1897 - Communications, Media

Communications, Media

American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) erects the first telephone poles, using wooden poles up to 50 feet tall for a line that it opens between Washington, D.C., and Norfolk, Virginia.

A cathode-ray tube (Braun tube) invented at Strasbourg by German physicist (Karl) Ferdinand Braun, 47, pioneers development of television and other electronic communications. Having earlier helped to develop use of crystals in radios, Braun this year invents the oscillograph; he has improved the Marconi wireless by increasing the energy of sending stations and arranging antennas to control the direction of effective radiation (see 1895; 1907).

"All the News That's Fit to Print" appears February 10 in a box to the left of the title of the New York Times, where it will remain for more than a century (see 1896). Adolph S. Ochs has offered a $100 prize to anyone who could think up a better slogan, but the motto devised by Ochs and his editors in October of last year and run on the editorial page has not been topped.

The Jewish Daily Forward (Vorwert) begins publication in April at 175 East Broadway under a sign that reads, "Arbeiter Ring" ("Workmen's Circle") (the Yiddish-language paper takes its name from that of a Berlin paper and has close ties to the Socialist Party). Novelist Abraham Cahan has started the paper with help from Russian-born journalist William H. Leaf, 22, and will hold the position of editor until his death in 1951, gaining readership with his advice column "Bintel Brief" ("packet of letters"), which allows readers and editors to exchange views on ethics, love, money, and getting along in America as he works to assimilate immigrants. Newsboys will buy the papers at two for a penny and sell them for 1¢ per copy, hawking them at meeting halls and on the streets (see real estate, 1912; the Day, 1914).

The New York Tribune prints halftones on a power press and on newsprint for the first time, employing techniques developed by Frederick E. Ives and Stephen Horgan (see Ives, 1886).

"The report of my death was an exaggeration," Mark Twain cables the New York Times June 2 from London. Now 61, Twain is on a world lecture tour that will help him recoup part of the fortune that he lost in the panic of 1893.

New York Evening Sun reader Virginia O'Hanlon of 115 West 95th Street writes to the paper's editor saying, "I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?" Former New York Times Civil War correspondent Francis Parcellus Church, 58, childless himself, replies in an unsigned front page editorial published September 21: "Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see . . . Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist . . . Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in fairies . . . No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever." The Sun will reprint the editorial each year until it is merged with the World Telegram in January 1950.

New York Evening Sun editor-publisher Charles A. Dana dies at Glen Cove, Long Island, October 17 at age 78 and is succeeded at the Sun by his son Paul (see 1887). His name will be commemorated in the Charles A. Dana Foundation, which beginning in 1986 will confer awards "for pioneering achievements in health and education" (see Sun, 1916).

William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal hires Sunday World editor Arthur Brisbane, 32, who quits the Pulitzer paper. Circulation of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World has reached 360,000 as compared to 309,000 for Hearst's Journal (the Evening Sun and Evening Telegram each has 100,000; Henry Villard's Evening Post 25,000). Richard Outcault's cartoon figure "The Yellow Kid" appears in strip form in the Journal's Sunday supplement beginning October 24. Brisbane builds Sunday Journal circulation from 40,000 to 325,000 in 6 weeks, Pulitzer and Hearst will battle over rights to the cartoon, and the contest for readership between the two will be marked by sensationalism that will be called "yellow journalism," a term that will be applied to other sensationalist papers (see 1895; 1898).

"The Katzenjammer Kids" by German-born cartoonist Rudolph Dirks, 21, begins appearing in the New York Journal December 12. The antics of Hans und Fritz (who torment der Captain, der Inspector, und Momma) ape those of the German cartoon characters Max und Moritz that Wilhelm Busch began drawing for the comic weekly Fliegende Blätter in 1859 (see 1917).

The Woman's Home Companion begins publication at Springfield, Ohio. Publisher John S. Crowell started the magazine in 1873 under the name Home Companion, renamed it the Ladies' Home Companion in 1886, and has changed its name to avoid confusion with Cyrus H. K. Curtis's magazine, published since 1883. It will continue until 1956, attracting readers with serialized fiction.

Ladies' Home Journal publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis pays $1,000 to acquire the 76-year-old Saturday Evening Post (see 1883). He will invest $1.25 million in profits from his women's magazine to revitalize the failing Post, whose circulation will grow in the next 25 years to exceed 2 million (see Lorimer, 1899).

Country Life magazine begins publication at London.

English vicar's son Fred T. (John Frederick Thomas) Jane, 32, establishes a business that will survive into the 21st century as a prime source of information about naval strength and aircraft. He started as a teenager to sketch what he called "Ironclads of the World," a magazine commissioned him in 1889 to cover Kaiser Wilhelm's inspection of the combined fleets at Spithead. He sketched nearly 100 ships and paid his mess bill by painting murals on the bulkheads of his host ship's wardroom. The first edition of his Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships (later simply Jane's Fighting Ships) will appear next year, and his Jane's All the World's Airships (later Jane's All the World's Aircraft) will debut in 1909. Jane himself will die at age 51, but his company will go on to publish Jane's Defence Weekly along with other weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports plus updates about twice each week.