1880s

The 1880s was a decade that began on January 1, 1880, and ended on December 31, 1889. The decade occurred at the core period of the. The modern city as well as the rose to prominence in this decade as well, contributing to the economic prosperity of the time. The 1880s were also part of the, in the , which lasted from 1874 to 1907.

Wars

 * (1873–1904)
 * (1879–1884)
 * (1880-1881)
 * (1881–1899)
 * (1882)
 * 13 September 1882 — British troops occupy, and becomes a British.
 * (1884-1885)

Internal conflicts

 * (Intermittently from 1622–1918)
 * 20 July 1881 — chief  leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at  in.
 * Frequent of African Americans in  during the years –.

Colonization

 * colonizes (1883)
 * colonization (1887)
 * Increasing colonial interest and conquest in Africa leads representatives from Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain to divide Africa into regions of colonial influence at the . This would be followed over the next few decades by conquest of almost the entirety of the remaining uncolonised parts of the continent, broadly along the lines determined. (1889)

Prominent political events

 * 3 August 1881: The peace treaty is signed, officially ending the war between the  and.
 * 3 May 1882: The was signed into law by President.
 * 1884: in Washington D.C., held to determine the Prime Meridian of the world.
 * 1884–1885:, when the western powers divided Africa.
 * The United States had five Presidents during the decade, the most since the 1840s. They were, , ,  and.

Disasters

 * May to August, 1883:, a volcano in , erupted ; 36,000 people were killed, the majority being killed by the resulting.
 * September 1887: and killed about 900,000 people.

Assassinations and attempts
Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:


 * 13 March 1881 – Assassination of the Tsar of the.
 * 19 September 1881 –, 20th (See also )
 * 2 March 1882 – fails to assassinate.
 * 3 April 1882 – assassinates, legendary outlaw.
 * 6 May 1882 –, Chief Secretary for Ireland, assassinated in the by the.

Technology

 * 1880: of, , England receives a patent for the . In 1887, Heaviside introduced the concept of s. In the 1890s,  would both create the loading coils and receive a patent of them, failing to credit Heaviside's work.
 * 1880–1882: Development and commercial production of was underway.  of, established  on December 17, 1880. Based at , it was the pioneer company of the . Edison's system was based on creating a central power plant equipped with s.   would then connect the station with other buildings, allowing for .  was the first central power plant in the United States. It was located at 255–257  in  on a site measuring 50 by 100 feet, just south of . It began with one  , and it started  on September 4, 1882, serving an initial load of 400 lamps at 85 customers. By 1884, Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps.
 * 1880–1886: of, and  installed carbon  along , New York City. A small generating station was established at Manhattan's . The electric arc lights went into regular service on December 20, 1880. The new  of 1883 had seventy arc lamps installed in it. By 1886, there was a reported number of 1,500 arc lights installed in Manhattan.
 * 1881–1885: of,  finishes his submarine-building project (which had begun in 1879). The crafts were constructed at Nevskiy Shipbuilding and Machinery works at . Altogether, 50 units were delivered to the . They were reportedly deployed as part of the defense of  and . In 1885, the submarines were transferred to the . They were soon declared "ineffective" and discarded. By 1887, Drzewiecki was designing submarines for the.
 * 1881–1883: of, ,  builds the  submarine for the . During extensive trials, Holland made numerous dives and test-fired the gun using dummy projectiles. However, due to funding disputes within the  and disagreement over payments from the IRB to Holland, the IRB stole  Fenian Ram and the  prototype in November 1883.
 * 1882: of, England and  of , ,  build an electric . It reportedly had a range of 10 to 25 miles, powered by a lead acid battery. A significant innovation of the vehicle was its use of s, here playing the role of s.
 * 1882: of, , England invented the  . By use of variable engine strokes from a complex , Atkinson was able to increase the efficiency of his engine, at the cost of some power, over traditional.
 * 1882: of  invented the two-blade .  of  invented the electric safety . Both were arguably among the earliest  to appear.
 * 1882–1883: of, , England was born.
 * 1882–1883: of, England patents the  system in 1882.  In 1883 Hopkinson showed mathematically that it was possible to connect two alternating current dynamos in parallel — a problem that had long bedeviled electrical engineers.
 * 1883:, an American inventor, creates the first working . The energy conversion efficiency of these early devices was less than 1%. Denounced as a fraud in the US for "generating power without consuming matter, thus violating the ".
 * 1883–1885:, an American inventor, works in his own submarine designs. His 1883 model was created in Delameter Iron Works. It was 30-feet long, "all-electric and had vertical and horizontal propellers clutched to the same shaft, with a 20-feet breathing pipe and an airlock for a diver." His 1885 model, called the "Peacemaker", was larger. It used "a patent  to power a 14-HP Westinghouse steam engine". She managed a number of short trips within the  area. The Peacemaker had a submerged endurance of 5 hours. Tuck did not benefit from his achievement. His family feared that the inventor was squandering his fortune on the Peacemaker. They had him committed to an  by the end of the decade.
 * 1883–1886: of, starts his attempts at . In 1884, using a glider designed and built in 1883, Montgomery made the "first heavier-than-air human-carrying aircraft to achieve controlled piloted flight" in the Western Hemisphere. This glider had a curved parabolic wing surface. He reportedly made a glide of "considerable length" from , his first successful flight and arguably the first successful one in the United States.  In 1884–1885, Montgomery tested a second monoplane glider with flat wings. The innovation in design was " at the rear of the wings to maintain ". These were early forms of . After experimentation with a water tank and smoke chamber to understand the nature of flow over surfaces, in 1886, Montgomery designed a third glider with fully rotating wings as pitcherons. He then turned to theoretic research towards the development of a manuscript "Soaring Flight" in 1896.
 * 1884–1885: On August 9, 1884, "", a, makes its maiden flight. Launched by  and . Krebs piloted  with the La France. The 170 ft long, 66000 cuft airship, electric-powered with a 435 kg battery completed a flight that covered 8 km in 23 minutes. It was the first full round trip flight with a landing on the starting point. On its seven flights in 1884 and 1885 the La France dirigible returned five times to its starting point. "La France was the first airship that could return to its starting point in a light wind. It was 165 feet (50.3 meters) long, its maximum diameter was 27 feet (8.2 meters), and it had a capacity of 66,000 cubic feet (1,869 cubic meters)." Its battery-powered motor "produced 7.5 horsepower (5.6 kilowatts). This motor was later replaced with one that produced 8.5 horsepower (6.3 kilowatts)."
 * 1884: of, ,  invents the , an  device. It was the basis of his patent method of translating visual images to electronic impulses, transmit said impulses to another device and successfully reassemble the impulses to visual images. Nipkow used a  . Nipkow proposed and patented the first "near-practicable"   in 1884. Although he never built a working model of the system, Nipkow's spinning disk design became a common television image  used up to 1939.
 * 1884: of, ,  makes the second known "powered, assisted take off of a heavier-than-air craft carrying an operator". His  monoplane took off at , near , making a hop and "covering between 65 and 100 feet". The monoplane had a failed , with one of its wings destroyed and serious damages. It was never rebuilt. Later   would overstate Mozhaysky's accomplishment while downplaying the failed landing. The Grand Soviet Encyclopedia called this "the first true flight of a heavier-than-air machine in history".
 * 1884–1885: Company engineers,  and  had determined that open-core devices were impracticable, as they were incapable of reliably regulating voltage. In their joint patent application for the "Z.B.D." s, they described the design of two with no poles: the "closed-core" and the "shell-core" transformers. In the closed-core type, the primary and secondary windings were wound around a closed iron ring; in the shell type, the windings were passed through the iron core. In both designs, the magnetic flux linking the primary and secondary windings traveled almost entirely within the iron core, with no intentional path through air. When employed in , this revolutionary design concept would finally make it technically and economically feasible to provide electric power for lighting in homes, businesses and public spaces. Bláthy had suggested the use of closed-cores, Zipernowsky the use of , and Déri had performed the experiments. Electrical and electronic systems the world over continue to rely on the principles of the original Z.B.D. transformers. The inventors also popularized the word "transformer" to describe a device for altering the EMF of an electric current, although the term had already been in use by 1882.
 * 1884–1885: and, having formed the “Nautilus Submarine Boat Company”, start working on a new submarine. The so-called "Zalinsky boat" was constructed in Hendrick's Reef (former ),  in (ray) or (rayacus the 3rd)   of . "The new, cigar-shaped submarine was 50 feet long with a maximum beam of eight feet. To save money, the hull was largely of wood, framed with iron hoops, and again, a  engine provided motive power." The project was plagued by a "shoestring budget" and Zalinski mostly rejecting Holland's ideas on improvements. The submarine was ready for launching in September, 1885. "During the launching itself, a section of the ways collapsed under the weight of the boat, dashing the hull against some pilings and staving in the bottom. Although the submarine was repaired and eventually carried out several trial runs in lower New York Harbor, by the end of 1886 the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company was no more, and the salvageable remnants of the Zalinski Boat were sold to reimburse the disappointed investors." Holland would not create another submarine to 1893.
 * 1885: of,  reaches the concept of a . He applied it to a new motor. "Ferraris devised a motor using electromagnets at right angles and powered by alternating currents that were 90° out of phase, thus producing a revolving magnetic field. The motor, the direction of which could be reversed by reversing its polarity, proved the solution to the last remaining problem in alternating-current motors. The principle made possible the development of the asynchronous, self-starting  that is still used today. Believing that the scientific and intellectual values of new developments far outstripped material values, Ferraris deliberately did not patent his invention; on the contrary, he demonstrated it freely in his own laboratory to all comers." He published his findings in 1888. By then,  had independently reached the same concept and was seeking a patent.
 * 1885: and  of  were granted a patent for their Electrogefest, an "electric arc welder with a carbon electrode". Introducing a method of, they also became the "inventors of modern welding apparatus".


 * 1885–1888: of, ,  introduces the , widely regarded as the first . It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones) with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. The Motorwagen was patented on January 29, 1886, as DRP-37435: "automobile fueled by gas". The 1885 version was difficult to control, leading to a collision with a wall during a public demonstration. The first successful tests on public roads were carried out in the early summer of 1886. The next year Benz created the Motorwagen Model 2 which had several modifications, and in 1887, the definitive Model 3 with  wheels was introduced, showing at the Paris Expo the same year. Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as the Benz Patent Motorwagen) in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history, the renowned botanist Emile Campbell-Browne is known to have been an early purchaser of this automobile, records show  he had several lucky escapes whilst  being "Reckless and without regard".
 * 1885–1887: of , , an employee of , creates an improved . Westinghouse had bought the patents of  and  on the subject, and had purchased an option on the designs of ,  and . He entrusted engineer Stanley with the building of a device for commercial use. Stanley's first patented design was for s with single cores of soft iron and adjustable gaps to regulate the EMF present in the secondary winding. This design was first used commercially in 1886. But Westinghouse soon had his team working on a design whose core comprised a stack of thin "E-shaped" iron plates, separated individually or in pairs by thin sheets of paper or other insulating material. Prewound copper coils could then be slid into place, and straight iron plates laid in to create a closed magnetic circuit. Westinghouse applied for a patent for the new design in December 1886; it was granted in July 1887.
 * 1885–1889:, a French inventor, builds two small electric submarines. The first Goubet model was 16-feet long and weighed 2 tons. "She used ( which operated an Edison-type dynamo." While among the earliest submarines to successfully make use of electric power, she proved to have a severe flaw. She could not stay at a stable depth, set by the operator. The improved Goubet II was introduced in 1889. This version could transport a 2-man crew and had "an attractive interior". More stable than her predecessor, though still unable to stay at a set depth.
 * 1885–1887: of, ,  produces a series of steam powered . The first was the Nordenfelt I, a 56 tonne, 19.5 metre long vessel similar to 's ill-fated  (1879), with a range of 240 kilometres and armed with a single torpedo and a 25.4 mm . It was manufactured by  in  in 1884–1885. Like the Resurgam, it operated on the surface using a 100 HP steam engine with a maximum speed of 9 kn, then it shut down its engine to dive. She was purchased by the  and was delivered to  in 1886. Following the acceptance tests, she was never used again by the Hellenic Navy and was scrapped in 1901. Nordenfelt then built the Nordenfelt II (Abdülhamid) in 1886 and Nordenfelt III (Abdülmecid) in 1887, a pair of 30 metre long submarines with twin torpedo tubes, for the . Abdülhamid became the first submarine in history to fire a torpedo while submerged under water. The Nordenfelts had several faults. "It took as long as twelve hours to generate enough steam for submerged operations and about thirty minutes to dive. Once underwater, sudden changes in speed or direction triggered—in the words of a U.S. Navy intelligence report—"dangerous and eccentric movements." ...However, good public relations overcame bad design: Nordenfeldt always demonstrated his boats before a stellar crowd of crowned heads, and Nordenfeldt's submarines were regarded as the world standard."
 * 1886–1887: of,  receives a patent for a , among the earliest examples of  batteries. Originally patented in the German Empire, Gassner also received patents from , , the , the  (all in 1886) and the United States (in 1887). Consumer dry cells would first appear in the 1890s. In 1887,  of ,  patented his own zinc-carbon battery. Within the year, Hellesen and V. Ludvigsen founded a factory in , producing their batteries.
 * 1886: of, and  of ,  independently discover the same inexpensive method for producing , which became the first metal to attain widespread use since the prehistoric discovery of . The basic invention involves passing an electric current through a bath of  dissolved in , which results in a puddle of aluminum forming in the bottom of the retort. It has come to be known as the . Often overlooked is that Hall did not work alone. His research partner was , an older sister. She had studied chemistry at , helped with the experiments, took laboratory notes and gave business advice to Charles.
 * 1886–1890: of ,  receives his first patent on a prototype of the . His research culminated in an 1890 patent for a . Production started in 1891 by  of , , England under the title  under licence. Stuart's oil engine design was simple, reliable and economical. It had a comparatively low compression ratio, so that the temperature of the air compressed in the combustion chamber at the end of the compression stroke was not high enough to initiate combustion. Combustion instead took place in a separated combustion chamber, the "vaporizer" (also called the "hot bulb") mounted on the cylinder head, into which fuel was sprayed. It was connected to the cylinder by a narrow passage and was heated either by the cylinder's coolant or by exhaust gases while running; an external flame such as a blowtorch was used for starting. Self-ignition occurred from contact between the fuel-air mixture and the hot walls of the vaporizer.
 * 1887: (later Baron Kelvin) of,  introduces the multicellular . The electrical supply industry needed instruments capable of measuring high voltages. Thomson's voltmeter could measure up to 20,000 volts. It could measure both  (DC) and  (AC) flows. They went into production in 1888, being the first s.
 * 1887: of,  introduces a method of using  fibers to measure "delicate forces". Boys was a physics demonstrator at the  in , but was contacting private experiments on the effects of delicate forces on objects. It was already known that hanging an object from a thread could demonstrate the effects of such weak influences. Said thread had to be "thin, strong and elastic". Finding the best fibers available at the time insufficient for his experiments, Boys set out to create a better fiber. He tried making glass from a variety of minerals. The best results came from natural . He created fibers both extremely thin and highly durable. He used them to create the "radiomicrometer", a device sensitive enough to detect the heat of a single candle from a distance of almost 2 miles. By March 26, 1887, Boys was reporting his results to the.
 * 1887–1888: of  recorded the human  with surface . He was employed at the time as a lecturer in physiology at  in, , England. In May, 1887, Waller demonstrated his method to many physiologists. In 1888, Waller demonstrated that the  of the  started at the  and ended at the .  was among those who took interest in the new method. He would end up improving it in the 1900s.
 * 1887–1889: The Serbian-American engineer files patents on a  based   and related polyphase AC transmission systems. The patents are licensed by  although technical problems and a shortage of cash at the company meant a complete system would not be rolled out until 1893.
 * 1887–1890: of, England is hired by the London Electric Supply Corporation to design the . Ferranti designed the building, as well as the electrical systems for both generating and distributing  (AC). Among the innovations included in the Station was "the use of 10,000-volt high-tension cable", successfully tested for safety. On its completion in October 1890 it was the first truly modern power station, supplying high-voltage AC power. "Ferranti pioneered the use of Alternating Current for the distribution of electrical power in Europe authoring 176 patents on the alternator, high-tension cables, insulation, circuit breakers, transformers and turbines."
 * 1888: of, a  of the , successfully transmits and receives . He was employed at the time by the . Attempting to experimentally prove ' "" (1864), Hertz "generated electric waves using an electric circuit". Then he detected said waves "with another similar circuit some distance away". Hertz succeeded in proving the existence of . But in doing so, he had built basic  and  devices. Hertz took this work no further, did not exploit it commercially, and famously did not consider it useful. But it was an important step in the.
 * 1888–1890: of  launches his  on September 8, 1888. Created for the, el Peral was "roughly 71 feet long, with a 9-foot beam and a height of almost 9 feet amidships, with one horizontal and two small vertical propellers, Peral's "cigar," as the workers called it, ... had a periscope, a chemical system to oxygenate the air for a crew of six, a speedometer, spotlights, and a launcher at the bow capable of firing three torpedoes. Its two 30-horsepower electrical motors, powered by 613 batteries, gave it a theoretical range of 396 nautical miles and a maximum speed of 10.9 knots an hour at the surface." It underwent a series of trials in 1889 and 1890, all in the . On June 7, 1890, it "successfully spent an hour submerged at a depth of 10 meters, following a set course of three and a half miles". He was celebrated by the public and honored by ,  of . But Navy officials ultimately declared the submarine a "useless curiosity", scrapping the project.
 * 1888–1890: and  launch the, a 60-foot submarine for the . "It was driven by a 55 horse power electric motor, originally powered by 564 s by Coumelin, Desmazures et Baillache with a total capacity of 400 Amphours weighing 11 tons and delivering a maximum current of 166 Amps." She was launched on 24 September 1888 and would stay in service to 1908. The Gymnote underwent various trials to 1890, successful enough for the Navy to start building two "real fighting submarines", considerably larger. Several of the trials were intended to established tactical methods of using submarines in warfare. Several weapons were tested until it was decided that the es of  were ideal for the job. The Gymnote proved effective in breaking s and surface ships had trouble spotting it. She was able to withstand explosions of up to 220 pounds of  in a distance of 75 yards from its body. Shells of s, fired at short range, would explode in the water before hitting it. At long-range everything fired at the submarine, ended up ing. The submarine proved "blind" when submerged, establishing the need of a.
 * 1889–1891: of, files a patent for the  on March 12, 1889. Issued on March 10, 1891, it enabled automatic s. Since 1878, telephone communications were handled by s, staffed by s. Operators were not only responsible for connecting, monitoring and disconnecting calls. They were expected to provide "emotional support, emergency information, local news and gossip, business tips", etc. Strowger had reportedly felt the negative side of this development, while working as an  in . The local operator happened to be the wife of a rival undertaker. Whenever someone asked to be put through to an undertaker, the operator would connect them to her husband. Strowger was frustrated at losing customers to this . He created his device explicitly to bypass the need of an operator. His system "required users to tap out the number they wanted on three keys to call other users directly. The system worked with reasonable accuracy when the subscribers operated their push buttons correctly and remembered to press the release button after a conversation was finished, but there was no provision against a subscriber being connected to a busy line." Strowger would found the  in 1891.
 * 1889: of, ,  creates a motor-driven.
 * 1889: of,  created the first  . He was at the time working for.
 * Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered s were undertaken by, and
 * The first commercial production and sales of s and phonograph recordings occurred.
 * Steel frame construction of happened for the first time.
 * February 16, 1880: The was founded in.
 * Construction began on the by the French. This was the first attempt to build the Canal; it would end in failure.
 * Lewis Ticehurst invented the.
 * 1884: was brought from France.
 * 1885: invents the first ever  in,.
 * 1886: Earliest commercial is invented.
 * 1887: As the movement gained nationwide prevalence, a "liquor-free" drink was brewed, known now as.
 * 1888: reform movements begin when many cities are devastated by the.

Science

 * discovered the.
 * The was undertaken, which suggested that the  is invariant.
 * The of  was produced.


 * About 600,000  to.
 * , and   laid 73000 mi of  in.
 * started to the.

Literature and arts

 * published .
 * published .
 * published .
 * wrote .
 * published .
 * published ' and '.
 * published his first tale.
 * music and rise to popularity in the later part of the decade.
 * wrote .
 * published 

Architecture

 * , the first in history, becomes the  ever built after it officially opened in 1885.
 * March 31, 1889 – The is inaugurated (opens ). At 300 m, its height exceeds the previous  by 130 m.

Other

 * 8 May 1886 — was invented.
 * 1888 — Whitechapel murders by the infamous.