Media History Project
mediahst@umn.edu

1910-1919

  • 1910: Daily newspapers in U.S. peak at 2,200.
  • 1910: Edison’s kinetophone attempts to create motion picture talkies.
  • 1910: Sweden’s Elkstrom invents “flying spot” camera light beam.
  • 1910: Gustav Mahler composes Das Lied von der Erde, his best known work.
  • 1910: Nobel Prize in Literature: Johann Heyse, Germany.
  • 1910: Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, helps break down academic painting standards.
  • 1910: The first live remote broadcasts: operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
  • 1910: Dance music is recorded.
  • 1910: Movie “stars” created when Florence Lawrence becomes “the Vitagraph Girl.”
  • 1910: Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica.
  • 1910: U.S. requires radio transmitters on some ships; first U.S. radio law.
  • 1910: Krazy Kat appears in a comic strip. The bricks start flying.
  • 1910: Victor Herbert’s operetta, Naughty Marietta.
  • 1910: Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.
  • 1910: The start of Hallmark Cards.
  • 1910: Market research begins, targeting audiences.
  • 1910: 24% of adult Americans have fewer than 5 years of schooling.
  • 1910: 13.5% of Americans have completed high school; 2.7% have college degrees.
  • 1910: Radio hobby craze; Quaker Oats boxes used to build crystal-cat’s whisker sets.
  • 1910: DeForest’s radio carries Enrico Caruso’s voice from the Met; heard at sea.
  • 1910: Neon tube development will aid mechanical television.
  • 1910: 5.8 million phones in Bell system, more than doubled in 5 years.
  • 1910: D.W. Griffith sets up shop in California at a place called Hollywood.
  • 1911: In China, theatres get raised platforms.
  • 1911: Rotogravure aids magazine production of photos.
  • 1911: Emma Goldman expresses outspoken credo in Anarchism and Other Essays.
  • 1911: Nobel Prize in Literature: playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgium.
  • 1911: Photoplay, first movie fan magazine.
  • 1911: A Cincinnati broadcaster gets the first U.S. radio license.
  • 1911: Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka hailed in Paris premiere.
  • 1911: J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan flies through the air.
  • 1911: Charles Ives’ piano sonata Concord introduces wider public to atonal music.
  • 1911: Keystone Kops’ folly delights audiences, especially cop-fearing immigrants.
  • 1911: Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier is staged.
  • 1911: Ambrose Bierce’s cynical take on humanity, The Devil’s Dictionary.
  • 1911: Postal savings system inaugurated.
  • 1911: The Concise Oxford Dictionary is published.
  • 1911: Pablo Picasso’s cubist collages challenge traditional art.
  • 1911: The first of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries.
  • 1911: Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, tale of hardship, romance on New England farm.
  • 1911: Early movie star, Danish actress Asta Nielsen, crossed gender boundaries.
  • 1911: Marc Chagall paints I and the Village.
  • 1912: Germans develop single-exposure panoramic camera borne by a spy homing pigeon.
  • 1912: U.S. passes Radio Act to control radio broadcasts; licenses are easy to get.
  • 1912: Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious helps found analytical psychology.
  • 1912: Shaw’s updated fable, Androcles and the Lion, considers religious belief.
  • 1912: Riders of the Purple Sage starts Zane Grey’s series of Western potboiler novels.
  • 1912: Motorized movie cameras replace hand cranks.
  • 1912: Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, marked by symbolism, allegory.
  • 1912: The Speed Graphic camera is introduced. It will become newspaper standard.
  • 1912: Maurice Ravel’s ballet, Daphnis and Chloe.
  • 1912: Early Cubist artist Juan Gris, Homage to Picasso.
  • 1912: George Moore’s Ethics will influence many modern philosophers.
  • 1912: Nobel Prize in Literature: playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, Germany.
  • 1912: Howard Armstrong’s regeneration circuit boosts radio reception.
  • 1912: Universal Pictures Corporation is formed.
  • 1912: First mail carried by airplane.
  • 1912: Titanic sinking leads to U.S. government controls on radio transmission.
  • 1912: A chemist coins the term “vitamine.”
  • 1912: Queen Elizabeth, starring Sarah Bernhardt, is first feature-length movie.
  • 1912: University of Minnesota tries to broadcast football games by wireless telegraph.
  • 1912: Edison records music on cylinders with a diamond stylus for better acoustics.
  • 1913: Armstrong discovers that audion tube can transmit; De Forest didn’t know.
  • 1913: Hollywood become America’s movie production center.
  • 1913: Painter Georges Rouault, Three Judges.
  • 1913: Matisse coins the term “cubism.”
  • 1913: The rumba, based on African-Latin roots, bumps to the United States.
  • 1913: Indiana passes law to regulate cartoons.
  • 1913: Prentice-Hall book publishing firm is founded.
  • 1913: Movies get longer; Quo Vadis runs for nine reels, about two hours.
  • 1913: Non-European wins Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Rabindranath Tagore, India.
  • 1913: Tagore writes his best known work, Sadhana, echoing sacred Hindu ideas.
  • 1913: The portable phonograph is manufactured.
  • 1913: Radio sound is recorded on cylinders.
  • 1913: Gertie the Dinosaur, the first animated cartoon, requires 10,000 drawings.
  • 1913: D.H. Lawrence’s autobiographical Sons and Lovers dwells on physical love.
  • 1913: Billboard magazine publishes its first list of most popular songs.
  • 1913: For professional photographers, sheet film instead of glass plates.
  • 1913: Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps explores dissonant modern music.
  • 1913: George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion; it will one day lead to My Fair Lady.
  • 1913: In the New York World, the first crossword puzzle.
  • 1913: African oral tradition is preserved in a written poem, Epic of Liyongo Fumo.
  • 1913: Edison starts making disks; cylinder recordings are on the way out.
  • 1913: Records are even thinner (1/4-inch) with Bakelite.
  • 1913: AT&T pledges universal phone service, expands to rural areas.
  • 1914: 1,300 journals, 140 daily newspapers in U.S. targeted to ethnic populations.
  • 1914: World War I opponents make use of mass media for propaganda.
  • 1914: Radio message is sent to an airplane.
  • 1914: WCTU demands federal film censorship.
  • 1914: Wireless telegraph baseball game by innings: N.Y. Giants vs. Memphis Turtles.
  • 1914: In the U.S., Robert Goddard begins rocket experiments.
  • 1914: Amateur radio licenses in most countries are suspended when WW I breaks out.
  • 1914: From Hollywood, a full-length comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance.
  • 1914: Underground cables link Boston, New York, and Washington.
  • 1914: First transcontinental telephone call.
  • 1914: James Joyce’s short story collection, Dubliners.
  • 1914: ASCAP founded to protect music copyrights.
  • 1914: Charlie Chaplin creates cinema’s most enduring character, the little tramp.
  • 1914: Cliffhanging serials like “The Perils of Pauline” enthrall movie audiences.
  • 1914: Mack Sennett fills the screen with slapstick and skimpy costumes.
  • 1914: Grand cinema houses replace nickelodeons.
  • 1914: For the first time, no Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded.
  • 1914: Silk screening in San Francisco, based on earlier English invention.
  • 1914: From New York vaudeville, steps to ragtime music: the foxtrot.
  • 1914: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, potboiler novelist’s first success.
  • 1914: Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising.
  • 1915: Wireless radio service connects U.S. and Japan.
  • 1915: Edith Sitwell publishes book of poetry.
  • 1915: Comstock retires after burning “60 train cars” of books, photos, drawings.
  • 1915: Einstein adds the General Theory of Relativity.
  • 1915: The 78 rpm record.
  • 1915: Supreme Court denies First Amendment protection for movies.
  • 1915: Aerial photography improves for use in World War I.
  • 1915: Americans average 40 phone calls a year.
  • 1915: Long distance phone lines connect New York and California.
  • 1915: Radio-telephone carries voice from Virginia to the Eiffel Tower, Paris.
  • 1915: Nobel Prize in Literature: Romain Rolland, France.
  • 1915: Somerset Maugham’s partly autobiographical novel, Of Human Bondage.
  • 1915: The Birth of a Nation sets new standards for film art, but is racist; leads to riots.
  • 1915: ASCAP created to organize Tin Pan Alley.
  • 1915: Hollywood begins star system. Charlie Chaplin goes from $125 to $10,000 weekly.
  • 1915: Actress Audrey Munson starts a trend: she takes her clothes off on screen.
  • 1915: Edgar Lee Masters’ tombstone verse, The Spoon River Anthology.
  • 1915: Vacuum tube amplifiers aid coast-to-coast phone transmission.
  • 1915: Sonar.
  • 1916: From Spain, Vicente Ibanez’ antiwar novel, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
  • 1916: Cameras get optical rangefinders.
  • 1916: Britain introduces Daylight Saving Time.
  • 1916: The electric loudspeaker.
  • 1916: Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics helps found linguistics.
  • 1916: Charles Ives’ best known symphony, the Fourth.
  • 1916: The electric clock.
  • 1916: Purported date of David Sarnoff’s radio music box memo.
  • 1916: Norman Rockwell draws his first Saturday Evening Post cover.
  • 1916: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Carl von Heidenstam, Sweden.
  • 1916: James Joyce’s fictional autobiography, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
  • 1916: Radios get tuners.
  • 1916: God and the State by Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.
  • 1916: Béla Bártok’s ballet, The Wooden Prince.
  • 1916: De Forest broadcasts presidential election returns.
  • 1916: Research proceeds for a sound-on-film recording system.
  • 1917: Jazz is recorded by Dixieland Jazz Band, an all-white group.
  • 1917: Ottorino Respighi composes The Fountains of Rome.
  • 1917: U.S. Espionage Act dooms socialist magazine Masses.
  • 1917: Austrian painter Egon Schiele’s The Embrace.
  • 1917: Photocomposition begins.
  • 1917: Lenin’s State and Revolution tells how to put Marx’s theories into practice.
  • 1917: Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.
  • 1917: Jazz spreads across American cities.
  • 1917: Nobel Prize in Literature to two Danes: Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan.
  • 1917: Condenser microphone aids broadcasting, recording.
  • 1917: The American Association of Advertisers.
  • 1917: Albert Einstein identifies stimulated emission, theoretical basis for lasers.
  • 1917: A Chicago movie theater adds a new feature: air conditioning.
  • 1917: U.S. enters WW I; amateur radio transmitters shut down; Navy controls radio.
  • 1917: The Uncle Sam I Want You poster brings thousands of recruits to World War I.
  • 1917: Erik Satie’s ballet, Parade.
  • 1917: Trench Pen puts ink pellets inside fountain pen to aid writing by soldiers.
  • 1917: Police in Japan order cinemas to separate seats for men and women.
  • 1917: The American Association of Advertising Agencies
  • 1918: Dr. Marie Stopes’ Married Love discusses the hidden world of sex.
  • 1918: All U.S. states require education through elementary school.
  • 1918: Wireless radio widely used by armies, navies in war.
  • 1918: First regular airmail service: Washington, D.C. to New York.
  • 1918: Howard Armstrong’s superheterodyne circuit improves radio reception.
  • 1918: Nobel Prize in Literature: no award.
  • 1918: Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West.
  • 1918: Willa Cather, My Antonia, a view of the immigrant experience.
  • 1918: U.S. Army publishes a newspaper: Stars and Stripes.
  • 1918: A recording of war: a gas shell bombardment.
  • 1918: Multiplexing increases telephone transmission capacity.
  • 1918: Two million phonographs, 100 million records are sold annually.
  • 1918: Germans get first version of Enigma code machine.
  • 1918: Valdemar Poulsen’s wire recording patent expires; Germans improve on it.
  • 1918: Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, history, and biography are awarded.
  • 1918: In Russia, Communists send agit-prop trains to hinterlands with propaganda.
  • 1919: Shortwave radio is invented.
  • 1919: Sherwood Anderson’s novel, Winesburg, Ohio.
  • 1919: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet Carl Spitteler, Switzerland.
  • 1919: Flip-flop circuit invented; will help computers to count.
  • 1919: The Algonquin Round Table of writers, wits, holds its first luncheon.
  • 1919: The New York Daily News is published
  • 1919: Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, Reclining Nude.
  • 1919: Pulitzer Prizes are added for poetry, drama, and fiction.
  • 1919: Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, novel based on Paul Gaugin’s life.
  • 1919: AT&T places dial telephones in offices and homes; new switching systems.
  • 1919: Jazz establishes itself in a new home, Chicago.
  • 1919: Upton Sinclair’s The Brass Check pillories American journalism.
  • 1919: Americans spend more on records than on books, musical instruments.
  • 1919: Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed witnesses Russian Revolution.
  • 1919: With war’s end, amateur radio transmitters return, now with vacuum tubes.
  • 1919: In Pittsburg, Frank Conrad builds a radio station, later KDKA.
  • 1919: H.L. Mencken, The American Language.
  • 1919: Manuel de Falla’s ballet, The Three-Cornered Hat.
  • 1919: Radio Corporation of America, RCA, comes out of American Marconi Co.
  • 1919: Phonofilm, an optical sound-on-film process, is patented.