Media History Project
mediahst@umn.edu

1850-1859

  • 1850: Number of U.S. public libraries triples in 25 years.
  • 1850: Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Sonnets from the Portuguese.
  • 1850: Mathew Brady publishes collection of photographs of famous Americans.
  • 1850: Auguste Comte, French philosopher, founds discipline of sociology.
  • 1850: In China, foreign nations operate the postal systems.
  • 1850: Alfred Lord Tennyson’s lyrical poem, In Memoriam, is published anonymously.
  • 1850: Olive Gilbert’s Narrative of Sojourner Truth, former slave, is published.
  • 1850: A new use for paper, the paper bag.
  • 1850: Jean-François Millet paints The Sower.
  • 1850: Robert Schumann’s Third Symphony, the Rhenish.
  • 1850: The New York Times founded as the Daily Times.
  • 1850: Ballroom dances divided into “round dancing” and “square dancing.”
  • 1850: Antonio de Torres Jurado invents the modern guitar.
  • 1850: Submarine cable briefly connects England and France.
  • 1850: Songs of Labor, of New England, arguably John Greenleaf Whittier’s best work.
  • 1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
  • 1850: P.T. Barnum sets a razzle-dazzle tone with newspaper ads and handbills.
  • 1851: Soap is mass marketed.
  • 1851: Herman Melville’s novel of the obsessive search for the great whale, Moby Dick.
  • 1851: In London, Frederick Bakewell demonstrates fax machine to send pictures.
  • 1851: Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables.
  • 1851: In the U.S., paper is made from wood fiber.
  • 1851: Stereoscope stirs public excitement at a London exhibition.
  • 1851: Sojourner Truth gives “Ain‘t I a Woman” speech in face of jeers by hostile men.
  • 1851: In Japan, type molds are designed to replace traditional wood printing blocks.
  • 1851: The Erie railroad depends on the telegraph.
  • 1851: Scott Archer invents wet-plate photography process.
  • 1851: In England, Talbot takes a flash photograph at 1/100,000 second exposure.
  • 1851: Newspaper postage cut in half; free distribution within county.
  • 1851: The Reuters news agency is founded.
  • 1851: Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto is staged.
  • 1851: Fire damages the Library of Congress.
  • 1851: Stephen Foster composes Old Folks at Home for a minstrel show.
  • 1852: Peter Mark Roget assembles his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.
  • 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin increases abolitionist support.
  • 1852: Postage stamps are widely used.
  • 1852: Telegraphic fire alarm system adopted in Boston, will spread worldwide.
  • 1852: E.P. Dutton, book publisher.
  • 1852: Dickens’ Bleak House.
  • 1852: Massachusetts is first state to enact compulsory education law.
  • 1852: Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
  • 1853: Envelopes are made by a paper folding machine.
  • 1853: London Stock Exchange sets up first pneumatic tube message delivery.
  • 1853: Duplex system doubles telegraph wire capacity.
  • 1853: European optical signalling system has 556 stations.
  • 1853: Richard Wagner publishes the librettos to The Ring Cycle.
  • 1853: Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor changes the structure of the sonata.
  • 1853: Verdi continues his operatic magic with La Traviata.
  • 1854: Telegraph brings news of the Crimean War.
  • 1854: In Paris, Le Figaro.
  • 1854: Thoreau publishes Walden.
  • 1854: Patent issued for a flexible film roll holder.
  • 1854: Bourseul in France builds an experimental telephone.
  • 1854: Carte-de-visite process simplifies photography.
  • 1854: Dickens’ Hard Times.
  • 1854: Wagner’s opera, Das Rheingold.
  • 1854: Curved stereotype plate obviates column rules; wide ads follow.
  • 1854: George Boole develops logic system that future computers will depend on.
  • 1855: Prepayment of letters made compulsory in the United States.
  • 1855: Walt Whitman publishes, at his own expense, Leaves of Grass.
  • 1855: In London, the Daily Telegraph.
  • 1855: The Bondwoman’s Narrative, a novel apparently written by a former slave.
  • 1855: First edition of John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
  • 1855: French diplomat Joseph Gobineau publishes racist book on Nordic supremacy.
  • 1855: The stopwatch.
  • 1855: Photographers Roger Fenton and James Robertson go to Crimean War.
  • 1855: Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha.
  • 1855: Registered letters enter service.
  • 1855: Photo studios offer cheap, finished-while-you-wait ambrotypes.
  • 1855: Charlotte Brontë dies in childbirth before completing Emma.
  • 1855: Dickens’ Little Dorrit.
  • 1855: Publication of the collection of legends known as Bulfinch’s Mythology.
  • 1855: A privately owned newspaper is published in Sierra Leone.
  • 1856: Poitevan starts photolithography.
  • 1856: Origin of Rand, McNally.
  • 1856: Electric clocks.
  • 1856: Photojournalism begins with pictures of the Crimean War.
  • 1856: Portugal gets a railroad and a telegraph line.
  • 1856: 500,000 stereoscopes sold in Europe in two years, one million stereographs.
  • 1856: Photographer Mathew Brady starts trend with large-type newspaper ads.
  • 1856: First full-page ad runs in a newspaper, the New York Ledger.
  • 1856: Blotting paper replaces sand boxes.
  • 1856: Another Wagnerian opera, Die Walküre.
  • 1856: Machine folds paper for books, newspapers.
  • 1857: A machine to set type is demonstrated.
  • 1857: Currier & Ives prints go on sale.
  • 1857: Harper’s Weekly magazine features engraved illustrations.
  • 1857: Reports from Germany’s Neanderthal Valley: bones of a pre-modern man.
  • 1857: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary leads to immorality trial; he is acquitted.
  • 1857: Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days.
  • 1857: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “novel in verse,” Aurora Leigh, praised, attacked.
  • 1857: In France, Scott’s phonautograph is a forerunner of Edison’s phonograph.
  • 1857: Atlantic Monthly is published.
  • 1857: Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers.
  • 1857: Les Fleurs du mal, the only poetry published during Charles Baudelaire’s life.
  • 1857: Matthew Arnold, new professor at Oxford, writes poetry and literary criticism.
  • 1858: Mailboxes appear on American streets.
  • 1858: First effort at transatlantic telegraph service fails.
  • 1858: Work begins on the Oxford English Dictionary.
  • 1858: Eraser is fitted to the end of a pencil.
  • 1858: In London’s Covent Garden, an opera house goes up.
  • 1858: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) writes Adam Bede, first of eight novels.
  • 1859: Camera gets a wide-angled lens.
  • 1859: The telautograph is another precursor to recorded sound.
  • 1859: Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
  • 1859: A novel by an African-American woman, Harriet Wilson, is published.
  • 1859: Gounod writes an opera about the legend, Faust.
  • 1859: Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
  • 1859: Telegraph crosses U.S. from Atlantic to Pacific.
  • 1859: Jacques Offenbach’s comic opera, Orpheus in the Underworld.
  • 1859: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.
  • 1859: Wagner’s opera, Tristan und Isolde.
  • 1859: George Meredith’s novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
  • 1859: Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species sells out in a day, but creates fury.
  • 1859: John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is a far-seeing liberal exposition.