, Of Human Bondage.

1915: The Birth of a Nation sets new standards, for film art, but is racist.

1915: Actress Audrey Munson starts a trend: she takes her clothes off on screen.

1915: Edgar Lee Masters' tombstone verse, The Spoon River Anthology.

1916

1916: From Spain, Vicente Ibanez' antiwar The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

1916: Cameras get optical rangefinders.

1918: Carl Sandburg will win first Pulitzer Prize for Cornhuskers.

1916: Charles Ives' best known symphony, the Fourth.

1916: The electric loudspeaker.

1916: Ferdinand de Saussure's General Course in Linguistics founds structuralism.

1916: The electric clock.

1916: The last stagecoach robbery in the U.S. is solved.

1916: Norman Rockwell draws his first Saturday Evening Post cover.

1916: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Carl von Heidenstam, Sweden.

1916: James Joyce's fictional autobiography, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

1916: Radios get tuners.

1916: God and the State by Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

1916: Béla Bartók's ballet, The Wooden Prince.

1916: Research proceeds for a sound-on-film recording system.

1917

1917: Jazz is recorded by Dixieland Jazz Band, an all-white group.

1917: Ottorino Respighi composes The Fountains of Rome.

1917: Austrian painter Egon Schiele's The Embrace.

1917: Photocomposition begins.

1917: Lenin's State and Revolution tells how to put Marx's theories into practice.

1917: Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.

1917: U.S. Espionage Act dooms socialist magazine Masses.

1917: Jazz spreads across American cities.

1917: Nobel Prize in Literature to two Danes: Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan.

1917: The American Association of Advertising Agencies

1917: Condenser microphone aids broadcasting, recording.

1917: The American Association of Advertisers.

1917: Albert Einstein identifies stimulated emission, theoretical basis for lasers.

1917: A Chicago movie theater adds a new feature: air conditioning.

1917: U.S. enters WW I; amateur radio transmitters shut down; Navy controls radio.

1917: The "Uncle Sam I Want You" poster brings thousands of recruits to World War I.

1917: Erik Satie's ballet, Parade.

1917: Trench Pen puts ink pellets inside fountain pen to aid writing by soldiers.

1917: Police in Japan order cinemas to separate seats for men and women.

1918

1918: Wireless radio widely used by armies, navies in war.

1918: First regular airmail service: Washington, D.C. to New York.

1918: Howard Armstrong's superheterodyne circuit improves radio reception.

1918: Nobel Prize in Literature: no award.

1918: Multiplexing increases telephone transmission capacity.

1918: Two million phonographs, 100 million records, are sold annually.

1918: Willa Cather, My Antonia.

1918: All U.S. states require education through elementary school.

1918: A recording of war: a gas shell bombardment.

1918: Germans get first version of Enigma code machine.

1918: Valdemar Poulsen's wire recording patent expires; Germans improve on it.

1918: Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, history, and biography are awarded.

1918: In Russia, Communists send agit-prop trains to hinterlands with propaganda.

1919

1919: Shortwave radio is invented.

1919: Sherwood Anderson's novel, Winesburg, Ohio.

1919: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Carl Spitteler, Switzerland.

1919: Flip-flop circuit invented; will help computers to count.

1919: The Algonquin Round Table of writers, wits, holds its first luncheon.

1919: The New York Daily News prints.

1919: Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, Reclining Nude.

1919: Pulitzer Prizes are added for poetry, drama, and fiction.

1919: Jazz establishes itself in a new home, Chicago.

1919: Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, novel based on Paul Gaugin's life.

1919: AT&T places dial telephones in offices and homes.

1919: Upton Sinclair's The Brass Check pillories American journalism.

1919: Americans spend more on records than on books, musical instruments.

1919: Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed witnesses Russian Revolution.

1919: With war's end, amateur radio transmitters return, now with vacuum tubes.

1919: In Pittsburg, Frank Conrad builds a radio station, later KDKA.

1919: H.L. Mencken, The American Language.

1919: Manuel de Falla's ballet, The Three-Cornered Hat.

1919: Radio Corporation of America, RCA, is established.

1919: Phonofilm, an optical sound-on-film process, is patented.