From Cave Paintings to the Internet An Annotated Interactive Timeline on the History of Information and Media 1850 to 1875 Timeline

John and Jacob Brett lay the first telegraph cable between England and France. After a French fisherman cuts the cable, thinking it is a new kind of seaweed, they install an armored cable in 1851 that will last for many years.

Circulation of The Times of London newspaper is 38,000.

Paul Julius Reuter, (originally named Israel Beer Josaphat) sets up an information service, later called Reuters, using a "fleet of 45 carrier pigeons, to deliver news and stock prices between Brussels and Aachen, terminal points of the German and French-Belgian telegraph lines. The pigeons carry the messages within two hours. This beats the railroad by six hours.

The use of “flong” for stereotype printing plates provides an advantage for the publication of mathematical tables since stereotype plates represent “an immutable form of information capture that offered immunity from the inherent vulnerability of moveable type to derangement during printing or storage.” (Doron Swade, “The ‘unerring certainty of mechanical agency’: Machines and table making in the nineteenth century,” in Campbell-Kelly [ed.], The History of Mathematical Tables [2003], 148.)

In his book, The Process of Thought Adapted to Words and Language, Alfred Smee suggests the possibility of information storage and retrieval by a mechanical logical machine operating analogously to the human mind. This is an attempt to produce an artificial system of reasoning based upon neurological principles which were then primarily a matter of speculation. The problem is that this hypothetical “electro-biological” machine, built out of mechanical parts, might occupy a space larger than London.

Paul Julius Reuter, founds the Reuters news agency in London using telegraph lines, and a fleet of carrier pigeons that grows to exceed 200. Reuter opens an office in London’s financial centre and located close to the main telegraph offices. He transmits stock market quotations and news between London and Paris over the new Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable, using his ’telegraph expertise’.

Journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones found The New-York Daily Times. It will change its name to The New York Times in 1857

The Scheutz team produce their second difference engine-- an improvement over the first.

The first use of wood pulp instead of linen rags for paper making occurs in England.

Boole publishes An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. Boole invents the first practical system of logic in algebraic form.

Paris and London are connected by telegraph.

Cyrus Field organizes the New York, Newfoundland, and London Electric Telegraph Company with the intention of laying an Atlantic Cable.

David Edward Hughes invents the first perfected mechanism for printing telegraph messages, using a keyboard in which each key causes the corresponding letter to be printed at a distant receiver. The printing mechanism works something like a 'golfball' typewriter, but it is produced before the typewriter is invented.

The Atlantic Telegraph Company is formed by Cyrus Field in the United States and Charles Bright, John Brett, and Jacob Brett in England.

George Parker Bidder, an engineer and one of the most remarkable human computers of all time, publishes his paper on Mental Calculation. (See Reading 3.1)

The first attempt to lay the Atlantic Cable using the American sailing ship Niagara and the British sailing ship Agamemnon fails.

Reuters opens offices all over Europe, following telegraph lines.

The second attempt to lay the first Atlantic Cable using the American sailing ship Niagara and the British sailing ship Agamemnon initially succeeds.

Communication is established on the Atlantic Cable but it fails within three weeks.

The British government, long after refusing funding to complete Babbage’s Difference Engine no. 1 or to construct his Analytical Engine, pays for the construction of the Scheutzes' third difference engine. William Farr first uses it to print a table for his paper, published in Philosophical Transactions, “On the Construction of Life-Tables, Illustrated by a New Life-Table of the Healthy Districts of England.”

On his third visit to the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai in Egypt, Constantin von Tischendorf discovers the Codex Sinaiticus "The first two trips [in 1844 and 1854] had yielded parts of the Old Testament, some from a rubbish bin. The emperor Alexander II of Russia sent him to search for manuscripts, which he was convinced were still to be found in the Sinai monastery."

"The story of how von Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the elements of a romance. Von Tischendorf reached the monastery on January 14; but his inquiries appeared to be fruitless. On February 4, he had resolved to return home without having achieved his goal. "On that day, when walking with the provisor of the convent, he spoke with much regret of his ill-success. Returning from their promenade, Tischendorf accompanied the monk to his room, and there had displayed to him what his companion called a copy of the Septuagint, which he, the ghostly brother, owned. The manuscript was wrapped up in a piece of cloth, and on its being unrolled, to the surprise and delight of the critic the very document presented itself which he had given up all hope of seeing. His object had been to complete the fragmentary Septuagint of 1844, which he had declared to be the most ancient of all Greek codices on vellum that are extant; but he found not only that, but a copy of the Greek New Testament attached, of the same age, and perfectly complete, not wanting a single page or paragraph." After some negotiations, von Tischendorf obtained the codex, and brought it to the Emperor Alexander, who fully appreciated its importance, and had it published in facsimile.

In 1933 the Russian government will sell the Codex Sinaiticus to the British Museum for 100,000 pounds.

[In July 2008 it was stated on the Codex Sinaiticus website that the "recent" history of the manuscript would be revised in light of previously unavailable documents.]

In this year 100,000 tons of paper are produced in the United Kingdom, almost a tenfold increase since 1800. Only 4% is made by hand. Because of reduction in labor costs the average cost of paper falls 60% in the period from 1800-1860 (Twyman).

The Parisian typesetter and tinkerer, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville produces the earliest known recording of the human voice and the earliest known recording of music on his phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually but not to play them back.

Telegraph lines connect New York and San Francisco.

Johann Philipp Reis, a German schoolteacher and physicist, announces his invention of the telephone in a lecture before the Physical Society of Frankfurt. He publishes "Ueber Telephonie durch den galvanischen Strom" in Jahres-Bericht des physikalischen Vereins zu Frankfurt am Main fur des Rechungshahr 1860-1861 (1861). 

Reis' transmitter works by alternatively making and breaking connection with a battery, while his receiver is designed to operate on the principle of magnetorestriction -- the property of ferromagnetic material such as iron to change shape on applicate of a magnetic field. Neither of these principles is adequate for constructing a successful speech-transmitting telephone, which requires continous contact and an undulating current; however,

"If the sound entering a Reis transmitter is not too strong, contact between the metal point and the metal strip will not be broken. Instead, the pressure of the former on the latter will fluctuate with the sound causing fluctuations in the electrical resistance and therefore in the current. Similarly the receiver will respond to continuously fluctuating as well as to intermittent currents (but not by magnetorestrction). The sensitivity, however, is extremely low. . . ." (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 15th edition.)

This may explain the partial but real success of Reis's telephone in transmitting intelligible speech.

Between 1858 and 1863 Reis constructed three different models of his telephone, the third and best-known of which was demonstrated to scientific societies throughout Europe and America. One of those who saw Reis's machine was Alexander Graham Bell, who was shown Reis's telephone at the Smithsonian Institution in March 1875, and who might have seen an earlier model demonstrated in Edinburgh as early as 1862.

Reis has no interest in profiting from his telephone, freely giving out information on it to anyone who asks, and selling models of it at a reasonable price. Reis dies of tuberculosis in 1874 at the early age of 40.

The first fascicule (A-Aanhaling) of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (English: "Dictionary of the Dutch language") is published during this year. It will become the largest dictionary in the world in print, eventually containing over 430,000 entries of Dutch words from 1500 to 1921 in 43 volumes and close to 50,000 pages. The last fasciculde (Zuid-Zythum) will be published in 1998. Three supplements containing modern Dutch words will be published in 2001.

Since 27 January 2007, the dictionary has become available online. There is no charge for access but registration is required.

William Farr uses the third Scheutz difference engine in the calculation of his English Life Table--the first instance of a printing calculator used extensively to do original work. Because the machine is very troublesome, the tables are completed by human computers. (See Reading 4.2)

Charles Babbage publishes his autobiography, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, in which he presents the most detailed descriptions of his Difference and Analytical Engines published during his lifetime, and writes talks about his struggles to have his highly futuristic inventions appreciated by society. In the wording of his title Babbage uses the word philosopher in its now obsolete equivalent to what we call a "scientist." The word scientist coined by William Whewell will not be widely used until the end of the 19th or early 20th century. (See Reading 6.2.)

James Clerk Maxwell publishes "A Dynamical Theory of the Electro-Magnetic Field" in the Transactions of the Royal Society. It provides a theoretical framework, based on experiment and a few general dynamical principles, for the propagation of electromagnetic waves through space.

Using the Great Eastern steamship, the attempt to lay the second Atlantic Cable takes place. The cable snaps after twelve hundred miles.

Osman Zeki Bey, an Ottoman calligrapher, opens his printing office called Matbaa-i Osmaniye in Constantinople. He is the first printer authorized by the Ottoman Palace to print the Koran. Kuran-Burcoglu, Osman Zeki Bey and his Printing Office the Matbaa-i-Osmaniye, Sadgrove (ed) History of Printing and Publishing the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 35-58.

Benjamin Tilghman of the United States develops the sulfite pulping process for the manufacture of paper. The first mill using this process will be built in Sweden in 1874.

Throughout the 19th century it has been increasingly necessary to find workable substitutes for scarce linen rags, the supply of which cannot possibly keep up with the growing demands for paper. While the production of paper from wood pulp will enable greatly increased production, the bleaching agents used in this new process will reduce the longevity of paper. The pulping, bleaching, and sizing processes generate hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, which over time result in brittleness and deterioration of paper and the possible loss of information.

The Great Eastern lays the third and successful Atlantic Cable, connecting the cable at Heart’s Content, a fishing village in Newfoundland. Communication by electric telegraph between Europe and America is finally established. The first message sent over the cable is “A treaty of peace has been signed between Austria and Prussia."

Edward A. Calahan of the American Telegraph Company invents the first stock telegraph printing instrument. The distinct sound of this telegraph printing instrument eventually earns it the name of “stock ticker.”

The Times of London installs a Walter press, developed by the owner of the newspaper, John Walter, that prints on continuous paper, further increasing the speed of production.

James Clerk Maxwell publishes “On Governors,” a classic paper on feedback mechanisms

William Stanley Jevons constructs his “logical piano,” the first logic machine to solve complicated problems with superhuman speed.

There are over 6000 miles of railroad track in England.

9,158,000,000 telegraph messages are sent in the United States.

Circulation of The Times of London is 70,000.

British telegraph systems are nationalized.

Heinrich Schliemann excavates a hill, called Hissarlik by the Turks, near the town of Chanak in north-western Anatolia. Here he discovers the ruins of a series of ancient cities, dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. From this excavation and another in 1878-79 Schliemann declares one of these cities—at first Troy I, later Troy II—to be the city of Troy. This identification is widely accepted at that time. Later excavations will show that were at least nine cities built one on top of each other at this site.

Charles Babbage’s scientific library is sold at auction. The auction catalogue, containing over two thousand items on topics such as mathematical tables, cryptography, and calculating machines, and including many rare volumes, may be the first catalogue of a library on computing and its history.

Willoughby Smith discovers that the electrical resistance of selenium varies dramatically with the amount of light falling on it. The photoconductivity of selenium will eventually provide a method for converting images into electrical signals-- the basis for photoelectric cells and a theoretical basis for television. 

Christopher Sholes, Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden invented the first practical typewriter in 1868. Scholes was granted a patent. In 1872 he sold the rights to Remington, a firm of gunsmiths. In 1873 he invented the QWERTY keyboard. When produced in 1874 it is called the “Sholes & Glidden Type Writer.” It has a keyboard with letters and numbers arranged in a four-line pattern (known as QWERTY from the first six letters in the top row), a wooden spacer bar, and a vulcanized india-rubber platen or roller. It only prints capital letters.