1877: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Queen Victoria is proclaimed empress of India January 1 at a Great Assemblage, or Durbar, held by the viceroy Lord Lytton and his wife, Edith, on a grassy plain north of Delhi. While thousands die of hunger in famine-stricken Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai), the British raj entertains officials, rajahs, and subalterns at a fancy ball and banquets that continue for a week. The viceroy and vicereine arrive at Government House, Calcutta (Kolkata), January 13 and Edith Lady Lytton settles down to a round of visiting soldiers' wives in their barracks and nurses in their hospitals, charming local society while her husband raises eyebrows with his undignified manner and open flirtations. Resentment against the raj increases, but India will remain part of the Empire for another 70 years (see Gandhi, 1906).
The Electoral Commission Act signed into law by President Grant January 20 establishes a 15-member commission to rule on disputed electoral votes in connection with last year's disputed U.S. presidential election; appointed January 29, the commission comprises five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court justices—two from each party and one to be appointed by the others. The fifth justice is David Davis, who is considered an independent, but the Illinois Legislature names Davis to a U.S. Senate seat, and he is replaced by upstate New York-born justice Joseph P. Bradley, 63, a Republican who has a record of favoring government power to regulate commerce and opposing constitutional protection for the civil rights of blacks. Eight members of the commission are Republicans (whose party controls the Senate), seven Democrats (whose party controls the House), all questions are decided along partisan lines, Justice Bradley casts the deciding vote, the president of the Senate announces at 4 o'clock in the morning of March 2 that Rutherford B. Hayes has won the presidency by one electoral vote, and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden is denied his marginal victory at the polls (considerable sums of money have changed hands and few people doubt that the presidency was stolen). Hayes has gained grudging Southern support by promising to withdraw the federal troops that have been protecting the carpetbagger governments in the former Confederacy, return the Southern states to Democratic Party control, and serve only one term. He is sworn in as president March 4, having named a cabinet whose members were chosen on the basis of ability rather than cronyism; "Party leaders should have no more influence in appointments than other equally respectable citizens," Hayes declares, but many people consider the election to have been stolen and call him "Rutherford B. Fraud" or "Rutherfraud" or "Old 8 to 7." When angry Senate Democrats confront him at the White House, Hayes takes a copy of last year's Republican platform from his desk drawer, invites his visitors to read the pledges to reform the civil service, and tells them, "We must not forget that I am president of the whole country, not any party."
President Hayes withdraws federal troops from Louisiana April 27 after 12 years of occupation, ending the period of Radical Reconstruction. Legislatures of former Confederate states enact measures that solidify Democratic Party control (seePosse Comitatus law, 1878).
Polar explorer and Civil War naval commander Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, U.S. Navy (ret.), dies at Washington, D.C., February 8 at age 78; former Confederate Navy rear admiral Raphael Semmes at Point Clear on Mobile Bay, Alabama, August 30 at age 67; former Confederate Army general Nathan Bedford Forrest at Memphis October 29 at age 56.
The first elected Ottoman parliament convenes at Constantinople under terms of the constitution proclaimed last year. Scholar Ahmed Vefik, 53, presides over the parliament, whose members include Palestinian deputies elected from Jerusalem.
Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire April 24 as the government of Aleksandr II yields to pressure from Panslav elements. Greece's prime minister Aléxandros Koumoundhouros advocates sending troops to aid insurgents in Ottoman-occupied Macedonia and Thessaly. The Russians cross the Danube and lay siege July 19 to the Turkish fort of Plevna (Pleven), 100 miles northeast of Sofia; Ottoman forces under the command of Crimean War veteran Osman Nuri, 45, repulse the Turks in the first Battle of Plevna July 20, but a larger war looms as the British cabinet decides July 21 to declare war on Russia if she should occupy Constantinople and if she does not make plans for immediate withdrawal. The Russians suffer further reverses at Plevna as the tough Turkish defenders throw back repeated Russian attacks, inflicting heavy losses and allaying fears of British intervention, but Plevna's earthenwork walls fall December 10, Osman Nuri tries to break through the cordon of 110,000 Russians and Romanians with 500 guns, but his force of 40,000 men and 77 guns is overpowered, and he is forced to surrender after being wounded; Turkish casualties total about 30,000 (the Russians and Romanians lose about 40,000), Nuri is taken prisoner and carried off to Russia but becomes a national hero for his stout resistance; the Turks appeal for mediation (see 1878).
Greece's prime minister Konstantinos Kanáris dies in office at Athens September 14 at age 87.
France has a May 16 crisis that threatens her survival as a republic. Premier Jules Simon is forced to resign as Marshal MacMahon becomes irritated with his weak opposition to the anticlerical position of French Leftists, but the principle of ministerial responsibility is upheld against the personal power of the reactionary president and France remains a republic (see 1873; Boulanger, 1889).
British reformer John Frost of 1839 Chartist uprising fame dies near Bristol, Gloucestershire, July 27 at age 93; former Chartist and reformer William Lovett dies in dire poverty at London August 8 at age 77, having run an unsuccessful book store.
Former Spanish Carlist insurgent leader Ramón Cabrera dies at London May 24 at age 70, having recognized the legitimist king Alfonso XII 2 years ago; former French president Louis Thiers dies suddenly at Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise) September 3 at age 80.
Japan's samurai warrior class rebels against the "evil counselors" of the Meiji emperor, who have denied the samurai their pensions and forbidden them to wear two swords (see 1869). The Satsuma Rebellion that begins January 29 alarms Tokyo as disciples of samurai leader Takamori Saigo attack the Kagoshima arsenal and navy yard; Saigo raises 40,000 men by February 15 and sets out for Tokyo with some idea of presenting a list of grievances, but his advance is blocked at Kumamoto. General Koshaku Yamagata, now 38, heads an expeditionary force sent to quell the uprising, and the government names Satsuma-born soldier Iwao Oyama, 34, to help lead a modern army of trained commoners (Oyama has learned military tactics with the Prussian Army in 1870 and his wife is a Vassar graduate). Former government official Takayoshi Kido dies at Tokyo May 26 at age 43, by which time Aritomo Yamagata, now 39, has become field commander of the government's conscript army, which is funded by a large issue of paper money and inflicts a series of defeats through the summer on Takamori Saigo, who has scarcely 200 samurai left by September. The imperial army launches a final assault September 24, Saigo is critically wounded, he is beheaded by a faithful lieutenant at his native Kagashima September 24 at age 49, and the rebellion ends after 12,000 men have died and 20,000 been wounded. Many Japanese refuse to believe that Saigo is dead, preferring to think that he will return at some time in the future when a great leader is needed (see constitution, 1889).
Britain annexes Walfish (Walvis) Bay on the coast of South-West Africa March 12, she annexes the South African Republic April 12 in violation of the 1852 Sand River Convention that recognized the independence of the Transvaal, and a new Kaffir War begins that will end with the British annexing all of Kaffraria and extending their rule toward the northeast.
Former Argentine dictator Juan de Rosas dies in exile at Southampton, England, March 14 at age 83.
Canadian statesman Sir James Douglas dies at Victoria, British Columbia, August 2 at age 73. He is mourned as "the father of British Columbia."
Congress ratifies a treaty February 28 that forces the Sioux under threat of starvation to cede the Black Hills to the United States (see 1876). General Alfred H. Terry meets in March with Sitting Bull in Canada but is unable to persuade the Lakota Sioux chief to return to the reservation in South Dakota (see 1881).
Nez Percé tribespeople in the Northwest are ordered to leave or be removed forcibly after years of passive noncompliance with the treaty they signed in 1863. Chief Joseph, 37, says, "I would give up everything rather than have the blood of my people on my hands." But in the chief's absence his braves kill several whites, Howard University founder General O. O. Howard sends in troops, and the troops are nearly annihilated in the Battle of White Bird Canyon. Eighteen subsequent engagements leave the Nez Percé weakened, Chief Joseph leads 750 tribespeople in a retreat through nearly 1,600 miles of Rocky Mountain wilderness pursued by 600 soldiers, but fresh troops under Colonel Nelson A. Miles, now 38, surround him October 5. Forced to surrender in Montana Territory less than 40 miles from the safety of the Canadian border, Chief Joseph says, "I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed . . . It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and we have no blankets, no food . . . Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired: my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
General James Carleton orders Apache in Arizona Territory out of the Chiricahua reservation at Warm Springs in November, telling them to move to San Carlos, where temperatures in summer reach as high as 140° F. in a region with no game and with no food except the meager rations issued by Indian agents. Any man, woman, or child found off the reservation is to be shot without being given a chance to surrender (see Geronimo, 1876; 1886).
Abolitionist Robert Dale Owen dies at his home on Lake George, New York, June 24 at age 75; abolitionist Levi Coffin near Cincinnati September 16 at age 78. His Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground R.R. was published last year.
A San Francisco mob burns down 25 Chinatown wash houses in July and anti-Chinese riots ensue for months (see 1869; Los Angeles, 1871). The Chinese receive little or no police protection, giving rise to the phrase not a Chinaman's chance (see population [Exclusion Treaty], 1880).
Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin move to England to escape puritanical criticism of their views and behavior (see 1872).
The Japanese Red Cross is founded at Tokyo, where the Meiji emperor is mobilizing forces to put down the Satsuma Rebellion.
The Fresh Air Fund started by Pennsylvania clergyman Willard Parsons brings needy city children for a visit to his rural community. Most have never seen a cow (see 1881).
The city of Tombstone is founded in southeastern Arizona territory by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who has found silver in the area after being told that all he would find would be his own tombstone. Within 4 years the town will have an estimated 7,000 people, including adventurers and outlaws as well as prospectors (see crime, 1881).
Portuguese explorer Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, 31, leads an expedition from Benguela, Angola, into the basins of the Congo and Zambezi rivers. Having gone to East Africa 8 years ago on an expedition to explore the Zambezi, he now explores the terrain between Angola on Africa's west coast and Mozambique on the east coast.
Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley reaches the port of Boma in August, exactly 1,000 days after leaving Zanzibar (see 1875). He has charted the course of the Congo River and confirmed the theory that Lake Victoria is the source of the Nile, but all three of his European aides have died, as have half his Africans, his weight has fallen to 120 pounds, his hair has turned white, and when he reaches Zanzibar he learns that his fiancée has married another man (see Nonfiction, 1878).
English explorer Lady Ann Blunt (née King), 40, travels across the desert from Aleppo to Baghdad; daughter of Ada Byron, Countess Lovelace, she skirts the Bedouin tribes that inhabit the region.
Sea captain-polar explorer Nathaniel B. Palmer dies at San Francisco June 21 at age 77 after returning from a voyage to China undertaken without success to restore a nephew's health.
Government regulation of U.S. business gains legal support from the Supreme Court March 1 in the case of Munn v. Illinois (see 1872). The landmark 7-to-2 decision sustains the state law of 1871 supervising grain elevators. Chief Justice Waite bases his majority opinion on a 17th century English decision; he holds that community rights are as sacred as the rights of business interests and that legislators can regulate in a matter "affected with the public interest"; six other justices concur, so while a dissenting judge calls the decision "subversive of the rights of private property," the Munn ruling lays the basis for all subsequent regulation of U.S. business by government. The New York Herald says, "Either the people would govern the railroads, or the railroads would govern the people. The Supreme Court has come to the rescue" (but see 1890).
U.S. railroad workers begin strikes February 12 to protest wage cuts. The New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore & Ohio call off a long-standing rate war in April and announce a 10 percent wage cut. The B. & O. announces a further 10 percent wage cut in mid-July. Its workers begin a strike at Martinsburg, West Virginia, and they are soon joined by Pennsylvania Railroad workers. Strikers set the Pittsburgh roundhouse ablaze, and the strike spreads across the nation, the railroads shut down for a week, and the strike does not end until federal troops fire on the workers July 24, killing some, wounding many (both sides claim victory) in the first use of federal troops to combat strikers. Riots spread across the country, more federal troops are called in to suppress them, and Chicago police join with units that have recently returned from an Indian massacre. They open fire July 26 at the corner of 16th and Halsted streets in what will be remembered as "the Battle of the Viaduct," killing 30 workers and wounding more than 100. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe reduces wages 5 percent August 1 and slashes conductors' salaries from a top of $120 per month to $75. The conductors strike but soon return to work at lower pay (see 1878).
A long strike of U.S. anthracite coal workers ends August 15 with a 10 percent wage increase. The "Molly Maguires" make headlines after a decade of activity in Pennsylvania mining towns by the secret Irish-American Philadelphia terrorist society. They have been apprehended through the efforts of Pinkerton detective James McParland, 35, Irish-born himself, who 5 years ago infiltrated the fraternal Ancient Order of Hibernians, some of whose lodges have been under Molly Maguire control. Ten members of the terrorist society are hanged June 21 in the yard of the Schuylkill County jail at Pottsville, and 10 more will be hanged in the next 2 years, all through testimony given by McParland, who will later become head of Pinkerton's Denver branch and be involved in suppressing activities of the Western Federation of Miners in Idaho (see Haywood, 1907).
India's Tata industrial empire has its beginnings in a cotton mill founded at his native Navsari by Persian-born entrepreneur Jamsetji Nasarwanji Tata, 38, who has worked for his father's export trading company since 1858 and will go on to open mills at Bombay (Mumbai) and Coorla, establishing a reputation for efficiency, quality, and protection of workers (see 1903).
Chase National Bank is founded September 12 by New York banker John Thompson, now 75, who founded First National Bank in 1863 but sold his controlling interest in that institution 4 years ago. The new bank opens offices at 104 Broadway, taking its name from the late chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, who originated the national banking system in 1863 but died at New York 4 years ago (see Chase Manhattan, 1955).
Congress adjourns without appropriating funds for military pay. New York banker J. Pierpont Morgan of Drexel, Morgan (see 1871) offers to cover the $550,000-per-month payroll and set up a disbursement system; he raises the necessary money by joining with August Belmont and the Rothschild family to float a $200 million 4 percent bond issue, thereby saving the government from embarrassment.
Singer Manufacturing Company cuts sewing machine prices in half as the U.S. economic recession continues (see 1863). The move will increase sales enormously (see 1880).
Merchant John Wanamaker opens the first true department store March 12 at Philadelphia (see 1861; 1896).
R. H. Macy founder Rowland H. Macy dies at Paris March 29 at age 54, having pioneered such innovations as cash-only sales, money-back guarantees, and an on-premise factory to sew made-to-measure garments. His only son ran away at age 16 to join the Union Army and deserted after 10 days; Macy's will leaves his interest in the New York department store to a nephew (see Straus brothers, 1888).
John D. Rockefeller signs a contract with the Pennsylvania Railroad that strengthens his oil-rail monopoly (see 1872). He has been exploiting the recession by buying up depressed rivals in the oil industry and gaining control of all major pipelines and of the Pennsylvania's tank cars. Secret and illegal rebates and drawbacks by the railroads give Rockefeller lower freight rates and enable his company to force competitors to merge with the Rockefeller interests (see 1882).
Cornelius Vanderbilt dies at New York January 4 at age 82, leaving a fortune of $105 million (relatively little goes to his 38-year-old widow and his eight daughters, but his son William Henry, 55, receives $90 million and his four sons receive $11.5 million among them, all in stock; see 1873). Vanderbilt has laid new steel rails and built new bridges to cut running time on the New York Central between New York and Chicago from 50 hours to 24 (see 1902).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules March 1 that a state has the power to fix freight rates for intrastate traffic and for interstate traffic originating within its borders (Peik v. Chicago and North Western Railroad Co.). A later decision will limit state regulation to intrastate shipments, exempt the much larger volume of freight that crosses state lines, and weaken the farmers' victory in the Peik decision (see 1886; Interstate Commerce Act, 1887).
Shovel maker Oliver Ames, Jr. dies at North Easton, Massachusetts, March 9 at age 69, having served as president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1868 to 1871. Much of his vast fortune has come from returns on his railroad investments and from supplying shovels, swords, and other equipment under government contracts during the Civil War. His nephew and namesake becomes the driving force behind Oliver Ames & Sons; now 46, Oliver Ames III has rivaled his late father, Oakes, as a financial speculator, paying 25¢ per share to buy stock at auction in the Central Kansas branch of the Union Pacific and later selling it to Jay Gould at $250 per share when the latter was consolidating the UP with the Kansas Pacific; former Chicago and North Western Railway president (and first mayor of Chicago) William B. Ogden dies at his Fordham Heights, New York, estate August 3 at age 72; Callao, Lima & Oroya Railroad builder Henry Meiggs at Lima, Peru, September 29 at age 66 after a series of paralytic strokes, leaving the world's highest railroad incomplete, although it has "broken the back of the Andes" with 67 tunnels and dizzying viaducts. His tunnel under Mount Meiggs at an altitude of 15,658 feet remains an engineering marvel (see 1871; Grace, 1890).
The first U.S. cantilever bridge carries trains across the Kentucky River near Harrodsburg. Designed by Charles Shaler Smith for the Cincinnati Southern, the $377,500 bridge tested April 20 has three spans of 375 feet each. Incorporated in 1869 as a municipally owned railroad and under construction since then, the Cincinnati Southern begins operations July 23 and will complete its 350-mile line to Chattanooga in 1880, with 27 tunnels (see "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," 1880). It will repay its original $20 million cost many times.
Boston entrepreneur Albert Augustus Pope, 34, converts his Hartford, Connecticut, air-pistol factory into the first U.S. bicycle factory (see Starley, 1876). Pope's Columbia bicycle with its high front wheel will be popular for more than a decade until safety bicycles make it obsolete, and Pope will soon be grossing $1 million per year (see 1896; safety bicycle, 1885).
Nikolaus A. Otto and Eugen Langen at Cologne obtain a patent for a "silent engine" that incorporates the theoretical advantages of a four-stroke cycle (see 1867). It is the first working model of what will become the modern automobile internal-combustion engine.
Barbed-wire prices drop from 18¢/lb. to 8¢ as the Bessemer steelmaking process of 1856 is applied to barbed-wire production (see Gates, 1875). All barbed-wire patents were acquired last year by Washburn & Moen Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, and sales of barbed wire leap from last year's 840,000 pounds to 12.86 million pounds. A ton of barbed wire represents two miles of three-strand "devil's rope" and sales will climb to 26.7 million pounds next year, 50.3 million in 1879, 80.5 million in 1880, 120 million in 1881 (see 1898).
Civil War cannon maker Robert P. Parrott dies at Cold Spring, New York, December 24 at age 73.
German botanist Wilhelm Pfeffer, 31, discovers osmosis, finding that fluids are diffused through semipermeable membrane tissues.
Warsaw-born German botanist Eduard (Adolf) Strasburger, 33, at the University of Jena reports the fusion of genetic nuclei in plants (see 1894; Virchow, 1858).
Swiss physicist Raoul-Pierre Pictet, 31, wires Paris December 22 that he has liquefied oxygen using sulfurous and nitrous acid under 320 atmospheres; oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases not heretofore considered liquefiable will be liquefied in the next year by French physicist Louis Paul Cailletet, 45 (see food, 1895).
German district surgeon (Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch, 33, of Wollstein demonstrates a technique for fixing and straining bacteria. Appointed 4 years ago to a position as district medical examiner in Poland, Koch found that anthrax was endemic and last year obtained a pure culture of the anthrax bacillus by using the eye of an ox as a sterile medium for culturing the bacillus (see Davaine, 1863); he will confirm Louis Pasteur's suggestion that every disease produced by microorganisms is produced by a specific bacillus (see tuberculosis bacillus, 1882).
English researchers A. Downes and T. P. Blunt discover the germicidal qualities of ultraviolet rays. Their findings will lead to new techniques for sterilization.
Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation by English-born physician Mary Jacobi (née Mary Corinna Putnam), 35, disputes the notion that women must leave off their pursuit of everyday activities during their menstrual periods. The first woman to receive a degree from New York City's College of Pharmacy at a time when no regular U.S. medical school would accept women, Jacobi entered the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, completed her studies at the Ecole de Médécine in Paris, where she was the first woman student.
James Paget, now 63, describes the chronic bone disease osteitis deformans that will be called Paget's disease (see 1835). It will defy a century of effort to unearth its etiology and find a specific therapy.
A Swiss Emancipation Law enacted May 15 gives Jews full citizenship, ending ghetto life.
Wilhelm Emmanuel, Baron von Ketteler, dies at Burghausen July 13 at age 65, having been outspoken in support of workers as bishop of Mainz; Mormon leader Brigham Young dies at Salt Lake City August 29 at age 76, survived by 17 wives (some of his 27 wives were merely "sealed" to him as ceremonial spouses) and 47 children.
The Association for the Higher Education of Women in Glasgow is founded.
Education for Italian children from age 6 to 9 becomes mandatory under terms of a new law, but poor administration will make the measure ineffectual.
Tokyo University (the University of Tokyo) is founded in Japan. The imperial university will be the nation's most prestigious (only men will be admitted until 1949).
The first university press is founded at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, where The American Journal of Mathematics begins publication. The new university is the first institution to subordinate student needs to research demands, inaugurating the "publish-or-perish" system that will lead to widespread publication of pedantic papers which often have little to do with real education.
The American Museum of Natural History opens its first building December 22 in ceremonies attended by President Hayes, Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, and other notables (see 1869). President Grant took part in the ground-breaking ceremonies 3 years ago on what heretofore has been New York's Manhattan Square—a 10-acre, city-owned site across from Central Park at West 77th Street—where the museum will add more buildings in years to come. The 29-year-old Arsenal in Central Park has housed the museum's collection up to now and will become the headquarters of the city's parks department.
Clock and instrument maker Alexander Bain dies at Glasgow January 2 at age 65, having obtained patents on the basics of facsimile messaging, developed chemical telegraph receivers, and used punch-tapes to speed up telegraphic transmission.
The Bell Telephone Association is organized with headquarters at New York. Founder Gardiner Hubbard gives himself and his prospective son-in-law Bell each a 30 percent interest in the Bell patent, gives Bell's assistant Thomas A. Watson a 10 percent interest, and gives a 30 percent interest to investor Thomas Sanders, who put up more than $100,000 to back Bell's early experiments in 1875 (see 1876). The company begins leasing telephones in May for business use on a private line between Boston and Somerville, Massachusetts (subscribers pay $20 per year for two telephones); 778 are in use by August (see 1878). Western Union's American Speaking-Telephone Company competes with Bell, but the new Bell firm is deluged with applications for telephone agencies, and Hubbard starts leasing telephones at the rate of 1,000 per month.
The first telephone switchboard is installed May 17 at 342 Washington Street, Boston, in the office of Edwin T. Holmes, a hoopskirt manufacturer who founded the Holmes Electric Protective Company (a burglar-alarm service). Bell loans Holmes 12 telephones and the switchboard at 342 Washington Street is used for telephone service by day and a burglar alarm at night. Men operate the switchboard in shifts, but within a few years thousands of American women will be employed as switchboard operators (see 1878).
The first telephone exchange is organized at Lowell, Massachusetts, by local entrepreneur Charles Jaspar Glidden, 20 (see New Haven, 1878). He will quickly develop a system under the name New England Telephone and Telegraph and another under the name Erie Telephone and Telegraph, and will not sell out to the Bell interests until the 1900s.
German-born U.S. inventor Emile Berliner, 26, develops a loose-contact telephone transmitter superior to Bell's telephone (see 1878; Hughes, 1855). Bell has married Gardiner Greene Hubbard's 18-year-old hearing-impaired daughter Mabel July 11 and leaves in early August for England and France, where he introduces his telephone to prospective investors.
An inter-colonial telegraph line opens December 8 to connect Western Australia with the rest of the world over a single iron wire 2,532 kilometers in length.
Mechanic Heinrich D. Ruhmkorff dies at Paris December 20 at age 74, having invented the improved induction coil that will be used in early electrical devices including the first radio transmitter (see Marconi, 1895).
French poet and inventor Charles Cros, 34, submits a paper in April to the Academy of Sciences at Paris suggesting that the vibrations of sound waves can be traced with a pen attached to a vibrating membrane. The waves can then be engraved into metal, and a stylus attached to a membrane can be run over the engraved waves to reproduce the sound. A hand-cranked "phonograph or speaking machine" demonstrated by Thomas A. Edison November 29 records sounds on grooved metal cylinders wrapped in tinfoil. Edison has not heard of Cros's paper but has followed up on his telephone research; he shouts the verses to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into his machine, is astonished when it plays his voice back, applies for a patent in December, and is soon attracting paid audiences at "exhibitions" of the machine. He publishes an article suggesting 10 possible uses for his invention (e.g., recording dictation of letters by executives to secretaries, announcing clock time, recording books for the blind, recording the last words of dying people) but will soon doubt that it has any commercial value and will not concede until the 1890s that its chief use will be to record and play music (see 1887).
The Farm Journal begins publication in March. Philadelphia publisher Wilmer Atkinson, 30, sends out 25,000 copies to farmers and other rural residents within a day's ride of Philadelphia.
The Washington Post begins publication December 6 with a four-page edition that sells at 3¢ and will have a circulation of 11,875 within a year. Publisher Stilson Hutchins, 39, calls President Hayes the "de facto president," refers to Hayes as "His Fraudulency," and uses the term "President Tilden" in his outrage over the "crime of '76." He will buy out the competing National Union next year and the Daily Republican in 1888 but will sell his interests in 1889 (see Meyer, 1933).
Britain's remaining restrictions on freedom of the press end with the court trial at London of Annie Wood Besant (Ajax), 30, and Charles Bradlaugh, 44, who have republished Charles Knowlton's Malthusian 1835 pamphlet "Fruits of Philosophy" advocating contraception. Their case is heard in July, their pamphlet is described in court as "indecent, lewd, and obscene," and although Besant and Bradlaugh are acquitted Besant is socially ostracized and loses custody of her daughter because a judge fears that she might contaminate the child with her ideas. The suffragist movement has given her no support lest it jeopardize its case for enfranchising British women (see Official Secrets Act, 1911).
Editor Ludwig von Gerlach dies at his native Berlin February 18 at age 81, having opposed Prince von Bismarck's persecution of Catholics in his Kulturkampf (he has also opposed unifying Germany under Prussian leadership).
The Boston Library opens on Copley Square in a Romanesque building designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. Its chief benefactor has been the late Joshua Bates, a local financier who was a partner in London's Baring Brothers from 1828 until his death in 1864 at age 76 (see 1895).
Nonfiction: Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzjung der Wissenschaft) (first of two volumes) by Friedrich Engels attacks Dühring's socialist ideas and "vulgar Materialism"; Inductive Metrology, or the Recovery of Ancient Measures from the Monuments by London-born British archaeologist (William Matthew) Flinders Petrie, 24, who has done field work at Stonehenge and other sites to develop a way of determining by mathematical calculations the unit of measurement used in constructing such ancient monuments; On the Art of War and Mode of Warfare . . . Among the Ancient Mexicans by Swiss-born anthropologist-archaeologist Adolph (Francis Alphonse) Bandelier, 37, whose study of Aztec culture has been influenced by Lewis Morgan.
Economist-editor Walter Bagehot dies at his native Lanport, Somerset, March 24 at age 51; historian-diplomat John Lothrop Motley at Dorchester, Dorset, England, May 29 at age 63 while working on a continuation of his History of the United Netherlands ("If Philip [Felipe II of Spain] possessed a single virtue it has eluded the conscientious research of the writer of these pages," he has written. "If there are vices—as possibly there are—from which he was exempt, it is because it is not permitted to human nature to obtain perfection even in evil").
Fiction: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; The American by Henry James; Deephaven (stories) by South Berwick, Maine, author Sarah Orne Jewett, 27.
Poetry: Lis Isclo d'Or by Frédéric Mistral; Proverbs in Porcelain by Austin Dobson.
Poet-novelist Caroline Norton dies at her native London June 15 at age 69, having helped to gain passage of the Marriage and Divorce Act of 1857 that abolished some of the inequities that burdened married women.
Juvenile: Black Beauty by English author Anna Sewell, 57, whose "Autobiography of a Horse" will be a worldwide bestseller and remain popular for more than a century. Crippled early in life, Sewell has been confined to her Norfolk home for the past 5 or 6 years, gets a flat £2O for her manuscript, and will receive no royalties, but her book will be credited by some with helping to abolish the cruel practice of using checkreins; That Lass o' Lowrie's by English-born U.S. author Frances (Eliza) Burnett (née Hodgson), 28.
Painting: Nana by Edouard Manet; Woman in Blue by Pierre-Auguste Renoir; Orchard with Flowering Fruit Trees, Springtime, Pontoise and The Red Roofs, View of a Village in Winter by Camille Pissarro; Lever de Lune by Charles François Daubigny; Paris Street, Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte; The Reader by Mary Cassatt; Inkermann by Elizabeth Thompson, who marries Sir William Francis Butler and becomes Lady Butler; The Carnival and The New Novel by Winslow Homer; William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River by Thomas Eakins, who creates a sensation by flaunting nudity. Gustave Courbet dies near Vevey, Switzerland, December 31 at age 58; imprisoned for 6 months in 1871 for destroying the Vendôme column at Paris, he fled to Switzerland in 1873 after being sentenced to pay for the column's reconstruction.
Photography pioneer William H. Fox Talbot dies at his native Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, September 17 at age 77, having distinguished himself also as a chemist, linguist, and archaeologist.
Theater: The Grasshopper 10/13 at London's Gaiety Theatre is an adaptation by John Hollingshead, 50, of the French farce La Cigale by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.
Ballet: Swan Lake 3/4 at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater with music by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky. The ballet is incomplete and the production not a success (see 1895).
The cakewalk is introduced into U.S. minstrel shows by the New York team Harrigan and Hart, whose "Walking for Dat Cake" number imitates antebellum plantation "cakewalks."
Opera: Adelina Patti makes her La Scala debut at Milan 11/3 in the 1853 Verdi opera La Traviata; The Sorcerer 11/17 at London's Opera Comique, with London-born actor-singer George Grossmith, 29, as John Wellington Wells, Gilbert & Sullivan arias that include "My Name Is John Wellington Wells," 178 performances; Samson et Dalila 12/2 at Weimar's Grand Ducal Palace, with music by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Cantata: Lallah Rookh by English composer Frederick Clay, 39, in February at the Brighton Festival with "I'll Sing Thee Songs of Araby," lyrics by Irish poet-playwright William Gorman Wills, 49.
First performances: Francesca da Rimini (Fantasia for Orchestra after Dante) by Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky 3/9 at Moscow; Les Eolides (The Aeolidae) (symphonic poem) by Belgian-French composer César (August Jean Guillaume) Franck, 54, 5/13 at Paris; Symphony No. 2 in B flat major by the late Franz Schubert (who wrote it in 1815) 10/20 at London's Crystal Palace; Symphony No. 3 in D minor by Anton Bruckner 12/16 at Vienna; Symphony No. 2 in D major by Johannes Brahms 12/30 at Vienna.
Scholar Ludwig Ritter von Köchel dies at Vienna June 3 at age 77, having compiled a complete chronological listing of works by W. A. Mozart.
Hymns: "Where Is My [Wand'ring] Boy To-night?" by Robert Lowry; "Hiding in Thee" by Ira David Sankey, lyrics by William O. Cushing.
Popular songs: "In The Gloaming" by English composer Annie Fortescue Harrison, 26, who has recently married the comptroller of Queen Victoria's household Sir Arthur Hill, lyrics by Meta Orred; "The Lost Chord" by Arthur Sullivan, who has been inspired by the fatal illness of his brother Frederick, lyrics by the late poet Adelaide A. Procter, whose verse was published in 1858 and who died 6 years later at age 39.
The Westminster Kennel Club dog show inaugurated in May at New York's 3-year-old Gilmore's Garden attracts 1,201 entries in the "first annual N.Y. Bench Show." Dogs compete for silver trophies produced by Tiffany & Co. Fanciers have organized the club at the Westminster Hotel on Irving Place at 16th Street. The founding members have adopted as the club's symbol the head of their pointer Sensation, whose stud services they offer at $35. While no "best of show" award will be made until 1907, the first show is so popular that its scheduled 3-day run is extended for an extra day with proceeds from the fourth session going to the ASPCA.
The first Wimbledon lawn tennis championship matches are organized by the 9-year-old All England Croquet Club. Spencer Gore, 27, wins the singles title (see 1874; USLTA, 1881).
The first cricket Test Match pits Australia against England at Melbourne, with each country fielding its best players. Australia wins (see 1882).
London inaugurates a Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in its 48-year-old Metropolitan Police department with a plainclothes detective force based at Scotland Yard under the direction of Charles Edward Howard Vincent, 28.
The first low-rent U.S. housing "project" opens at Brooklyn, New York, where businessman Alfred Tredway White, 31, has financed construction of cottages for workingmen at Hicks Street and Baltic, each 11.5 feet wide with six rooms. By 1880 White will have built 44 of the cottages for $1,150 each exclusive of land and be renting them at $14 per month. He will build 226 apartments in six-story "sun-lighted tenements" around a central court with communal bathing facilities in their basements and will rent the four-room apartments for $1.93 per week.
Timber barons are "not merely stealing trees but whole forests," says Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, 48, who has been named to the post by President Hayes. Schurz emigrated from his native Germany in 1848 at age 19, practiced law at Milwaukee, served as minister to Spain, fought as a Union Army brigadier general of volunteers, and has served as U.S. senator from Missouri (see Muir, 1876; Forest Reserves Act, 1891).
Swan Boats designed by Robert Paget appear on the pond of Boston's 18-year-old Public Garden with official city permission and quickly become a major attraction for visitors.
The Halifax Fisheries Commission created by the Treaty of Washington in 1871 awards Britain $4.5 million for U.S. fishing rights in the North Atlantic November 23.
British entomologist Eleanor A. Ormerod, 49, begins publishing Annual Report of Observations of Injurious Pests, beginning a 20-year career in which she will make herself an international clearinghouse for entomological information. Ormerod's efficient and inexpensive methods for eradicating insect pests (saline solution for turnip moths, axle grease and sulfur applied to infested areas of the hide for maggots that plague livestock) will be credited with saving half the cows in Britain (see 1889).
Congress establishes a U.S. Entomological Commission to control grasshoppers that have been devastating western farms and rangelands.
San Francisco lawyer and land speculator James Ben Ali Haggin and his Kentucky-born brother-in-law Lloyd Tevis, 53, use political influence to have Congress pass a Desert Land Act offering land at 25¢ per acre to settlers who will agree to irrigate and cultivate the land for 3 years. Haggin and Tevis have acquired hundreds of thousands of acres by buying up old Spanish land grants, often of dubious value, and they acquire 96,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley by hiring scores of vagabonds to enter false claims which they then transfer to themselves, ousting settlers who have not yet perfected their titles under old laws and have not heard about the new law. The Haggin-Tevis lands will become the basis of Kern County Land Company (see 1890).
San Francisco flour and grain king Isaac Friedlander files for bankruptcy (see 1858). His Eureka Flour Mills are the largest in the state. He has gained control of almost all California wheat exports, financed construction of grain elevators, and with help from local bankers has developed a network of agents and intelligence sources to estimate the size of the California crop, thus enabling him to charter the appropriate number of ships to transport it. But this year he has overchartered. Calling him "the money king as well as the grain king," the National Grange has attacked Friedlander in its fight for regulation of railroads and grain warehouses (see 1878).
Famine kills 4 million in Bengal. British authorities station troops outside rice warehouses, and their ideological devotion to laissez-faire capitalisim makes them refuse to distribute grain to the hungry lest prices collapse.
Argentina challenges Australia as a source of meat for Europe by sending its first refrigerator ship to France with a cargo of meat. The S.S. Paraguay employs an ammonia compression system devised by French engineer Charles Albert Abel Tellier, 49 (see 1880; Linde, 1873).
The first shipment of Chicago-dressed beef to reach Boston arrives in a railcar designed to prevent spoilage by Chicago meat packer Gustavus Franklin Swift, 38, who is determined to save the cost of transporting whole live animals. Swift's partner James Hathaway has sold his interest in the firm anticipating failure, but Swift has refused to be thwarted by the railroads that demand exorbitant rates to make up for lost tonnage. He has used a railroad that has not carried livestock shipments (see 1881).
John Morrell & Company takes over a slaughterhouse at Ottumwa, Iowa (see 1868). Morrell will build its own plant at Ottumwa next year to compete with the big Chicago meat packers.
Lard and beef fat from the fast-growing U.S. meat-packing industry begins arriving in the Netherlands, where it will be used to make margarine. Thousands of pounds are soon arriving each week (see Jurgens, 1871).
Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company enters the infant-cereal business, competing with Nestlé (see 1866). Nestlé responds by producing its own condensed milk (see 1882).
A centrifugal cream separator invented by Swedish engineer Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval, 32, eliminates the need of space-consuming shallow pans and the labor of skimming the cream that rises to the top. By reducing the cost of producing butter, the Laval separator will lead to a vast expansion of the Danish, Dutch, and Wisconsin butter industries.
British butter prices fall to as little tuppence/lb., depressing demand for margarine (see 1871).
New York State outlaws the representation of margarine as "butter," but the law will be widely ignored.
Brick cheese is invented by Wisconsin cheese maker John Jossi, whose product is a more elastic, slightly milder version of Limburger.
The Quaker Mill Company begins operations at Ravenna, Ohio, making oatmeal with a process patented by William Heston (see Schumacher, 1875). Heston and his partner Henry D. Seymour register as a trademark the "figure of a man in Quaker garb," but their venture suffers for lack of business acumen and will soon be acquired by distiller Warren Corning, who will use the Quaker symbol on a brand of whiskey (see Quaker Oats, 1884; 1888).
Granula is introduced at Battle Creek, Michigan, by James Harvey Kellogg (see Jackson, 1863; medicine, 1876). He has created the cold cereal breakfast food by mixing wheat, oatmeal, and cornmeal and baking half-inch thick biscuits which he grinds up and sells at 12¢ per pound in one-, two-, and five-pound packages (see Granola, 1881).
The United States imports upwards of 340 million pounds of coffee—nearly one-third of the world's export crop, with almost three out of four pounds coming from Brazil. San Francisco coffee roaster James A. Folger takes his 27-year-old clerk August Schilling into partnership (see 1865). Now 42, Folger will soon be sending salesmen to Oregon, Washington State, Montana, and other markets.
Distillers Company, Ltd. is created by a consolidation of six Scottish distilleries to begin what will become a great whisky cartel. The syndicate will be joined in 1919 by John Haig, in 1924 by Robert Burnett, and in 1925 by Buchanan-Dewars (Black & White, Dewars White Label) and John Walker (Johnny Walker Red Label and Black Label).
The Oneida Community introduces tableware that will be called Community Plate silver. Its Wallingford, Connecticut, branch has developed the silverware.
The taboo subject of contraception comes into the open at the Bradlaugh-Besant trial. Many poor women, desperate for relief from continual pregnancies, have bought the 1832 manual "Fruits of Philosophy" after hearing publicity about the trial (sales have risen to more than 250,000 per year, up from fewer than 1,000), and the acquittal of Bradlaugh and Besant will lead to an end of the ban against disseminating contraceptive advice. But Besant is contemptuous of condoms, saying that they are "used by men of loose character as a guard against syphilitic diseases, and occasionally recommended as a preventive check." She prefers that the woman remain in control by using the sponge.
The Malthusian League is founded in England by George and Charles Drydale to spread the teachings of the late Thomas Malthus.
Queensland's new governor, Arthur Kennedy, gives approval August 20 to a drastic cut in Chinese immigration to his Australian state; his predecessor had refused demands for such a cut.
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