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| 1880 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| March 4 |
New York Daily Graphic prints the first half-tone photographic image in a newspaper. |
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| April 26 |
Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter demonstrate the photophone, a device in which a mirrored silver disc is made to vibrate by speech from a speaking tube. Light reflected off the disc is captured in a parabolic dish and focused onto a selenium cell, where variations in the reflected light are converted into the electrical signals that are carried to headphones. The laser disc and CD of the 1970s work on a remarkably similar principle. |
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| June 1 |
Connecticut Telephone Company installs public telephone booths on its premises in New Haven, the first available for public use in the USA. |
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| October 1 |
Edison Lamp Works in New Jersey produces its first commercial electric light bulbs. |
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George Eastman and Henry Strong start manufacturing photographic dry plates, using Eastman's machine, in a rented third-floor space in Rochester, NY . |
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Maurice Leblanc proposes horizontal and vertical scanning by vibrating mirrors for electrical transmission of images. |
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Method of mechanical scanning of images is outlined by George Carey of Boston, US in Design and Work. |
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Theoretical studies of the principles of television are published by Adriano de Paiva. |
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Principle of piezo-electric effect—the relationship between voltage generated and mechanical pressure of crystallographic materials—is developed by Jacques and Pierre Curie. |
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With the $10,000 Volta Prize awarded by the French government in recognition of the invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell establishes a laboratory in Washington DC (the Volta Laboratory) to study acoustics and sound reproduction in collaboration with his cousin, chemical engineer Chichester A Bell, and scientist and instrument maker Charles Sumner Tainter. |
> 1881 October 17 |
| 1881 |
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| July 1 |
First international telephone call is made between Calais, Maine in the USA and St Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada. |
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| October 17 |
Bell and Tainter donate a sound recording machine to the Smithsonian Institution that uses jets of air to inscribe sounds. |
> 1885 June 27 |
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Charles Tainter develops the lateral-cut technique for cylinder recording. The cutting stylus moves from side to side and is thus not as destructive of the cylinder's recording surface as Edison's vertical movement (hill-and-dale). |
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George Eastman and Henry Strong form the Eastman Dry Plate Company. |
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Thomas Henry Blair forms the Blair Tourograph & Dry Plate Company to take over marketing of his Tourograph complete photographic kit. |
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Shelford Bidwell in the US demonstrates equipment for transmitting silhouettes. |
The device is preserved in the Science Museum, London. |
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At the Paris Electrical Exhibition, Clément Ader ranges 80 telephone transmitters across the front of a stage to create a form of (binaural) stereophonic sound. Musical performances are relayed from the Opéra and the Comédie Française. |
> 1890 |
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Eadweard Muybridge further improves his Zoögyroscope as the Zoöpraxiscope. |
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Louis Lumière (1864-1948) introduces his Blue Label photographic plate, with much improved photosensitivity allowing shorter exposure times. |
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Public telephone service is launched in the Buenos Aires area of Argentina by Compañia Telefónica del Plata. |
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Richard D’Oyly Carte builds the Savoy Theatre in London to stage the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas—the ‘Savoy Operas’. |
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| 1882 |
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| February |
Jules-Etienne Marey (1830-1904) invents a photographic gun, taking 12 images a second on a single plate. |
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| July |
Marey’s chronophotographs are shown. |
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Speed of light is measured at 186,282 miles per second, 299,778 km/sec. |
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Théodore Puskás, a Hungarian who has previously worked in Edison's laboratories in Menlo Park, demonstrates a ‘telephoned newspaper’ at Paris Electrical Exhibition and subsequently establishes a system in Budapest. |
> 1892 |
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Sir William Crookes anticipates the possibilities of wireless telegraphy, including tunable receivers, in an article in The Fortnightly Review (51:302). |
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| 1883 |
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Frenchman Albert Londe (1858-1917) records images at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris using a multiple-lens camera. |
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| 1884 |
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| January 6 |
 German patent no 30105 for an ‘electric telescope’ is granted to Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (1860-1940) [right], the 30 marks fee being lent by his future wife. This is a ‘television’ system comprising a scanning disc and selenium cell. |
> 1935 |
| August |
General Post Office opens the first telephone call offices in England for use by the public. |
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| October 10 |
 First edition of weekly UK journal The Amateur Photographer. It consists of 16 pages and includes one illustration, an engraving of 'Marion's Miniature Camera'. It does not include any photographs. |
Picture source: Terra Media Archives, Amateur Photographer |
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Estimated 40 tons of silver and three tons of gold are used annually in the UK photographic industry. |
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Emile Berliner makes a cylinder recording of the Lord’s Prayer—the oldest record in BBC Record Library. |
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The first long-distance telephone cable in the US is installed between New York and Boston. |
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Page updated 30 November 2008
© David Fisher
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