A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

Part 1 : 500 BC - 1899 AD   |   Part 2 : 1900 to the present day

- 500 :

Greek and Chinese philosophers describe the principles of optics.

- 330 :

Aristotle describes image projection in terms of the camera obscura. His concept involves a 'darkened box or chamber' with a small hole on one side through which light is admitted. An inverted image of the scene is projected onto an interior wall, where it can be viewed and traced by an artist.

- 65 :

Titus Lucretius Carus - (98 - 55 BC) 'De Rerum Natura' - Book 4 pp. 768 - First reference to persistence of vision

..."This (perception c.f. movement) is to be explained in the following way; that when the first image passes off, and a second is afterwards produced in another position, the former then seems to have changed its gesture"

also from another source...

Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman poet and philosopher, describes frame sequential animation almost two thousand years before the advent of motion pictures.

BC

AD

130 :

From Ptolemy's 'Optica' "...if a sector of a disk be coloured, the whole will appear of that colour when rapidly revolved and if the sector be variously coloured at different distances from the centre, the disk will appear ringed".

180 :

Inventor Ting Huan perfects a device, for projecting moving images. Similar inventions are reported in China as early as 207 B.C.

1030 :

Abu 'Ali Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haitham, or Al-Hazen, writes the text 'Optical Illusion' in which describes the 'Camera Obscura' and the 'Persistance of Vision' . Al-Hazen's theory is that light carries the reflection of an object to the eye, thus implying the eye's need to focus. These concepts significantly influence the work of Italian Rennaissance painter Brunelleschi, who applies them to his perspective painting.

1437 :

Architect Leon Battista Alberti demonstrates the art of perspective in drawings observed though a pinhole. Alberti is significantly influenced by the painter Brunelleschi, who is credited with the first paintings to manifest the concept of perspective. Alberti honors the artist by translating his perspective geometry into a Latin treatise on the subject that includes classical references, but is still simple enough for any painter or architect to understand.

1550 :

Geronimo Cardano makes the first camera lens.

1553 :

Gemma Frisius constructs a functional 'Camera Obscura'

1558 :

Giovanni Battista Della Porta, a physicist and philosopher in Naples publishes the book 'Natural Magic'.The first edition is in four volumes, the second - in 1589 - is in twenty. It will be reprinted more than twenty-seven times. The book discusses methods for exploiting the forces of nature to perform feats of 'magic'. The first edition describes the 'camera obscura'. Sections of the book deal with magnetism, optics and such topics of contemporary interest as demonology and astrology. Della Porta also publishes books on meteorology, optics, pneumatics, architecture, astronomy, astrology and mnemonics.

1575 :

An Englishman, Thomas Ruckert, devises an instrument which records compass bearings on a paper tape.

1600 :

Dr. William Gilbert publishes the first book on electrical phenomena and is the first person to use the words 'electricity', 'electric force' and 'electric attraction'

1604 :

The astronomer Johann Kepler publishes a work on the optical principles involved in the study of astronomy. He explains how the eye focuses light and demonstrates that as light travels from its source, its intensity falls at a rate of the distance squared.

1646 :

Athansius Kircher, a German Jesuit around this time draws plans for the first projector.

1649 :

Athansius Kircher, constructs his 'projector'and publishes 'Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae'

1659 :

Christiaan Huygens constructs a 'Magic Lantern'

1671 :

Athansius Kircher publishes a text on the principles of 'Persistence of Vision'

1675 :

On his way home from the Paris Observatory one night, French astronomer Jean Picard discovers that the more he shakes his mercury-filled barometer, the more it glows with an unexplainable light.

1678 :

Dutch natural philosopher Christiaan Huygens proposes his wave theory of light in "Traite de la lumiere." It is overshadowed by Newton's corpuscular theory, but will finally be recognized in the 19th century. It marks the beginning of physical optics. 1702 :

Francis Hauksbee, a pupil of Isaac Newton, describes an interesting phenomenon in his book 'Physico-Mechanical Experiments': air under low pressure glows during an electrical discharge.

1704 :

Newton's "Optics" is published, detailing his "corpuscular" theory of light. Newton believes light to be a particle phenomenon, and accounts for its occasional wave-like behavior by conceding that the particles may cause vibrations in the ether - a hypothetical substance which, it is assumed, pervades all space.

1706 :

Francis Hauksbee, a pupil of Newton's, is the first to reproduce the effect at will in a glass globe, inside of which a vacuum has been created. The glow is shown to be caused by the friction between the mercury and the glass. A year later, he introduces the Influence Machine, the first man-made device to produce static electricity at will. It will lead to the invention of the Leyden Jar.

1720 :

Louis Bertrand Castel invents a "clavecin oculaire" or optical harpsichord. The keys of the instrument move colored tapes over a light source, creating a light show to accompany the music.

1725 :

From 1725 to 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze experiments with the darkening action of light on mixtures of chalk and siver nitrate

1746 :

The age of electricity begins when the 'Leyden Jar' is simultaneously invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek of the University of Leyden in the Netherlands and Dean E.J. von Kleist of Cammin, Pomerania.

"A glass vial is filled partly with water and stopped with a cork that is pierced with a wire or nail that dips into the water. When the wire is brought into contact with a device that produces static electricity, the jar stores that electricity so it can be used in later experiments."

The Leyden jar is a prototype for the 'capacitor', one of the building blocks (the inductor and resistor being the other two principal components) of all electrical circuitry

1748 :

In Britain, William Watson describes watching rays of electricity in a tube. Watson is a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin. Together they originate the principle of conservation of charge: the total quantity of electricity in an insulated system is constant.

1752 :

Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity through a series of experiments culminating with the famous 'flying of a kite' during a thunderstorm. In theory (the actual experiment is more one of folk lore) the lightning is drawn to the steel-tipped kite and the electricity runs down the kite string to an iron key. The next two people to try this experiment are electrocuted. Following this experiment, Franklin mounts lightning rods on his own home and on two public buildings. The steel-pointed rods draw the lightning away from the buildings and discharge it into the ground. Although he does a great deal to popularize electricity, Franklin laments later that he has done nothing of direct use to mankind.

1760 :

Tiphaigne de la Roche predicts photography in 'Giphantie'

1765 :

Abbe Nollet wrote in his 'Lecons de Physique'..."When an object moves very rapidly before our eyes, we often attribute to it size and shape which it does not possess".

1770 :

John Cuthbertson, an English instrument maker living in Amsterdam, makes an electric battery out of 135 Leyden jars.

1774 :

The first telegraph was demonstrated in Geneva, Switzerland in 1774 by George Louis Lesage. He built a device composed of 24 wires separated from each other by insulators. At the end of the wire was a pith ball which was repelled when a current was initiated on that particular wire. Each wire stood for a different letter of the alphabet. When a particular pith ball moved, it represented a letter.

1775 :

Count Alessandro Volta, physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy at Pavia, Italy, invents the 'Electrophorus', a device that produces static electricity by friction.

1781 :

Painter and set designer Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg creates a device he calls the Eidophusikon. This uses moving pictures to represent natural phenomena. Loutherbourg, who is known for his collaboration with the actor and manager David Garrick, exhibits his invention in London.

1784 :

From the court at Versailles, Seraphin's famous 'Chinese Shadow Theatre' transferred to the Palais Royale and captivated Paris as a public attraction

1786 :

Gilles-Louis Chrétien develops the 'Physionotrace' for profile portraits

1788 :

An Irish painter, Robert Barker, paints a panorama, a 360° view of Edinburgh, around the wall of a circular building.

1788-91 :

Luigi Galvani develops a theory of 'animal electricity' or, as it comes to be called, 'Galvanic Electricity', after observing that a salinated dead frog lying on a zinc surface twitches when touched with a scalpel. These findings will lead to the invention of the 'Voltaic Pile', the world's first battery.

1792 :

Claude Chappe, a mechanic, and Abraham Louis Breguet, a watchmaker, was the first to construct a functioning optical telegraph machine with a T type moving arm. After successful demonstration of the machine, the Chappe Telegraph Line is established between Paris and Lille in 1794. In the wake of the French Revolution, the optical telegraph acquired great military importance.

1794 :

Robert Barker opens the first 'Panorama', a prototype of future movie houses

Volta finds elecricity is generated by different metals

1798 :

Belgian physicist Etienne Gaspard Robert professionally known as 'Robertson' develops the 'Fantasmagorie'

1800 :

Inspired by Luigi Galvani's discovery of animal electricity in 1786, Alessandro Volta, professor of natural philosophy at Pavia, discerns that Galvani induced a twitch in a frog's leg by using dissimilar metals in his experiment. Volta then groups sheets of zinc and copper in acid to produce a continuous flow of electricity. He calls it a 'continuous current pile', and the marketed version - the 'Voltaic Pile'

Sir William Herschel, a British astronomer (born in Germany), discovers the infrared region of the spectrum of light.

1801 :

Depillon, a former artillery officer in the French Army, develops a semaphore system for a signal machine with three or four arms. This system has a vocabulary of 301 signals. Depillon's machines are installed all along the French coastline to signal ships at sea.

Cambridge scientist Thomas Young formulates the wave theory of light.

1802 :

Thomas Wedgewood, following experiments of Schulze and Scheele, produces silhouettes by use of siver nitrate but is unable to fix the images

1807 :

Dr. William Hyde Wollaston, the London chemist and physicist, invents the 'Camera Lucida'. This is an optical device that projects the virtual image of an object onto a screen.

1808 :

Humfrey Davy produces the first electric arc light

1810 :

A complex telegraphic system, based on an electrochemical current, is designed by S.T. von Sommering at the Academy of Sciences in Munich. Commissioned by Margrave Leopold of Bavaria, an ally of Napoleon, the electrolytic telegraph is too slow and complicated to enjoy much success, and is soon supplanted by the more efficient electric telegraph.

1816 :

A French inventor, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, produces the first photograph through a process he calls heliography or sun drawing. Niepce's process uses an instrument like the camera obscura to record an image on paper coated with silver chloride. The image is only temporary, however. It will be another six years before Niepce is able to capture images permanently.

Joseph Henry proposes a single wire telegraph. Sir Francis Ronalds demonstrates such a device in 1816, in his garden at Hammersmith. Others do not share his vision, though, and his ideas, published in 1823, go largely ignored. In the words of the British Admiralty, to whom Ronalds has offered his invention, "Telegraphs of any kind are wholly unnecessary..."

Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham tests a semaphore telegraph, mounting the semaphores on ships in the English Channel. The trial run takes place sixteen years after the initial invention of the Popham system. It is a success, the Admiral receives £2000, and lines are thereafter established between Whitehall, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham and Dover.

1817 :

Swedish Baron Jons Berzelius isolates the element selenium and shows that its electric conductivity reacts to light.

1819-20 :

Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovers the link between electricity and magnetism during a lecture he gives at Kiel University. A wire from the galvanic battery he is using accidentally falls on a compass, whose needle is thus deflected from the Polar North position. Inadvertently, he gives the first demonstration of electromagnetic induction. His discovery will lead to William Sturgeon's development of the electromagnet.

Davy shows that electric current forms a magnetic sheath around the wire

Ampere formulates the right-hand rule

John Herschel discovers the photographic fixative, hyposulfite of soda

1821 :

A theater for the display of large panoramas is designed by showman and scene painter Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Known as the Diorama, its effects are enhanced by dramatic lighting. (In 1824 Daguerre will attempt to capture and preserve the images of the camera obscura, unaware that Nicephore Niepce has already accomplished this goal. In 1826, Daguerre will become aware of Niepce's work and begin corresponding with him. In 1829, after Daguerre overcomes Niepce's initial reluctance, they will become partners.)

Schweigger invents the galvanometer

1822 :

Seebeck discovers thermoelectricity

1823 :

In England, Sir Francis Ronalds builds a 'telegraph' in his garden; no one is interested.

1824 :

William Sturgeon creates a practical application for magnetism with the electromagnet. He discovers that by running an electric current through a coil of copper wire wrapped around a soft piece of iron, a magnetic field is produced. This discovery lays one of the cornerstones for Bell's invention of the telephone.

Physicist Andre-Marie Ampere demonstrates the galvanometer at the National Institute of Paris, a device that uses a freely moving needle to measure electric current. The unit of electricity known as the ampere or "amp," is named after him.

Peter Mark Roget discovers ability of retina to retain image for 1/20 - 1/5 of a second - demonstrates the persistence of vision with his 'Thaumatrope'

1825 :

André-Marie Ampère establishes mathematical basis for electrodynamics

An English doctor, John Ayrton Paris, invents the 'Thaumatrope', an optical parlor toy that exploits the phenomenon of persistence of vision. A small piece of cardboard with a different picture on either side is rotated quickly. As one image replaces the other, the eye combines the two pictures into one. Paris had based his idea on work by the astronomer Herschel and William Fritton.

Thaumatropes are also referred to as 'Magic Disks'

1826 :

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce uses Bitumen of Judea for photographs on metal

1827 :

Georg Ohm examines relationship of current voltage and resistance. Ohm's Law states that the strength of an unvarying electric current is directly proportional to the electromotive force E, and inversely proportional to the resistance R of the circuit concerned. The unit of resistance known as the 'ohm' is named after him.

The visionary English inventor Charles Wheatstone, increasingly intrigued by the transmission and amplification of sound and voice, designs a microphone. Wheatstone's work in acoustics will win him a professorship of experimental physics at King's College in London in 1934. It is here that he will conduct his groundbreaking experiments in electricity.

1829 :

Niépce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre form a 10 year partnership to develop photography

Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau invents a parlor toy, the 'Phenakistoscope'. A series of drawings showing successive stages of a continuous motion are displayed on a spinning disc. When the drawings are seen one at a time through a small opening, an illusion of motion is created.This is considered the first motion picture device.

1830 :

Joseph Henry discovers phenomenon of electrical self inductance. The unit of inductance known as the 'henry' is named after him

1830 :

Michael Faraday passes electricity through vacuum tube.

1831 :

The Englishman Michael Faraday and the American Joseph Henry independently discover the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction. In independent experiments, Faraday and Henry observe that an electric current is induced in a closed coil of wire when a magnet is passed through it.

Henry, a teacher of mathematics in Albany, New York, demonstrates his findings with a bell that rings when stimulated by an electrical impulse.

Faraday, the son of an English blacksmith and Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institute in London, discovers electromagnetic induction using an electromagnet. He is credited with building the first electrical transformer, and his findings lead directly to the development of electrical machinery for industry.

Faraday proposes a single wire telegraph based on this discovery. The work of both men will inspire Samuel Morse to develop the telegraphic receiver. Further, it will play a significant role in Bell's invention of the telephone.

In Paris, physicist Antoine Cesar Becquerel investigates electromagnetic balance.

1832 :

Charles Wheatstone invents a non-photographic 'stereoscopic viewing device' (This is also reported as far ahead as 1838 ?)

Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau invents a parlor toy - the Phenakistoscope. A series of drawings showing successive stages of a continuous motion are displayed on a spinning disc. When the drawings are seen one at a time through a small opening, an illusion of motion is created. This is considered the first motion picture device. It is marketed as the 'Phantascope' (also called in England the 'Fantascope') Plateau loses his eyesight by conducting too many experiments on his own retinae.

The Wheel of Life, or Daedalum, an optical toy, is introduced by W.H. Horner. Thirty years later, the device will be patented in the US by the Milton Bradley toy company.

Simon Von Stampfer invents the stroboscope, (a phenakistiscope in reverse) which casts regular flashes of light on moving objects - making their motions appear jerky and abrupt.

William Henry Fox Talbot begins experiments with photogenic drawings

On a visit to Berlin, Tsar Nicholas 1 saw a demonstration of the first telegraph system which did not need a wire for each letter. It was developed by a Russian diplomat, Baron Schilling, based on Oersted's electromagnetic ideas and German inventor Samuel Thomas von Sömmering's early experiments. Signals were sent along between one and six wires, causing movement in compass needles, suspended over coils, which indicated the letters.

Carl Friedrich Gauss, the mathematician, physicist and astronomer, constructs the first electric telegraph, assisted by physics professor Wilhelm Eduard Weber.

Scientist S.H. Christie invents an electrical bridge circuit for measuring the value of a resistance. Though created by Christie, the device is named for Sir Charles Wheatstone, who popularizes its use ten years later.

1834 :

William George Horner patents the 'Daedelum' - The wheel of the Devil. Later (around 1864) French inventor Pierre Desvignes refines the device and markets it under the name 'Zoetrope' - The Wheel of Life.

The device consists of a drum with equally spaced vertical slits (peepholes) down the side and a series of images on strip of paper (showing a figure or object in graduating stages of motion) laid flat against the inside surface below the line of slits. As the drum spins and the viewer looks through the slits at the strip of spinning images (faster than 12 images per second), the individual frames merge into one sequence and the figure or object appears to move.

This truly was the beginning of what we now call cinema - a series of sequential images presented to the eye at such a rate that the so called persistence of vision convinces us that the images are indeed one continuous motion. Equally the Zoetrope introduced the concept of 'scanning' or breaking down an image into small fragments to be re assembled either in the brain 'on site' or at a distant point by converting the segments into electrical signals which themselves can be reassembled to recreate the original scanned image.

In Scotland, James Bowman Lindsay, an inventor and scientist without formal education, uses galvanic cells to produce continuous electric light.

1836 :

A constant electrical current is achieved by John Frederick Daniell, a chemistry professor in London, when he introduces a non-polarizing battery: the Daniell Cell.

1837 :

Charles Wheatstone and William F. Cooke patent an electric telegraph in England on July 10

Together with William F. Cooke, Sir Charles Wheatstone, a physicist and inventor, patent an electric telegraph in England on July 10. Their telegraph, an improved version of the Schilling electric telegraph, (just) predates Samuel Morse's device. The first test of their system is conducted in a transmission spanning the 1.2 miles between Euston and Camden. When it is perfected, they will offer their telegraph to the British Railroad System.

Working with student Alfred Lewis Vail, whose father owns a small electromechanical factory, American painter Samuel F.B. Morse develops and patents (September 28) a working electric telegraph. Morse first conceives his system of electromagnetic communication while returning by ship from studying art in Europe. In the course of his journey, he is inspired by a conversation regarding the newly discovered electromagnet.

Electrical telegraphic systems have already been worked on by other inventors, most notably Sir Charles Wheatstone. It is Morse, however, who makes the significant addition of the electromagnet upon which his receiver is based.

Louis Daguerre invents 'Daguerreotype' cutting exposure time down to 20 minutes

1838 :

K.A. Steinheil of Munich shows that one of two wires used in overland telegraphy could be dispensed with by using an earth ground. He looked forward to a time that the second wire could also be eliminated, and 'wireless' telegraphy could be used.

Samuel F.B. Morse's telegraph is augmented in 1838 by a system of dots and dashes he devises, representing numbers and letters of the alphabet. Known as the Morse Code, this signalling strategy is used to communicate complete messages which can be listened to or read on a printed tape as they are transmitted across the telegraphic wire by electrical pulses of varied lengths. Visual signals, such as flashing lights, can also be used to transmit coded messages.

Physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone invents an optical viewing device, the stereoscope. With the aid of strategically placed mirrors, two slightly different pictures converge when seen through the apparatus, thereby giving a sense of depth to the image. In 1849, David Brewster will improve the stereoscope and the twin camera, enhancing the three dimensional realism when pictures are viewed.

1839 :

Antoine César Becquerel examines electrochemical effect of light.

The Daguerreotype is publicly announced at the Academy of Sciences in Paris and given to the world

Hippolyte Bayard produces direct-positive images on sensitized paper

1840 :

Alexander Walcott issued first American patent in photography for his camera

The Austrian optician Joseph Petzval introduces the f 3.6 Petzval photographic lens. Designed to diffuse 16 times more light than the field lens, it is perfectly suited for portrait photography.

1841 :

William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Calotype process

1842 :

Alexander Bain proposes facsimile telegraph transmission that scans metal letters and reproduces image by contact with chemical paper. Synchronized scanning is part of proposed transmission system.

Samuel Morse, artist and pioneer of the electric telegraph in America, directs the construction of an underwater telegraphic cable that is laid between the Battery and Governor's Island in New York.

1843 :

Alexander Bain, patents his 'pantelegraph', an electrical method for transmitting images over a distance. This facsimile system can be said to be a primitive forerunner of television. In Bain's system of two synchronous pendulums with styluses attached, the movement of one stylus is communicated to the other, using nonconducting ink on conductive paper on the one end, and sensitive paper on the other. Although the system looks good on paper, it proves to be somewhat unreliable, since the pendulums are not truly synchronized as they should be. Others improve on Bain's invention in the years to come.

Charles Wheatstone devises the rheotstat, a variable resistor designed to regulate electrical current. He uses it in experiments with the Wheatstone Bridge, an electrical circuit invented by S.H. Christie to measure the value of a resistance. It is named for Wheatstone though, as he is the first to put it to extensive and significant use.

1844 :

It has taken Samuel Morse several years of perseverance to talk Congress out of the $30,000 needed for the experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. The decision is made with a narrow margin, and the line is completed. Morse's dot and dash code makes the single wire telegraph practical. Public usage is inaugurated on the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line in 1844 when Morse transmits the first message, "What hath God wrought!" through coded interruptions of an electric current. The dots and dashes can be heard or recorded on paper tape. The telegraph spawns signals communication, and the analysis thereof, called "signals intelligence" (SIGINT).

Arc lights are used in the Paris Opera House

1846 :

The Electric Telegraph Company is established by William Fothergill Cooke who, with Sir Charles Wheatstone, devised an electric telegraph nine years ago. Within a year, two networks will have been established: one in the north, linking major cities from Edinburgh to Birmingham, the other in the south, linking London, Dover and Southhampton. In a six year period after its founding, the company will lay 4000 miles of telegraph wire.

J.E. Fuller combines his personally designed time telegraph with the Fuller circular slide rule to create a computing telegraph.

1847 :

Frederick Bakewell improves on Bain's idea by using tin-foil covered revolving drums (for transmitting and receiving recorded pictures)

1848 :

Claude Felix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor uses albumen on glass plates for negatives

A Hampstead engineer named Francis Whishaw creates a "speaking telegraph." The device, known as the telekouphonon, serves as a sort of intercom for long-distance communications in dockyards or large firms. The telekouphonon's cable is made of gutta-percha, caoutchouc, glass or earthenware, and connects with an ivory, bone, wood or metal mouthpiece.

The telegraph now links New York and Chicago.

1849 :

The Continental Telegraphen Compagnie of Berlin, also known as the Wolff Agency, is the first telegraph news service. Like the Agence Havas of Paris, founded in 1835, and the Reuter Telegram Company of London - Reuters - founded in 1851, the Wolff Agency begins as a service providing financial information to bankers but soon offers world news to newspapers and other periodicals. Engineer Antonio Meucci develops and tests an experimental telephone while working in Havana.

1850 :

Albumen printing paper introduced by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard

Fizeau measures the velocity of electricity

Slides are introduced to photography by Frederick Langenheim in Philadelphia.

The brothers W. and F. Langenheim of Philadelphia produce the first photographic lantern slides, used to project narrative sequences. These were the immediate forerunners of narrative films

1851 :

Frederick Scott Archer publishes wet-collodion process

William Henry Fox Talbot makes first instantaneous photographs using electric spark illumination

Morse Code is adopted and modified by a special conference of European nations to produce a simpler and more precise system. Known as International Morse Code or Continental Code, it replaces spaced letters with unspaced letters. Moreover, the Continental Code uses dashes of uniform length, as opposed to the original Morse system which used three different lengths. International Morse code is still used today for ship-to-shore communications and amateur radio.

Louis Jules Duboscq designs a stereoscopic still camera, based on the concepts developed two years earlier by Sir David Brewster in England. The camera produces right and left monocular photographs that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope.

1852 :

The theory of fluorescence is developed and introduced by George Gabriel Stokes, a professor of physics and mathematics and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

William Henry Fox Talbot patents a prototype of photo-engraphing

In 1852, there are 6500 km of telegraph wire strung in England. By 1862, the number is up to 24,000 km.

1853 :

Duplex telegraphy is explored by Dr. Wilhelm Julius Gintl, allowing simultaneous transmission of signals in opposite directions. Moses Gerrish Farmer of Massachusetts pioneers multiplex telegraphy, a system which increases the capacity of a telegraph line, allowing up to six operators to share it. The system is perfected by Emile Baudot in 1874.

1854 :

The telegraph is used in Crimean War

French engineer Charles Bourseul, an expert in telegraphy, experiments with ideas for a kind of telephone.

A telegraph that prints letters of the alphabet is suggested by the designs of David Edward Hughes, an English music professor living in Kentucky.

1856 :

Celluloid is synthesized by British chemist Alexander Parkes, under the name "parkesine." Parks will form The Parkesine Company, Ltd. ten years later, but it will last only two years. The synthetic plastic material he creates as a prototype for celluloid will be developed as a commercial product by John Wesley Hyatt in 1869.

1857 :

Painter Leon Scott de Martinville designs the phonautograph, a precursor of the phonograph. His device makes permanent visual records of sound waves, which can then be analyzed. Alexander Graham Bell observes the phonautograph at the Massachussets Institute of Technology in 1874.

Kirchhoff relates static and current electricity by the constant velocity 'c'

German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz notices that he can make the strings in his piano vibrate when he sings into it. He then causes a tuning fork to vibrate and produce sound by switching an electromagnet on and off. This principle is the basis of the audio speaker, and sets one of the cornerstones of the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

1858 :

Heinrich Geissler, a German glass blower and maker of scientific instruments creates the Geissler tube. A vacuum is created in a glass container sealed with electrodes at either end. Electrons moving through the tube are visible as patterns of light, varying according to the shape of the tube or the type of gas introduced into the vacuum. This invention will lead to the discovery of cathode rays, a basic principle of video technology.

The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable is laid

Photographer Thomas Skaife builds the Pistolgraph, a novelty snapshot camera that almost gets him arrested when he aims it at Queen Victoria.

1859 :

Establishing an important principle for the future of electronics, the German mathematician and physicist Julius Plucker discovers that cathode rays (electrons) are deflected by a magnetic field.

Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, a member of the noted family of French physicists, uses a Geissler discharge tube filled with fluorescent material to create the first primitive fluorescent lamp.

Thomas Sutton, an editor of the English publication "Photographic Notes," is the first to develop a panoramic liquid lens, more commonly known as the wide angle photographic lens.

Thomas Du Mont patents his 'camera zootropica', capable of reproducing the phases of movement in 12 successive images

Johann Wilhelm Ritter's discovery of the secondary cell, almost 60 years earlier, forms the foundation for the Frenchman Gaston Plante's invention of the first electric storage cell: the lead-acid storage battery.

1861 :

James Clerk Maxwell's 'On the Theory of the Three Primary Colours'

Oliver Wendell Holmes invents the popular 'stereoscope viewer'

American inventor Coleman Sellers patents the 'Kinematoscope': posed photographs mounted on a turning paddlewheel. In picture parlors, the Kinematoscope crudely projected the photographs for the audience by flashing them rapidly on a screen.

Developed by Philadelphia Coleman Sellers, this antecedent of the cinema consisted of a series of stereoscopic pictures printed on glass plates which were strung together by chain mounted in a box. The spectator turned a crank and saw moving images.

also...

The Kinematoscope, a device that takes stereoscopic photographs, is invented in Philadelphia by Coleman Sellers. Like David Brewster's double camera, the device simultaneously takes two pictures of the same subject, but at slightly different perspectives. This gives the resulting photographs a suggestion of depth and dimension when they are observed through a special viewing device.

NB: The above "kinematoscopes" is obviously incorrectly named as the descriptions of operation seems to represent a distinctly different device to the two above - to be researched.

Western Union completes construction of a transcontinental telegraph line. This line, which links New York and San Francisco, has been completed despite interference by hostile Indians and Confederate guerrillas.

German schoolteacher Johann Philipp Reis (1834-74) suceeds in transmitting speech and music electrically down a wire using a device he called das Telephon - the 'telephone.' These come in various shapes and sizes; one resembles a large wooden ear. Reis' devices are fragile and clumsy laboratory models, never put to public use, and are sold only to research labs or other experimenters.

1862 :

In 1852, there are 6500 km of telegraph wire strung in England. By 1862, the number is up to 24,000 km. Signalling distances have been improved with the introduction of an electromagnetic receiver that supplements the line current with the use of local battery power, thereby "lengthening" the line. Italian physicist, Abbe Giovanni Caselli, is the first to send fixed images over a long distance, using a (wired) system he calls the 'pantelegraph'.

Maxwell, "On Physical Lines of Force"

1863 :

Using the work of civil engineer Henry Dircks as a foundation, analytical chemist John Henry Pepper creates a machine that uses mirrors and lenses to project a ghostly image. 'Pepper's Ghost' is demonstrated at London's Royal Polytechnic Institute. 1864 :

James C. Maxwell developed Maxwell's Equations which were an extension and mathematical formulation of Faraday's theories of electricity and magnetic lines of force.

In Virginia, USA, wireless electromagnetic waves are transmitted 14 miles

Joseph Wilson Swan perfects the carbon process

Around this time French inventor Pierre Desvignes refines William George Horner's 'Daedelum' and markets it under the name 'Zoetrope' - The Wheel of Life. Toy magnate Milton Bradley packages a study drum, rotation device and supply of animations sold for $2.50

1865 :

An unsuccessful attempt was made to join Europe and the U.S. by cable but 1866 saw success. See Bern Dibner: http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/hst/atlantic-cable/sil4-00473.htm

thanks to Bill Burns of Long Island for this correction [8/02]

1866 :

the 'Woodburytype' process is patented

American dentist Mahlon Loomis (1826-1886) uses radio waves to send telegraph messages between two mountains in West Virginia - a distance of 22.5km - using aerials held in the air by kites.

Western Union Telegraph acquires two other telegraph companies and becomes the first great industrial monopoly in the US.

French physicist Antoine Becquerel develops the first fluorescent lamp. It uses a mercury arc and a fluorescent phosphor coating to provide an extremely efficient light source.

1867 :

Becquerel is the grandfather of Henri Becquerel, the discoverer of radioactivity.

Professor Charles Wheatstone, a key contributor to the development of the English telegraph, creates the first automatic printing telegraph system. Messages are typed on an instrument like a typewriter, and automatically coded and transmitted as a series of pulses.

Siemens invents the modern dynamo

1868 :

Amos Dolbear while a professor at Bethany College invented the 'electrostatic telephone'. Dolbear also work on converting sound waves into electrical impulses.

The forerunner of today's dry cell battery is developed by French chemist Georges Leclanche. The cell is assembled inside a glass jar and generates about 1.5 volts.

1869 :

Louis Ducos du Hauron's 'Colors in Photography' describes the principles of color photography using the subtractive method

also..

Basing independent experiments on Young and Helmholtz' theories of color separation and mixing, France's Charles Cros and Louis Ducos du Hauron both develop a subtractive method of color photography. Three different color positives representing cyan, magenta and blue respectively are superimposed on one another to create the final picture. These colors are described as subtractive primaries because they each represent the remaining color after one primary color has been subtracted from white light. Communications entrepeneur Cyrus Field completes construction of a telegraph cable connecting the US to continental Europe for the first time. The cable runs from France to Duxbury, Massachusetts.

1871 :

Richard Leach Maddox invents the 'gelatin dry plate silver bromide' process

1872 :

John W. Hyatt begins manufacturing 'celluloid'

Eadweard Muybridge started his photographic compilation of animals in motion

Léon Vidal combines chromolithography with Woodburytype printing

Mahlon Loomis is granted the world's first wireless patent, for an 'Improvement in Telegraphy' on 20th July 1872.

Anson Stager, Enos Barton and Elisha Gray found the Western Electric Company. Their main business is selling telegraph equipment, but Gray is experimenting with the electrical transmission of actual sound - the telephone.

Australia completes its first telegraph network; soon it will be linked to to Indonesia, India and Europe.

1873 :

Maxwell publishes a text on electricity, magnetism and theory of radio waves

Two English telegraph engineers, Joseph May and Willoughby Smith, note that the electrical conductivity of the element selenium changes when light falls on it. This property, called photoconductivity, will give inventors a way of transforming images into electrical signals.

May uses selenium to send a signal through the Atlantic cable

Hermann Wilhelm Vogel increases the spectral sensitivity of photographic emulsions by adding dyes

First color photographs

A daguerreotype disk is devised at the Astrophysical Observatory at Meudon, France by Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen, to photograph the movement of the stars.

1874 :

Karl Ferdinand Braun discovers unilateral conduction (rectification)

George Johnstone Stoney of Ireland hypothesizes the existence of electrons in 1874. He actually applies the term 'electron' in 1891.

The Logograph, built by W.H. Barlow, creates a graphic representation of the sound vibrations produced by speech.

Quadruplex telegraphy, introduced by Thomas Alva Edison, allows the transmission of two messages simultaneously in both directions, producing a total of four messages being transmitted at the same time.

1875 :

George Carey builds a rudimentary facimile system using dozens of tiny light-sensitive selenium cells.

Charles Coulomb demonstrates the manner in which electric charges repel each other.

1876 :

Alexander Graham Bell invents the "telephone"

The radiometer, an instrument used to detect the effect of light radiation, is invented by Sir William Crookes.

George Johnstone Stoney of Ireland hypothesizes the existence of electrons in 1874. He actually applies the term "electron" in 1891.

The first Teletypewriter is used on Telegraph lines.

1877 :

Working independently, E.W. Siemens in Germany and the team of Cuttris and Redding in the U.S. develop the dynamic microphone. In this device, the diaphragm is attached to a light coil that generates voltage through electromagnetic induction as it moves back and forth between the poles of a permanent magnet

Alexander Graham Bell and his father-in-law, Gardiner Hubbard, found the Bell Telephone Association. Western Union establishes the American Speaking-Telephone Co. to compete with them, but the Bell company is already leasing telephones at the rate of 1000 a month. The first telephone switchboard is installed at the office of a burglar alarm company in Boston. Local telephone exchanges go into business in New England, Iowa, and the Great Lakes region. Emile Berliner, a German-American inventor, develops a loose-contact telephone transmitter superior to Bell's. The following year, Bell buys the rights to the invention. By that time, Berliner is patenting an induction coil for use as a transmitter.

The 'radiometer', an instrument used to detect the effect of light radiation, is invented by William Crookes.

English-American photographer Eadweard Muybridge used a battery of 24 cameras to record the cycle of motion of a running horse for Leland Stanford.

Chemist and railway engineer Georges Leclanche introduces the solid depolarizer battery, after ten years of development. Although it is not portable, it is popularly used to power telephones and doorbells for many years. Today's dry cell battery is derived directly from Leclanche's model.

1878 :

Sir William Crookes develops the 'cathode ray' tube that confirms the existence of cathode rays.

Maurice Senlacq proposes the use of selenium in facsimile machines to transmit paper documents.

Eadweard Muybridge publishes 'The Horse in motion' He goes on to invent the 'Zoogyroscope' (projector) which in turn became the 'Zoopraxograph' and then the Zoopraxiscope, a sensation at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

In France, Emile Reynaud invents the the 'Praxinoscope', an optical toy and the first practical device for projecting successive images on a screen

1879 :

In Ireland, Denis Redmond builds (possibly in 1879) his 'Electric Telescope' transmitting an image electrically. Argueably the first 'television' system

American, George Carey transmits pictures over wire bundles

Carlo Peresino suggests the concept of television 'scanning'. This is the practice of breaking down an image into picture elements which are then reassembled on the screen of the television receiver.

In the 1880s the idea is seconded by W. E. Sawyer and Maurice Leblanc.

Following his photographic series of a horse in motion, commissioned by Leland Stanford to settle a bet, English photographer Eadweard (that's the way he spells it!) Muybridge develops the zoopraxiscope. The device reconstructs motion from series of photographs on a revolving transparent glass disc, and foreshadows the onset of motion pictures.

American engineer Leroy B. Firman invents the multiple switchboard, capable of handling more than the fifty telephone lines previous switchboards were limited to. The subsequent improvement in service will help to quadruple the number of telephones in service in the US in the next ten years. In 1884 the Western Electric Company will introduce the multiple switchboard to England.

On October 21, 1879, inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates the carbon filament light bulb, making good his bold promise to solve the problem of the incandescence that had been plaguing scientists for 50 years. The lamp glows for 40 hours, powered by a special high-voltage dynamo. The key to Edison's success is the filament material that is housed inside the vacuum bulb: carbonized cotton thread, which demonstrates a greater resistance than platinum wire, the material used formerly. Edison constructs a parallel circuit of 30 lamps, supplied with current from a special high-voltage dynamo. Each of the lamps operates independently from the others, so that one can be turned down without effecting the operation of the rest. Within three years, the Pearl Street central power station in downtown New York City is constructed, the first of many such large-scale operations that light the cities of the world. The Pearl Street plant is equipped with steam-driven generators of 900 hp, which can provide enough power for 7,200 lamps.

1880 :

Maurice Leblanc suggests 'photoelectric scanning' or transmitting a picture in segments also offers the first proposal for color television.

An early scanning device was developed by George Carey. The image was scanned by a selenium cell which travelled across the image in a spiral path. The signal currents were transmitted through a single line wire. The system lacked any synchronisation between scanning transmission and reception.

Denis Redmond publishes the first book about television, 'La Telescopie Electrique' (The Electric Telescope).

Piped-in music, transmitted by a device known as the electrophone, telharmonium or dynamophone, is introduced by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill. The system allows subscribers to dial in to a central switchboard in order to receive transmissions of musical and theatrical performances from concert halls and theaters.

A mirror-optical telephone that transmits speech by light rays, called the photophone, is designed by Alexander Graham Bell and Sumner Tainter. A forerunner of today's fiber optic communications, Bell considers the lightwave system for sending sound to be his greatest invention, although it has no practical application at the time.

1881 :

The 'Scanning Phototelegraph' is invented by physicist Shelford Bidwell. The process uses electricity and selenium to transmit the image of a chart, map or photograph over a distance, producing a wirephoto. The telautograph, an electrical device used to transmit handwriting and line drawing, is invented by Elisha Gray.

French inventor Clément Ader builds an ultra-sensitive microphone and, with it, discovers the stereo effect. He uses twelve of these microphones to transmit the sounds of the Paris Opera, via lines laid through the Paris sewers, to the Exhibition Hall at the Palais de l'Industrie. Up to 48 listeners can hear the opera using two receivers each, one for each ear. * Ader called his system the 'Theatrephone'. This is the first public broadcast entertainment.

Feedback:

Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 18:15:05 +0100
From: Eole
Reply-To: ogechter@club-internet.fr
To: russelln@netspace.net.au
Subject: Clement Ader's phone.

Hello,

I'm the author of the Clement Ader's homepage.

Ader discovered the stereo effect with his theatrophone and not with his microphone.

If you want more information and pictures on Ader's phone visit my site: http://village.cyberbrain.com/musee/Eole/autresin.htm and for the Théatrophone: http://www.telemuseum.se/historia/teatrophon/theatro2.html

Amicalement
Olivier

Russell Naughton answers: Yes, Ader's system was indeed called the Theatrephone as I have added now * (March 98). The original data was taken from the excellent Arthur C. Clark site. The discovery of the stated 'stereo effect' was however due to Ader's use of more than one microphone and the subsequent delivery of a number of phase different signals to the listeners ears. In reality, the overall sound would have, without implementation (or knowlege?) of the correct phase relationship required by the use of multiple microphones, been quite 'muddy' but none the less acoustically 'diffuse' and somewhat 'stereophonic' in nature.

Constantin Senlecq, a French lawyer, invents the teletroscope.

1882 :

Professor Amos E. Dolbear communicates over a distance of a quarter of a mile without wires.

Striving to capture the minute details of motion, Dr. Jules Etienne Marey, a French physiologist, develops the fusil photographique, or photographic pistol. It can take 12 consecutive pictures per second.

Edison's Pearl Street station begins operation in New York

The induction coil system or "secondary generator" is developed by Lucien Gaulard in France, and John Gibbs in the UK.

1883 :

Thomas Edison accidentally discovers what comes to be known as the "Edison Effect." This phenomenon defies immediate explanation by the inventor as well as his contemporaries. While experimenting with the incandescent bulb, Edison notes a curious flow of electrical current from the hot filament across the vacuum to the metal wire. The light that is produced by heating is later shown to be the result of thermionic emission of electrons from the hot electrode to the cold. The variability makes the transmission of complex waveforms possible. Telegraphy is a binary (on and off) code, whereas sound transmission demands continuous and varying information. Mechanically, the effect is accomplished in a tube evacuated to such an extent that its electrical characteristics are essentially unaffected by the presence of residual gas or vapor. The Edison Effect will become the basis of the electron tube, and the foundation of the electronics industry in the 20th century.

Fitzgerald predicts the existence of electromagnetic waves

1884 :

German scientist Paul Gottlieb Nipkow patented a device for scene analyzation that consisted of a rapidly rotating disk placed between a scene and a light sensitive selenium element. It became known as the Nipkow disk. Although a mechanical design, it was the first system, to propose the principle of scanning a moving image. It is believed a working model was never built by Nipkow himself. It would take the development of the amplification tube before the Nipkow Disc would become practical.

also...

Paul Nipkow of Germany patents his electric telescope, an instrument that divides images into lines. This is the first practical application of the principle of image scanning. This, however, is mechanical television, relying on optical principles. A spirally perforated disc is rotated in front of the image to be analyzed, thus progressively revealing the image to the sensor.

A synchronous multiplex telegraph system is designed by Patrick Delany, allowing several operators to use the same telegraph line at once, instead of sharing it on a cyclic basis.

Etienne Jules Marey develops the 'Chronophotographe' and in the coming decade, in collaboration with Georges Demeny, perfected techniques for both the analysis and synthesis of movement.

Gulielmo Marconi first experiments with Hertzian Waves.

A practical design for a commercial transformer is produced by Max Deri, Otto Blathy and Karl Zipernowsky.

1885 :

J. J. Thompson uses magnetism to deflect Crookes' 'cathode rays'.

1886 :

Eugene Goldstein, a German physicist, identifies canal rays in the electric charge carriers inside the discharge tube. The canal rays are composed of different, positively charged ions in the gases formed by the discharge.

The electric light bulb or "bayonet cap" is marketed in the UK by the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Co. The firm represents the combined forces of Thomas Alva Edison, the American inventor, and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, the pioneering English chemist and physicist who made an incandescent lamp using a carbon filament 20 years before Edison's lamp.

The chemical element germanium is discovered by German chemist Clemens Alexander Winkler. He isolates the silver-grey metal from the mineral argyrodite, which is a mixed sulfide of silver and germanium. The existence of germanium, named after Winkler's homeland, was predicted in 1871 in the Russian chemist Mendeleyev's periodic table, hypothetically named "ekasilicon." It will be used extensively in the manufacture of semiconductor materials and devices.

At the Volta Laboratory in Washington, DC, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter develop the graphophone, a variant of Edison's phonograph. They substitute wax for tinfoil as a covering for the cylinder, and use a sapphire stylus.

1887 :

Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, a 30 year-old German mathematician and physics professor at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic, produces and studies what we now call radio waves. Hertz links a spark gap, fed from a high voltage generator, to a sort of antenna. Some distance away, similar antennae pick up something, but nobody knows quite what for years to come. He further demonstrates that the velocity of these electromagnetic waves (also known as Hertzian waves) is equal to that of light. Named in honor of his work, the "hertz" (Hz) is the unit of frequency, equal to one cycle per second.

Thomas Edison starts research work into motion pictures.

An American Episcopalian minister Hannibal Williston Goodwin (1822-1900) invents the use of celluloid as an emulsion base, an essential step in the development of cinematography. He became interested in photography through the magic lantern entertainments he gave for his congregation.

The number of telephones in service in the US reaches 200,000. Boston has over 5000 phones, Hartford and New Haven each have more than 1000.

Oberlin Smith imagines the tape recorder.

1888 :

German physicist Wilhelm Hallwachs noted that certain substances emit electrons when exposed to light. Hallwachs demonstrated the possibility of using photoelectric cells in cameras. This property called photoemission was applied in the creation of image orthicon tubes allowing the creation of the electronic television camera.

Tired of the unwieldy glass plate system normally used in his work, photographer John Carbutt commissions a celluloid manufacturer to provide him with thin sheets, coated with emulsion, that will roll through a camera. This same year, George Eastman will market a paper photographic film in rolls.

Up to this point, photography has been the exclusive domain of professionals. With the introduction of the flexible roll film camera by a dry plate manufacturer named George Eastman, it is now made available to anyone who can press a button. The inexpensive, fixed-focus Kodak camera uses roll film with a paper base, coated with a photosensitive emulsion. One roll of film has the capacity for 100 circular pictures with a 2 1/4in diameter. The Kodak, which establishes Eastman's hold on the photographic products market, is made famous with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest."

W. K. Laurie Dickson (working for Edison) starts to develop Kinetograph camera.

Louis Le Prince's camera initially uses paper roll film but changes to the new Eastman celluloid film in 1899. Le Prince, his films and equipment disappeared without a trace in September 1890.

A commercial model of the phonograph, first devised by Thomas Edison almost ten years earlier, is built in his Menlo Park laboratory. It is equipped with a clockwork motor and wax cylinders.

1889 :

Lazare Weiller scans with mirrors on a revolving drum.

At the Eastman Kodak factory, Henry Reichenbach using a nitro-cellulose base creates celluloid roll film, an improvement on Eastman's earlier emulsion-coated paper variety.

Thomas Edison and his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, patent and market an electric peephole viewing machine called the Kinetoscope. It uses 158 glass plates, later to be replaced by Eastman and Goodwin's roll film which projected a 50ft length of film in approximately 13 seconds. Having little faith in the Kinetoscope or motion pictures in general, Edison neglects extending his patent rights to England and Europe. Within the next five years, two Frenchmen will manufacture the portable Cinematographe projector based on Edison's ideas, initiating the era of motion pictures.

A coin-operated telephone for public use is designed by William Gray, and the prototype is installed at the Hartford Bank. Soon the Gray Telephone Pay Station Co. is established to rent the devices to merchants and businesses.

Thomas Edison and his assistant William Kennedy Dickson develop the Edison camera or Kinetograph, using the phonograph as a foundation for the device. Dickson abandons the wax cylinders for celluloid film, a far superior medium for motion pictures, and between 1891 and 1895, shoots the first films. Each averaging about 15 seconds, these films are designed be shown on the Kinetoscope. Edison's disinterest in the Kinetograph and its European patent rights opens up the field for the Lumiere brothers, who develop the Cinematographe in 1895.

1890 :

Michael Pupin studies low pressure vacuum-tube discharges, and invents an electrical resonator. At his death in 1935 he held 34 patents, most used in telephony and telegraphy.

Charles Driffield and Ferdinand Hurter publish their work on emulsion sensitivity and exposure measurement

The Kinematograph camera and projector are publicly demonstrated in London. Invented by William Friese-Green, a Bristol born photographer and self-taught scientist, the camera is able to take pictures on modified celluloid film at 50 fps (frames per second) by means of parallel sprocket holes. Friese-Green's invention is unreliable and does not meet with great success.

The High Frequency Generator is invented by Elihu Thomson, a US engineer and inventor, with Edward James Houston.

Edouard Branly, Physics Professor at the Catholic University of Paris, invents the radio conductor coherer.

1891 :

Thomas Edison patents 'Kinetograph' camera and 'Kinetoscope' viewer. The Kinetoscope is not a projector. The coin-operated machines were introduced in public parlors in New York City in 1894 and appeared in London, Berlin, and Paris before the end of the year.

Suspecting that his competitor's wife - an operator at the local telephone exchange - is redirecting business calls to her husband's company, Kansas City undertaker Almon Brown Strowger creates the automatic telephone switchboard. He patents what he calls a "girl-less, cuss-less, out-of-order-less, wait-less" telephone system, which is activated when a caller selects a number by pressing a combination of three buttons. Also in 1891, Strowger patents a dial telephone and founds the Automatic Electric Co. to promote his invention. The first automatic system will be put into commercial use in La Porte, Indiana the following year. The Strowger system can link up to 99 subscribers, and is later licensed to ATT. In 1919, the Bell Telephone System will adopt the automatic switchboard and the dial phone.

In the same year he is granted his US citizenship, inventor Nikola Tesla constructs what is known as the Tesla coil. This air-core transformer converts low voltage high current to high voltage low current at high frequencies; it is soon considered essential equipment in research laboratories across the country, to supplement the weak oscillations of the Hertz circuit.

1892 :

Frederick Ives invents first complete system for natural color photography.

Telephone service between New York and Chicago commences.

1893 :

The 'photoelectric cell' is invented by German physicists Julius Elster and Hans F. Geitel. Also called the 'photocell' or 'electric eye', the photoelectric cell varies its electric output in relation to the light it receives.

Thomas Edison patents Dickson's 'Kinetoscope' under his own name.

The Kinetographic Theater, a film studio, is designed by W.K.L. Dickson, an associate of Thomas Edison, at Menlo Park, New Jersey. The entire studio revolves on a pivot to follow the sunlight. It is nicknamed 'The Black Maria'

Edweard Muybridge projects many of his sequences of human beings in motion at the Chicago fair, in a specially constructed building of classical design, the Zoopraxographical Hall, a forerunner of the Cinema theatre

Electricity wizard Nikola Tesla has applied for and received over 40 US patents on the AC electrical system, which will form the basis of electrical power distribution systems throughout the world. The competition between the Westinghouse - Tesla alliance and Thomas Edison is fierce. Edison has ignored Tesla's discoveries in favor of his own direct current electrical system, but the DC method ultimately fails because it is unable to distribute power efficiently for more than a few miles. Unwilling to accept his competitors' success, Edison wages a venomous smear campaign which includes the electrocution of small animals with AC power, to demonstrate its potential danger to the public. Despite such efforts, the inventor fails to turn the tide of progress. In 1893, Edison loses the competition to supply the Niagara Falls with hydroelectric power generation facilities. Westinghouse and Tesla win the contract, and the 15,000 hp two-phase facility is up and running by 1895.

1894 :

Guglielmo Marconi, a 20-year-old physicist in Bologna, Italy, begins his experiments with radio telegraphy. He successfully sends telegraph signals over a distance of 1.5 miles (2.4 km), marking the first successful wireless transmission. By 1895 Marconi has developed a practical working version of his system. He offers it to the Italian government, but their lack of interest sends him to England. Meanwhile, in Russia, the physicist and electrical engineer Alexander Popov builds an aerial for registering atmospheric electricity and proposes the use of such a device for receiving telegraph signals. Unaware of Marconi's work, he demonstrates such a transmission for an audience of scientists at St. Petersburg in March,1896. Marconi receives a patent for a wireless system in England in June of that year.

US inventor Charles Francis Jenkins patents the phantascope, one of the first practical motion picture projection machines.

Michael Idvorsky Pupin, a Hungarian physicist and former student of Hermann von Helmholtz, is now living in the United States, where he makes innovations in multiplex telegraphy

1895 :

The young physicist Ernest Rutherford, newly arrived at Cambridge from New Zealand, employs magnetism to detect Hertzian waves over a distance of two miles. Only twenty-four, Rutherford delivers a lecture on this research before the Cambridge Physical Society. The lecture is published by the Royal Society of London.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays

Louis and Auguste Lumière issued a patent for a device called a cinematograph capable of projecting moving pictures and on Dec 28, 1895, the brothers show the first motion pictures at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard Des Capucines.

In the US, Enoch Rector invents a device to prevent motion picture film from breaking in the camera. The device is called the Latham Loop, after Rector's employers, the Latham Brothers. Thomas Armat produces the same device independently for his Vitascope Beater Movement projector.

May 1895 - Birt Acres (1854-1918) patents his Kineopticon and becomes the first Englishman to successfully produce and publicly show animated pictures, initially at the Royal Photographic Society in London on 14th January the following year. The demonstration includes film strips of the 1895 Derby and the opening of the Kiel canal by the German Emperor.

Marconi uses the oscillators of Hertz and Righi. The signals were too weak so Marconi connects the oscillator to antenna and ground to increase power. It is also in 1895 when Marconi sends his first wireless radio transmission at Pontecchio, Italy. Three dots (the letter "S") were heard behind the hill three kilometers away.

Photographic typesetting (kinematography) is invented by William Friese-Greene, of London. He takes out a patent but his system is never built for commercial use.

1896 :

April 23, Thomas Edison, using Thomas Arnat's 'Vitascope', shows the first motion pictures in the USA in Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York.

Marconi leaves for London, and on September 2, Marconi performs his first offical experiment from the terrace of the Post Office to the Salisbury plain. He was granted the worlds first radio patent.

also...

Guglielmo Marconi takes his system of wireless telegraphy to England. Enlisting the support of the Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, Marconi patents his system in England and, in 1897, founds the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, Ltd. In 1900 the name of the company will be changed to Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd.

Thomas Edison's company, General Electric, licenses Nikola Tesla's AC (alternating current) system and in 1896 builds a transmission and distribution system linking the Niagara Falls Powerhouse to Buffalo, NY. This signals the winding down of the war between Edison and Westinghouse over the superiority of the electric currents, Edison having failed to win the public over to his own DC (direct current) system. Westinghouse, the first to supply the Niagara Falls with hydroelectric power generation facilities, will eventually build seven more generating units, raising the yield to 50,000 hp. The high-yield AC voltages make possible the manufacture of aluminum, as Tesla had predicted, and enables the Pittsburgh Reduction Company--later to be known as the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA)--to feed raw materials to the youthful aircraft industry.

1897 :

Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta publish stereoscopic Röntgen photographs.

At the University of Strasbourg, German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the 'oscilloscope', the first cathode ray tube (CRT). In this laboratory device (the forerunner of television and radar tubes) a narrow stream of electrons traces patterns on the fluorescent screen of the tube. Braun is also the inventor of the crystal rectifier, a device that allows current to flow in only one direction and improves radio transmission. He will share the 1909 Nobel Prize with Guglielmo Marconi for the development of radio.

The British Ministry gives Marconi money and technicans to continue his work. Marconi signals reached 5, 8, 15, 30 and 100 km. In July Marconi formed the Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Co. Ltd.

J. J. Thomson, head of the experimental physics program at Cambridge University in England, discovers and identifies units of electrical current--electrons-- in cathode rays. Thomson believes that these units are a fundamental part of all matter. He suggests that in a model of atomic structure, the negatively charged subatomic particles, electrons, are embedded in a sphere of positive electricity, and that the two charges neutralize each other. Thomson's findings revolutionize the study of physics, and win him the Nobel Prize 1906. The strength of his gift as a researcher and a teacher is evidenced by the fact that seven of his research assistants, and his son George, will win Nobel prizes, and he will lead his country to the forefront of the field of subatomic particles in the early 20th century.

The oscillograph is invented by William du Bois Duddell, a British engineer.

The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (later to be known as Biograph) produces the mutoscope, a peep-show viewer developed to rival Edison's Kinetoscope. The device uses large cardboard photographs that flip when a hand crank is rotated, and outperforms the Kinetoscope with its electrically driven film strip. Mutoscopes can still be found at some carnivals, amusement parks and penny arcades.

1898 :

In September, Marconi comes to the US where he carries out a telegraph circuit for the Navy between the cursers New York and Massachusetts.

The Bellowing Telephone (a speaker phone) is developed by Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor of Physics at University College, Liverpool.

The loudspeaker is invented by Horace Short of London. The compressed air "Auxetophone" is first used to broadcast records of operatic arias from the tops of the Blackpool Tower in England and the Eiffel Tower in France.

1898, December 1 - Danish electrical engineer and inventor Valdemar Poulsen (1869-1942) patents the first practical magnetic sound recorder, the 'Telegraphone', using magnetised piano wire as the recording medium. Poulsen demonstrates his device at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and later adapts it to create a recording telephone.

1899 :

Nikola Tesla, gazing at the Colorado Springs skies during a Fourth of July electrical storm, makes what he believes to be his most important discovery. By studying the movement of clouds, he perceives the existence of terrestrial stationary waves that transmit energy, and is thereby assured of the possibility of wireless telegraphy (which he has suspected for some time). Even more fantastic is the fact that using the earth as a conductor will make possible the transmission of unlimited power to any location on the planet. This means, among other things, that the modulations of the human voice can be heard around the world. Tesla builds a magnifying transmitter and, in one experiment, lights 200 incandescent lamps from a distance of 26 miles without the use of wires. In the most spectacular demonstration of his career, he creates a bolt of lightning 135 feet long, the crack of which can be heard 15 miles away from his laboratory. The experiment is cut short only by the Colorado Springs Electric Company who, complaining of a burned-out generator, crisply informs him that his service is thereby terminated. It is during this same year that Tesla receives what he believes to be communications from Venus or Mars. Public reaction ranges from the polite to the incredulous, but sixty years later scientists will acknowledge the fact that radio signals from beyond our atmosphere are indeed often picked up by earthbound receivers.

Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark invents a sound recording device, forerunner of the modern tape recorder. Poulsen's invention, which he calls the telegraphone, records sound on a magnetic wire. Poulsen demonstrates his device at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and later adapts it to create a recording telephone.

In the US, Michael Idvorsky Pupin, an immigrant Hungarian physicist and inventor, devises the so-called Pupin 'loading' coil - a system for extending the range of long distance telephone service by placing inductance coils around the transmitting wires. AT&T patents the invention in 1901.

A photoelectric cell designed for practical use is invented by German physicists Julius Elster and Hans Friedrich Geitel. Originally introduced in 1893, photoelectric cells permit the conversion of luminous flux into an electric current. Thereafter, variations in light are transmitted by an electric current and then turned back into identical light variations upon arrival. The end result is the successful transmission of static or luminous imagery.

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