1892 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

The Hall Braille writer invented by Illinois School for the Blind superintendent Frank H. Hall is the first writing machine for braille (see 1834; 1852). The late Louis Braille produced special machines with six keys, one for each dot in his Braille cell, or matrix, but Hall's machine and modifications of it will come into universal use (see Kurzweil Reading Machine, 1976).

Chinese-English Dictionary by H. A. Giles firmly establishes the Wade-Giles style of romanizing Chinese characters (see 1872). A second edition will appear in 1912 with some modifications (see Pinyin, 1978).

Papermaking pioneer Hugh Burgess dies at Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 23 at age 66. The American Wood-Paper Company that he has served as manager since its founding in 1863 will go bankrupt (see 1854), but the soda process of turning wood pulp into paper will survive; pulp paper pioneer Charles Fenerty dies at Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, June 10 at age 71, having lived to see two pulp-producing mills built at Sackville.

The Toronto Star begins publication under the name Evening Star. A labor dispute has cost 25 printers their jobs, their first issue has only four pages, some leading citizens will acquire ownership in 1899 and rename it the Toronto Morning Star, and by 1904 its circulation will have risen from 7,000 to 40,000.

The Ridder newspaper chain that will grow to include 19 daily newspapers, most of them in the West and Midwest, has its beginnings as German-born publisher Herman Ridder, 41, acquires the New York German-language newspaper Staats-Zeitung und Herolt (see Knight, 1903).

Baltimore's Afro-American begins publication on a semiweekly basis with John Murphy as editor.

The Addressograph invented by Sioux City, Iowa, engineer Joseph Smith Duncan prints addresses automatically and will soon be used by women in offices all over America. Duncan's first model employs a revolving, hexagonal block of wood to which he has glued rubber type torn from rubber stamps; a new name and address advance to the printing point each time the block is turned, and the process of turning the block re-inks the type. Duncan will put a more refined model into production in July of next year from a back office in Chicago.

Vogue magazine begins publication late in the year at New York as a society weekly, devoting its first issues largely to coming-out parties, galas, betrothals, marriages, travel itineraries, golf, theater, concerts, and art. Founders Arthur Turnure and Harry McVickar have engaged editor Josephine Redding, who is never without a hat but does not wear corsets (see Condé Nast, 1909).

Electrical Papers by London-born physicist Oliver Heaviside, 42, uses operational calculus (Laplace transforms) to study theoretical aspects of problems in telegraphic, telephonic, and electrical transmission. Himself a onetime telegrapher, Heaviside went increasingly deaf, had to retire in 1874, and turned his attention to studying electricity. The proliferation of telephone wires in Britain and abroad has created problems such as interference (cross talk) from adjacent lines on the same crossarm of a telephone pole; two-wire copper circuits based on Heaviside's theories solve some of the problems, and transposing the wires by twisting them at specified intervals cancel cross talk, but on long-distance lines even two-wire circuits attenuate telephone signals appreciably. Heaviside's theories attract the attention of Columbia University physicist Michael I. Pupin and AT&T engineer George A. Campbell, who realize that introducing inductive coils (loading coils) at regular intervals along the length of a long-distance telephone wire could make a significant reduction in the attentuation of signals at frequencies of less than 3.5 kilohertz (within the voice band). Pupin and Campbell both file for patents on the concept of loading coils (see 1900).

Telegraph pioneer Frederic N. Gisborne dies at Ottawa August 30 at age 68, having ended the isolation of Canada's maritime provinces and of many communities in the western provinces but derived little financial benefit from his work.

Telephone service between New York and Chicago begins October 18.

German electrical equipment manufacturer Werner von Siemens dies at Charlottenburg, Berlin, December 6 at age 75, having invented (among other things) a printing and needle telegraph and a cable insulated with gutta-percha. He turned his company over to his younger brother Carl 2 years ago.