1830: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Europe has political revolutions as sectional conflicts threaten U.S. unity.
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" declaims Sen. Daniel Webster (Mass.) January 27 in his "Reply to Hayne" speech against Sen. Robert Y. (Young) Hayne, 38, (S.C.) as the South threatens secession over issues of states' rights and high tariffs (see Foot resolution, 1829). Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, 47, (Mo.) protests New England's attempts to limit the sale of western lands; Southern leaders demand low tariffs in the interest of their slave-owning planters, and the historic debate between Webster and Hayne that began January 19 has transfixed the nation, with Hayne making a brilliant exposition of the argument for states' rights under the Constitution and Webster forcefully defending federal power in arguments that will continue for more than 30 years. Hayne has defended last year's Foot resolution, calling Northerners selfish and unprincipled for supporting protectionism and restrictive land policies; any restriction on the sale of lands is an infringement of citizens' rights, he says.
"Our federal union: It must and shall be preserved!" declaims President Jackson April 13 in a toast at a Jefferson Day dinner. The president thus signifies his determination to resist southern efforts to declare the 1828 Tariff of Abominations null and void. "The Union, next to our liberty, most dear!" declaims Vice President Calhoun in a toast at the April 13 dinner. South Carolina's Calhoun signifies his determination to persist in his fight.
Norwegian political leader Christian M. Falsen dies at his native Kristiania (Oslo) January 13 at age 47, having given his country a liberal constitution but brought obloquy upon himself by proposing an amendment in 1824 that would have limited the franchise.
Britain's debauched George IV dies childless at Windsor Castle June 26 at age 67 and is succeeded by his childless 64-year-old brother William, duke of Clarence, who will reign until 1837 as William IV. His 38-year-old consort, whom he married in 1818, is the daughter of George, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Meiningen, and will reign as Queen Adelaide, but her own two daughters died in infancy and she, too, is childless.
A general election turns out the Tories who have run Britain almost without interruption for nearly half a century, and a Whig government takes power with Charles Grey, 66, 2nd earl Grey, as prime minister. His foreign minister is Henry John Temple, 46, Viscount Palmerston, and his son Henry George Grey, 27, serves as undersecretary of state for the colonies. Henry "Orator" Hunt wins election to Parliament, narrowly defeating Edward Stanley, chief secretary for Ireland, having campaigned for parliamentary reform, a 10-hour day, and an end to child labor. Now 57, he marches to Manchester with a crowd estimated to number 16,000 and holds a meeting at the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre.
French forces land in Algeria July 5 after a 3-year blockade of the Ottoman regency (see 1827). The Koulouglis (people of mixed Algerian and Turkish ancestry) and certain privileged tribes support the dey and have run the country for generations, but they have hardly won the hearts of the people and constant rebellions have left the country too divided to resist the French; Algiers capitulates July 5, the dey Hussein surrenders, he and his top officials accept the French offer of exile, and France begins 132 years of occupation and colonization, but the Algerian leader Ahmad Bey continues to rule from the inland city of Constantine, and western tribes lay siege to Oran (see 1832).
Former French general Dominique-René Vandamme, comte d'Unebourg, dies at his native Cassel, near Dunquerque, July 15 at age 59.
Paris revolutionists depose France's reactionary king Charles X July 29. Conveyed to England in August by navigator Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville, Charles is succeeded after a 6-year reign by the Bourbon duc d'Orléans, 56, who is proclaimed "citizen king" by the journalist Louis Adolphe Thiers and confirmed August 7 by the Liberals sitting as a rump chamber. Thiers, 33, has drawn up a protest against the five July ordinances of July 26 that established rigid governmental control of the press, dissolved the chamber, and changed the electoral system, the radicals have raised street barricades with the intent of making France a republic with the marquis de Lafayette as president, but Thiers and other Liberals thwart them, making the duc d'Orléans king; he will reign until 1848 as Louis Philippe.
Belgian revolutionists inspired by the July Revolution at Paris demand independence from the Netherlands and win support from workers and peasants, but moderate liberal elements protest that they merely want autonomous administration with the son of the Dutch king Willem I as viceroy. Brussels workers force Dutch troops to evacuate the city in late September, an independent Belgium is proclaimed by a provisional government October 4, the Dutch bombard Antwerp October 27, but an international conference declares dissolution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands December 20 and effectively recognizes Belgian independence (see 1831).
Former Prussian field marshal Johann, Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, dies in Silesia October 4 at age 71, having opposed the liberal army reforms of Graf Neidhart von Gneisenau.
The king of the Two Sicilies Francesco I dies at his native Naples November 8 age 53 after a 5-year reign as reactionary as was that of his late father. He has left the government to court favorites and the police while living with his mistresses, surrounded by soldiers to protect him from assassination. His 20-year-old son will reign until 1859 as Ferdinand II, continuing Francesco's despotic rule.
A Polish revolution against Russia begins November 29 as nationalists form a union with Lithuania and declare the Romanov dynasty deposed. Prince Adam Czartoryski, now 60, has seen the futility of using armed conflict to restore Polish sovereignty without help from the Western powers and has been largely inactive in public affairs since 1816, but the nationalists put him at the head of the insurrection (see 1831).
Mexico's president Vicente Guerrero refuses to give up dictatorial powers he has been granted (see 1829), Michoacán-born general Anastasio Bustamante, 49, poses as a strong supporter of constitutional law. He stages a coup d'état that ousts Guerrero, and he will rule until 1833 (see 1831). The Mexican Congress passes a law April 6 forbidding further colonization of the nation's Tejas province by U.S. citizens (see 1824). The U.S. population of the northern province has grown to outnumber the Mexicans 10 to one, the new law aims to encourage settlement of the province by Mexicans and Europeans, but illegal immigration by North Americans continues. Richmond, Virginia-born soldier Juan (originally John) Davis Bradburn, 43, married a prominent Mexican woman 9 years ago, joined the Mexican Army, and lands at the mouth of the Trinity River October 26 with a force of 40 officers and men to prevent smuggling (see 1831).
Chile's Conservative Party gains power under the leadership of newspaper publisher-politician Diego (José Victor) Portales, 37, who has amassed a fortune by gaining a monopoly on tea, tobacco, and liquor. Scornful of democracy and political freedom, he will hold power until his death in 1837, imprisoning his opponents, subduing the army, and shutting down the opposition press (see constitution, 1833).
The Republic of Ecuador is created May 13 in a further breakup of Gran Colombia (see García Moreno, 1862). The liberator Antonio José de Sucre has tried to maintain Colombian unity but is assassinated June 4 at age 35 in the forest of Berueros near Pasto, New Granada, while en route to Quito.
Uruguay (La Republica Oriental del Uruguay) comes into being July 18 as voters approve a constitution, but 20 years of war and depredations have decimated cattle herds, many colonial families have lost their land and fortunes, and the new nation has a population of scarcely 74,000. José Fructuoso Rivera, 40, takes office as Uruguay's firt president, but both Argentina and Brazil continue to have designs on Uruguyan territory.
The Great Liberator Simón Bolívar dies penniless at Santa Marta, New Granada, December 17 at age 47, saying that America is ungovernable.
Mexico prohibits further importation of slaves into her Tejas province (see 1829).
British authorities in the Bahamas declare that slaves from the schooner Comet are free (the ship was wrecked on a voyage from Alexandria, Virginia, to New Orlean). Washington registers a protest.
Fanny Wright returns from the Caribbean in June, having transported slaves from her Nashoba community to Haiti at great expense and personal discomfort (see 1828). She has emancipated the slaves, made arrangements for their housing and employment, and sails in July for Europe; her sister will die next year, and she will return in 1835 to America, where she will continue until her death at Cincinnati in December 1852 to write and lecture on such causes as more equitable distribution of property, the gradual emancipation of slaves and settlement of freedmen outside the United States, and women's rights.
The Seneca chief Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha) dies at Seneca Village near Buffalo, New York, January 20 at age 71 (approximate).
The Indian Removal Act signed by President Jackson May 28 provides for the general relocation of Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi (see 1832; 1834).
President Jackson names a commissioner of Indian affairs.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek signed September 15 cedes Choctaw lands east of the Mississippi to the United States.
Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan becomes Chicago (see 1825); a town is laid out on the site (see steamboat, 1832).
William Sublette of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and Jedediah Strong Smith lead the first covered wagon train from the Missouri River to the Rockies (see 1827). They sell their fur-trading interests to the new Rocky Mountain Fur Company, organized by Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, and others (see 1831).
The Royal Geographical Society that will promote or support British explorations has its beginnings in the Geographical Society of London, an outgrowth of the 3-year-old Raleigh Travellers' Club. It will soon absorb the 42-year-old African Association and incorporate under the Royal Geographic name in 1859.
Explorer Richard L. Lander returns to West Africa at the request of the British government, landing at Badagri March 22 in the company of his brother John (see 1827). His expedition travels inland to Bussa, moves up the Niger for about 100 miles, and then begins a perilous canoe journey downstream to the river's delta, where the brothers are seized by local inhabitants and held captive until a large ransom is paid and their passage to the island of Fernando Po is arranged (see 1834).
Farm workers in southern England riot to protest against their low wages.
London-born printer Henry Hetherington, 38, draws up a "Circular for the Formation of Trades Unions" that will provide the basis for the National Union of the Working Classes. Hetherington apprenticed under the late Luke Hansard, has lived in Belgium, but has returned to help establish the Mechanics' Institution (see communications, 1831).
Yorkshire industrialist Richard Oastler, 40, learns that factories are employing young children for long hours and begins an immediate journalistic attack on the use of child labor. Oastler manages a large agricultural estate (see 1831).
The Valencia bourse opens in Spain (see Hanover, 1787); trading on the exchange will continue for more than 167 years (see Bilbao, 1890).
London banker Henry Philip Hope purchases the French Blue diamond that was stolen along with the rest of France's crown jewels in 1792. It has been cut from its 67-carat size to a 44.5-carat oval shape in order to conceal its identity and will become famous as the Hope Diamond (see 1908).
The 6-year-old China-trade firm Russell & Company merges with its Boston-based rival Perkins & Company to create an organization whose power almost rivals that of the East India Company at Guangzhou (Canton). Russell opens a factory to make elastic webbing at Middletown, Connecticut, as he continues to build his Chinese enterprise. Ipswich seacaptain Augustine Heard, now 45, sails for Guangzhou June 7 to become a partner in Russell & Company, having acquired a 1/16th interest in the firm, but health problems will force him to return home in 1834 and settle at Boston (see 1840). Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts-born seacaptain Robert Bennet Forbes, 25, secures the lucrative storeship at Lintin and prospers in the illegal opium trade, rationalizing that the opium trade is no more reprehensible than dealing in ardent spirits (see 1837).
Coal mining begins on a systematic basis near Sydney, Nova Scotia, on Cape Breton Island, where mining operations have been conducted on a small scale since 1766. One of the mines in the area will extend five miles out beneath the sea, and extraction will continue until the last mine closes in 1975.
Nantucket whaling captain Obed Starbuck returns to port with 2,280 barrels of sperm oil after a voyage of only 14 months. His crew has consisted almost entirely of blacks. They parade up Main Street with their harpoons and lances, and the Nantucket Inquirer runs a headline, "Greatest Voyage Ever Made."
Captain John Pearsall's schooner Harriet Smith lands the first full cargo of bananas—1,500 stems—at New York (see Chester, 1804; Baker, 1870).
A surface condenser is invented that will solve the problem of providing fresh water for steam boilers and make oceangoing steamships economically viable (see 1826; 1838).
The Atlantic Coast Line has its beginnings in the Petersburg Railroad chartered February 10 and organized August 28 to build tracks between Petersburg, Virginia, and Weldon, North Carolina. It will be completed in 1833.
A flanged T-rail invented by Robert L. (Livingston) Stevens, 43, will be the basis of future railroad track development. Stevens is a son of steamboat pioneer and railroad champion John Stevens; now president and chief engineer of the Camden & South Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company (see 1815), he will also invent a hookheaded spike and a metal plate to cover the joint between rails (seeJohn Bull, 1831).
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad publishes the first U.S. railroad timetable May 23 (see 1828) and begins service May 24 between Baltimore and Elicott Mills, Maryland, with horses pulling the cars. New York mechanic Peter Cooper, now 28, demonstrates the first American-built steam locomotive on the B&O August 28, having named his engine Tom Thumb after the diminutive folktale hero (seeStourbridge Lion, 1829). Cooper has taken scraps of iron including pipes from musket barrels to build his little engine in the B&O shops. His engine pulls a carriage containing more than 20 passengers (total weight about four tons, including coal and water) 13 miles from Baltimore's Mount Clare station to Ellicott's Mills in a race against a stagecoach, covering the distance in 75 minutes, losing at the last minute when a pulley belt slips, but returning in 57 minutes and proving that a steam engine can pull a single car around a sharp (400-foot radius) curve at 15 miles per hour. The B&O offers a $4,000 prize for a locomotive that can pull 15 tons at 15 miles per hour (see Davis, 1832).
The Boston & Maine Railroad has its beginnings in the 26½-mile Boston & Lowell chartered June 5 at Boston; the first steam railroad to be projected in New England, it is to have 15 bridges and 18 viaducts, one of them 1,600 feet long (see 1833).
Service begins September 15 on England's Liverpool & Manchester Railway, the first railway built primarily for passengers (see 1829). Designed by George Stephenson, now 49, and his son Robert, 27 (who spent 6 months at Edinburgh University when he was 19 and has worked in South America), the new Rocket locomotive can pull a train of cars at 30 miles per hour.
The locomotive Best Friend of Charleston begins service December 25 on South Carolina's Charleston & Hamburg Railroad, chartered as the first road intended from the start for use by steam cars. Designed by Schenectady-born engineer Horatio Allen, 28, and built by New York's West Point Foundry, the engine pulls four loaded passenger cars over six miles of track—the world's longest railroad to date.
President Jackson signs an act of Congress appropriating $130,000 to survey and extend the Cumberland Road that reached Wheeling in 1817. Calling it a national road, Jackson signs the bill 4 days after vetoing the Maysville Road Bill, which would have authorized federal aid to a Kentucky turnpike from Maysville to Lexington (federal expenditure for a local project is unconstitutional, says the president).
Louisville, Kentucky, begins its growth as a major river port with the opening of the Louisville and Portland Canal, which allows riverboats to circumvent 26-foot falls in the Ohio River.
The Fairbanks scale devised by Vermont inventor Thaddeus Fairbanks, 34, is the world's first platform scale, using a system of multiplying levers to counterpoise a heavy object on the weighing platform by a light beam with a small sliding weight and slotted weights on an extension arm (see Toledo Scale, 1901).
London wine merchant-optician Joseph Jackson Lister, 44, improves on the microscope invented by Anton von Leeuwenhoek in 1683. He discovers the law of the aplanaic foci, fundamental principle of the modern microscope (see 1832).
Theory of Numbers (Théorie des nombres) by mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre, now 77, includes Legendre's proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity.
Principles of Geometry by Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski, 37, pioneers non-Euclidian geometry (see 300 B.C.). Born at Nizhny Novgorod, Lobachevski was the son of a poor government official but entered the University of Kazan at age 14 and became a dean of the university 10 years ago. Euclid's parallel postulate holds that only one line can be drawn through a point in a plane parallel to a given line in that plane, but Lobachevski demonstrates that this cannot be deduced as a consequence of Euclid's other postulates, making Euclidean geometry illogical (see Bolyai, 1832).
Elements of Arithmetic by Madura, India-born English mathematician-logician Augustus De Morgan, 24, at London's new University College expresses concepts of number and magnitude in clear philosophical terms (see 1838).
Mathematician and Egyptologist Joseph, Baron Fourier dies at Paris May 16 at age 62.
Cholera spreads from Astrakhan throughout the interior of Russia (see 1829). In some areas there is famine as quarantines and demoralization add to crop failures, and there are widespread riots against cholera controls as priests denounce physicians, government officials, and quarantine guards, calling them Anti-Christ. The pandemic kills 900,000 this year and will kill several millions in Europe before it ends (see 1840).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is founded April 6 at Fayette, New York, by local farmhand Joseph Smith Jr., 25, who has The Book of Mormon published in 522 pages at Palmyra, New York. The book claims that Native Americans were originally Jews who sailed from the Near East in the 6th century B.C., broke into two groups, and received a visit from Jesus Christ after his resurrection (one group died out a few centuries later). Smith says he experienced his first vision at age 14 when a "pillar of light" descended on him, that he was told by God not to join any existing religious sect, that he was told by an angel 3 years later about golden plates buried in a hillside near Palmyra, and over the next 7 years translated the strange hieroglyphics on the plates with miraculous help from an angel named Moroni. Mormons will practice polygamy, and their marriages will make Smith and his followers unwelcome in many communities (see Nauvoo, 1839).
Pope Pius VIII dies at Rome November 30 at age 69 after a 1-year reign in which he has departed from the conservatism of his predecessor and insisted that the Church remain independent of any French regime. He will not be replaced until next year (see 1831).
Philadelpia publisher Jesper Harding, 31, absorbs the Morning Journal into his year-old Pennsylvania Inquirer July 1 to create what will become the Philadelphia Inquirer, which he will run until he retires in 1869.
The Boston Daily Evening Transcript begins publication July 24. Henry Worthington Dutton, 34, suspends the small-size paper after three issues but resumes August 28 with an issue that contains no advertising but devotes its entire contents to an address by Daniel Webster in the murder trial of a Salem seacaptain. Dutton's descendants will run the paper for the city's Brahmins until its demise at the end of April 1941.
Godey's Lady's Book begins publication at Philadelphia under the name Lady's Book. Publisher Louis Antoine Godey, 26, will acquire Sarah Josepha Hale's magazine, the first U.S. periodical for women, in 1837.
Paul Pry begins weekly publication at Washington, D.C., with gossip unearthed by journalist Anne Newport Royall (see 1823). Carrying a green umbrella and a newspaper subscription book, she lays siege to local politicians, who may incur her vitriol if they do not subscribe to the paper that she will rename The Huntress.
Paris bookshop owner Louis-Christophe-François Hachette, 30, begins publishing textbooks for the nation's newly-established primary schools following the July Revolution. His company will become a major publishing house, putting out a cheap "railway library," guide books, directories, and scholarly editions of ancient and modern classics.
Nonfiction: Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit) by Bavarian-born philosopher and moralist Ludwig (Andreas) Feuerbach, 26, is published anonymously, attacking the concept of personal immortality and proposing, instead, an immortality by which human qualities are reabsorbed into Nature; Rural Rides by journalist William Cobbett, now 67, who since 1821 has toured the English countryside, describes unflinchingly a land in which the Industrial Revolution has turned the peasantry into half-starved paupers and destroyed rural skills.
Essayist William Hazlitt dies in poverty at London September 18 at age 52, saying, "Well, I've had a happy life."
Fiction: The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir) by the French novelist Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), 47, who blends 18th-century rationalism with romantic fervor in what the author calls the emotional "crystallization" of experience; Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer, who begins, "It was a dark and stormy night and the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Poetry: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical by English poet Alfred Tennyson, 21, whose book gets a poor critical reception; "Old lronsides" by Boston medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes, 21, appears in the Boston Daily Advertiser and helps save the U.S. frigate Constitution from being destroyed by the Navy Department, which has condemned her: "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!/ Long has it waved on high"; "The Ballad of the Oysterman" by Oliver Wendell Holmes; "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by Boston editor Sarah Josepha Hale, whose verse in the first issue of the magazine Juvenile Miscellany will be set to music from the song "Goodnight Ladies" in 1867.
Painting: July 28. Liberty Leading the People (Liberty on the Barricades) by Eugène Delacroix, who sympathizes with the July Revolution (his only explicitly political canvas, it will be purchased by the government but soon removed from display lest it inflame public sentiment); Rustic Dance by William Sidney Mount. Sir Thomas Lawrence dies at London January 7 at age 60.
Birds of America by John James Audubon appears in the first of its several editions (see 1813). His wife's financial support has enabled Audubon to pursue his passion for painting birds from life; his work began appearing in London 3 years ago.
Theater: Hernani by Victor Hugo 2/25 at the Comédie-Française, Paris (Hugo's hero swears vengeance against Don Carlo—i.e. Charles X—and the resulting brouhaha helps spark the July revolution that overthrows the king).
Opera: I Capulleti e i Montecchi 3/4 at Venice's Teatro de la Fenice, with Italian mezzo soprano Giuditta Grisi, 24, creating the role of Romeo, music by Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, 28, libretto from the 1595 Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet; Italian soprano Eugenia Tadolini (née Savonari), 21, makes her Paris debut 10/23 at the Théatre des Italiens in the Rossini opera Ricciardo e Zoraide; Anna Bolena 12/26 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan, with Giuditta Pasta in the title role, music by Gaetano Donizetti (Pasta is largely responsible for making the work so successful).
The Code of Terpsichore by Carlo Blasis, now 26, contains innovations in ballet technique that will make his book as much a classic as his 1820 work.
First performances: Concerto No. 2 in F minor for Pianoforte and Orchestra by Frédéric Chopin 3/17 at Warsaw; Concerto No. 1 in E minor for Pianoforte and Orchestra by Chopin 10/11 at Warsaw (the concerti will be published in the opposite order of their premieres); Symphonie Fantastique by French composer Hector Berlioz, 27, 12/25 at Paris. Berlioz makes extravagant use of percussion and breaks new ground in symphonic composition.
Former matador Pedro Romero, 76, opens a bullfighting school at Seville. A grandson of the late Francisco Romero, he killed some 5,600 bulls in a career that spanned 28 years.
Gloucestershire textile-mill foreman Edwin (Beard) Budding, 35, invents a cutting machine to shear the nap off velvet, realizes that it can be adopted to mow lawns, and applies for a patent on his reel lawn mower, saying, "Country gentlemen may find, in using my machine themselves, an amusing, useful, and healthy exercise." Initially available in a 19-inch width, it comprises a set of blades housed in a cylinder and mounted on two wheels; when the cylinder rotates, the blades cut grass, making it unnecessary to use a scythe or maintain a flock of sheep; advertising for the device depicts a man in top hat and tailcoat, but the new mower is heavy and its price (7 guineas) puts it far beyond the reach of most homeowners (see 1868).
Authorities at Naples discover the Camorra, a secret criminal association that has evidently come from Spain and been used by the Bourbon regime as a quasi-police organization to crush opposition. It will continue to increase its influence, employing blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and murder to gain power in the municipal government as well as in business (see 1911).
Munich's Glyptothek is completed in Greek revival style to designs by architect Leo von Klenze, now 46, who became court architect to the late Maximilian I in 1816 and began work on the building.
The Kentucky State House is completed at Frankfort to designs by architect Gideon Shrycock.
Ireland's potato crop is poor; many peasants follow the advice of Daniel O'Connell and decline to pay their tithes.
"In whatever proportion the cultivation of potatoes prevails . . . in that same proportion the working people are wretched," writes William Cobbett in Rural Rides.
French and Belgian bakers begin using minute quantities of highly toxic copper sulfate as well as the less toxic alum to whiten bread.
Domestic baking and brewing skills have been forgotten by the English peasantry, says William Cobbett in Rural Rides. "Nowadays all is looked for at shops. To buy the thing ready made is the taste of the day: thousands who are housekeepers buy their dinners ready cooked."
Average U.S. per capita wheat consumption reaches 170 pounds; meat consumption is 178 pounds (see 1850).
Tinned foods from London's Donkin, Hall & Gamble Preservatory reach English food shops for the first time.
Congress reduces U.S. duties on coffee, tea, salt, and molasses imports.
Teacher's Highland Cream Scotch whisky has its beginnings in a distillery opened at Glasgow by William Teacher, 19.
Tanqueray Gin is introduced by London distiller Charles Tanqueray, 20, who has perfected a recipe of juniper berries, coriander, angelica, and other botanicals mixed with water from Finsbury Spa, just outside London. His son Charles Waugh Tanqueray will take over after the founder dies in 1868, and Tanqueray will be amalgamated with the Gordon's distillery in 1898.
The continuous still patented by the inspector general of Irish excise Aeneas Coffee speeds up distilling and makes for "cleaner" whiskey and gin. Coffee has used earlier models as the basis for his cheap, quick, continuous-process still: a small amount of wash (fermented malt made from anything containing starch or sugar), enough to provide the enzyme needed to convert corn starch into a fermentable sugar, is mixed with a mash of corn and water; allowed to ferment, the mixture is then piped into one end of Coffee's distilling system (two very tall, heated columns with a sequence of chambers), and high-proof alcohol comes out of the other end. The process eliminates most of the higher alcohols, esters, acids, and other "congeners," producing a more neutral, lighter-bodied "patent" whisky which Highland Scottish pot-still distillers scorn, claiming that their slower, more costly method retains more of the "impurities" that give aged whisky its characteristic flavor. Irish whiskey will continue to be made mostly in pot stills (see 1850).
"A Summary View of the Principle of Population" by Thomas R. Malthus appears in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (see 1826). Now 64, Malthus has modified his views to allow for the fact that man is a political animal as well as a biological one (see 1834).
Law of Population by Derbyshire-born linen importer and member of Parliament Michael T. (Thomas) Sadler, 50, is a massive treatise that attacks Malthusian theories as being too pessimistic.
Congress makes abortion a statutory crime (see England, 1803; Pius XI, 1869).
The U.S. population reaches 12.9 million, including 3.5 million black slaves. The country receives 34,338 immigrants from Ireland during the year and 27,489 from England.
The population of the world reaches 1 billion, up from 750 million in 1750.
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
Astronomy
The Mechanisms of the Heavens by Mary Fairfax Somerville [b. Jedburgh, Scotland, December 26, 1780, d. Naples, Italy, November 29, 1872] is a popularization in English of Laplace's Mécanique céleste. Although Somerville is self-educated, Laplace declares that she is the only woman to have understood his work. See also 1799 Astronomy; 1831 Mathematics.
Chemistry
Pierre Louis Dulong [b. Rouen, France, February 12, 1785, d. Paris, July 19, 1838] determines the percentages of hydrogen and carbon in organic compounds by his perfected incineration method. See also 1833 Chemistry.
Jöns Jakob Berzelius coins the term isomerism to describe compounds of identical chemical composition but different structure and properties, first identified by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac. See also 1824 Chemistry; 1848 Chemistry.
Communication
James Perry [b. Banbury, England, 1769, d. 1843] develops an improved form of the steel pen point, or nib, that is made flexible by cutting slits in the body of the point and adding a hole; this form of pen becomes the commonplace type for the next hundred years. See also 1822 Communication; 1938 Communication.
Trains start carrying mail in England between cities; previously, the bulk of mail was carried by coaches. See also 1784 Communication; 1840 Communication.
Earth science
The first volume of The Principles of Geology by geologist Sir Charles Lyell begins a massive study that shows Earth must be several hundred million years old. Volume three is published in 1833, and the whole trilogy is republished many times since, with a dozen revisions during the author's lifetime. See also 1654 Earth science; 1907 Earth science.
William Nicol [b. Scotland, 1768, d. Edinburgh, September 2, 1851] begins work on what will eventually become the petrological microscope, a device for viewing thin sections of rock. Nicol's first experiments use thin sections of wood, however.
Energy
Joseph Henry discovers the principle of electromagnetic induction shortly before Michael Faraday does, but fails to publish; he publishes his results after learning of Faraday's. He also describes a practical electric motor. See also 1829 Physics; 1831 Energy.
French chemistry student Charles Sauria [b. 1812, d. 1895] discovers how to make matches that light when struck, using yellow phosphorus, sulfur, and potassium chlorate. Jacob Friedrich Kammerer manufactures them. See also 1827 Energy; 1855 Energy.
Mathematics
Treatise on Algebra by George Peacock [b. Durham, England, April 9, 1791, d. Ely, England, November 8, 1858] is one of the first attempts to formulate the fundamental laws of numbers. See also 1879 Mathematics.
In February Evariste Galois presents a second version of his theory of groups to the French Academy of Sciences, but the referee, Jean-Baptiste Fourier, dies before looking at it. The document is never found among Fourier's papers. See also 1829 Mathematics; 1831 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
Charles Bell's The Nervous System of the Human Body distinguishes different types of nerves. See also 1822 Medicine & health; 1833 Medicine & health.
Physiologist Marshall Hall [b. Basford, England, February 18, 1790, d. Brighton, England, August 11, 1857] is the first to identify and study reflexes. He also denounces bloodletting as a treatment for disease.
Tools
Richard Roberts [b. Llanymynech, Montgomeryshire, Wales, 1789, d. 1864] develops the automatic, or self-acting, spinning mule, which, unlike the original version, can be operated easily by semiskilled workers. See also 1779 Tools.
Optician Joseph Jackson Lister [b. London, January 11, 1786, d. West Ham, Essex, England, October 24, 1869] succeeds in developing an achromatic lens for the microscope about 70 years after the first achromatic telescope lenses were made. See also 1762 Tools; 1834 Tools.
French tailor Barthélemy Thimonnier [b. 1793, d. 1859] invents a sewing machine and installs 80 of them in a workshop for military clothing. The following year his workshop is destroyed by Parisian tailors fearing to be put out of work. See also 1846 Tools.
In Stroud, England, Edwin Beard Budding [b. 1796, d. 1846] invents the reel (or cylinder) lawn mower, basing it on a device used to make a smooth nap on cloth. Before this, lawns were cut with scythes, which left grass high and ragged. The mower is patented and manufactured by his partner, engineer John Ferrabee. See also 1902 Tools.
Transportation
In October George Stephenson's steam locomotive The Rocket is chosen over three competitors to open the Liverpool to Manchester railway. This is considered the start of the railroad boom. The Rocket, along with seven others built to the same design by Stephenson, are used for operations of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, which formally opens on September 15. See also 1825 Transportation; 1832 Transportation.