1915 | Communications, Media
Communications, Media
Long-distance telephone service between New York and San Francisco begins January 25 (see De Forest, 1907). Alexander Graham Bell, now 68, repeats the words allegedly spoken in 1876 ("Mr. Watson, come here") to Thomas Watson in San Francisco, the call takes 23 minutes to go through, it costs $20.70, but although frequency multiplexing makes it possible for a single pair of copper wires to carry three simultaneous conversations at what later will be computed as 30,000 bits per second (up from 2,000 in 1876), unrelayed calls across more than 40 miles are almost inaudible (see coaxial circuit, 1940).
A group of Australian newspapers sends reporter Keith Murdoch, 29, to London in August with instructions to stop at Cairo and report on postal arrangements for Australian troops. He asks Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton for permission to visit the front in Gallipoli, the general agrees on condition that Murdoch sign a war correspondent's pledge "not to attempt to correspond by any other route than that officially sanctioned" for the duration and not "impart to anyone military information of a confidential nature . . . unless first submitted to the Chief Field Censor." Murdoch arrives at the front September 2, declines Gen. Hamilton's offer of transport, returns to the island of Imbros where the general has his headquarters and where he meets Daily Telegraph correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, 34, who persuades him that a major disaster is imminent unless the British public can learn the truth of what is happening. Ashmead-Bartlett writes a letter September 15 to Prime Minister Asquith, Murdoch sets out for London with it, but Gen. Hamilton has learned of it and alerted the War Office, Murdoch is detained by British authorities at Marseilles and told to hand over the letter or be placed in custody, Murdoch complies but proceeds to London and dictates a letter to Australia's prime minister Andrew Fisher September 23 giving all the information he can remember from Ashmead-Bartlett's letter and calling for the recall of Gen. Hamilton and his chief of staff. Former prime minister David Lloyd George has opposed the Gallipoli campaign and urges Murdoch to send a copy of the letter to Prime Minister Asquith, Ashmead-Bartlett arrives and writes an article for the Sunday edition of the Times substantiating the charges in his letter, the Dardanelles Committee convenes October 14, it deputizes Lord Kitchener to inform Gen. Hamilton that his active career is over, evacuation of Gallipoli begins December 15, and Murdoch becomes a hero back in Australia (see 1921).
London publishers William E. and J. Gomer Berry (later Viscounts Camrose and Kemsley) acquire the 93-year-old Sunday Times, whose circulation they will increase enormously (see 1901; Allied Newspapers, 1924).
"Adventures of Teddy Tail—Diary of the Mouse in Your House" by English cartoonist Charles Folkard appears in the London Daily Mail April 5; the mouse ties a knot in its tail April 9 to rescue a beetle that has fallen down a hole. This first British newspaper comic strip will continue for more than 40 years.
Kansas City Evening Star and Kansas City Times publisher William Rockhill Nelson dies at Kansas City April 13 at age 74, leaving a fortune estimated at $6 million to his wife and daughter, with what remains after the death of the survivor to be used to found an art museum (see art [Nelson-Atkins Gallery], 1933). Ownership of the papers passes to the paper's employees under a plan devised by Nelson's son-in-law Irwin R. Kirkwood. Seattle Times publisher Alden J. Blethen dies at Seattle July 12 at age 69.
Direct wireless communication between the United States and Japan begins July 27.
Spectators at a San Francisco football game hear the first demonstration of a dynamic loudspeaker developed by Peter Laurits Jensen and Edwin Pridham (see 1913). While working to develop a better telephone receiver, Jensen has used a coil of copper wire in an electromagnetic field to connect telephone ear tubes to the diaphragm of a 22-inch Edison horn. He names it the Magnavox. A crowd at San Francisco's Civic Center hears a demonstration Christmas Eve, and Sonora Phonograph Co. CEO Frank M. Steers is so impressed that he agrees to invest capital in Jensen and Pridham's company.
Japanese engineer Tokuji Hayakawa, 20, invents the first mechanical pencil and markets it under the brand name Ever-Ready Sharp. Proceeds will enable the inventor to start a Tokyo metalworking shop that will be renamed Hayakawa Electric Industry Co. in 1942, become Sharp Corp. in 1970, and market a wide range of products under the Sharp name.
The weekly Italian news magazine Epoca begins publication at Verona, where Arnoldo Mondadori, 25, bought a printing shop in 1912 and founded an empire that will grow to publish books as well as magazines (see Grazia, 1938).
Condé Nast takes over House and Garden magazine, which has only 10,000 readers and little advertising (see Vogue, 1909).