John Michels wrote a letter to Thomas Alva Edison, expressing his intention to establish an American scientific journal to counter the British Nature, founded by Norman Lockyer for the Draper Expedition to the 1878 eclipse. Edison financed it for the first year and then withdrew. Science magazine would have a glorious future, first under Michels and then under Alexander Graham Bell. Science magazine was founded in 1880 by New York journalist John Michels, but the real protagonists behind the scenes were two giants of innovation: Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Edison was the first to finance the project, but he was soon forced to withdraw due to the decline in his reputation, linked to delays in the commercialization of the light bulb. At that point, Bell and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, took over the journal and entrusted its refoundation to entomologist Samuel H. Scudder, who relaunched it in 1883. A turbulent beginning, but with exceptional sponsors!

De Beers diamond trust founded in South Africa

Official British opinion was firmly opposed to granting Edison any priority. The scientific journal Nature dismissed his light bulb as an “absolute failure: flawed in design and principle, and serving only to demonstrate how a crafty doer can dispense with genuine scientific expertise.” In Paris, it was more or less the same: it was impossible to believe that his light bulb did not deteriorate with incandescence. Edison took the Europeans’ anti-Americanism philosophically enough to ignore these comments.

Iosif Vissarionovic Dzhugashvili (later known as Stalin) was born in Gori, Georgia, in the Caucasus, the son of a cobbler and a washerwoman.

Berlin Industrial Exhibition: Small electric railway with 150V Siemens DC motor powered by rails

King Cetshwayo, the last great chief of Zululand, was captured after the defeat in the war between the Zulu Kingdom and Great Britain. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo had challenged British rule in southern Africa, prompting the invasion of Zululand in 1879. At Isandlwana and Mount Hlobane, the British suffered severe defeats at the hands of Zulu warriors, but in March, at the Battle of Khambula, the tide turned in their favor. In July, at Ulundi, Cetshwayo’s forces were annihilated, and the Zulus surrendered. In 1887, faced with continuing rebellions, Great Britain formally annexed Zululand. In 1897, it was merged with Natal, which became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910.

Thomas Alva Edison overcame his stage fright, partly due to his near-total deafness, by reading a speech in public on the plaster telephone receiver he invented, with Alexander Graham Bell in the audience. He would not give another public speech for 50 years, until the “Golden Jubilee of Light” in his honor in 1929.

Lars Nilson of Uppsala University discovers Scandium, filling the gap between Calcium and Titanium in Mendeleev’s table.

Anglo-Afghan Peace Treaty of Gandomak: Afghan Emir to handle internal affairs, British to handle foreign policy

LS Crandall releases a hammerless typewriter

Marsh, in a hasty note typical of the current race between him and Edwin D. Cope, describes Brontosaurus, but in reality it is still the Apatosaurus ajax, also described by him a few years earlier. The enormous amount of specimens discovered in just a few years by Marsh and Cope in North America does not allow the error to be immediately noticed, and this will create confusion between the two names (the scientific one is Apatosaurus ajax, but in popular culture it is Brontosaurus).

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland discover saccharin, 400 times sweeter than sugar.

The Ottoman Empire must suffer the humiliation of a victorious Russian army camped within sight of the outskirts of Istanbul.

Russo-Ottoman War. The Russians fail to capture Istanbul. However, the Imperial Palace in Edirne is completely destroyed.

Giovanni Schiaparelli observes what he calls the canals of Mars

British doctor Sir Patrick Manson, nicknamed Mosquito Manson, proved that the disease elephantiasis was caused by mosquitoes; 17 years later, he would also prove the same for malaria.

Louis Pasteur was the first to demonstrate that one microorganism could be used to kill another. These would be called antibiotics. Note that there is also a broader definition of antibiotic, which includes chemicals derived from dyes that attack certain bacteria. Pasteur demonstrated that the growth of anthrax could be prevented in urine by adding some common bacteria. Subsequently, John Lister investigated the properties of molds and successfully cured a patient with an abscess with a poultice of the mold Penicillum, which had resisted all previous treatments. But only the Scottish physician Alexander Fleming, in 1928, noticed that a mold from the Penicillum family disintegrated some staphylococcal cultures (what is now known as “lysis”). He thus developed penicillin, with an antibiotic but non-irritating effect, applicable directly to infected tissue, and more powerful than John Lister’s phenol. Penicillin also proved effective against meningitis, gonorrhea, and strep throat. But the production boom came with World War II: in July 1943, American pharmaceutical companies produced 800 million units of the new antibiotic, and in 1944, it reached 140 billion units! (a 17,000% increase in one year).

Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph contains some interesting aspects, typical of the circumstantial and sometimes accidental nature of some important inventions. Edison envisioned applications: recording the last words of dying people, recording books for the blind, announcing the exact time, and teaching correct pronunciation. Period. Reproducing music proved too frivolous an application for Edison. A few years after its invention, Edison declared the invention a failure and had no real practical commercial application and stopped trying to sell it. A few years later, he began selling it as a dictating machine for offices. Then other entrepreneurs began using it in the first jukeboxes, while Edison objected that it was useless compared to the office, business-related use he proposed. Another 20 years would pass before Edison admitted that the primary use of his phonograph was for recording and listening to music.

Italy. Milanese Enrico Forlanini experiments with a sort of steam-powered helicopter, much to the delight of Milanese citizens who witness it in a demonstration in the Public Gardens.

Tolstoy publishes Anna Karenina

Graz, Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nikola Tesla has successfully completed his second year of university, and during the summer he socializes with students at the Botanical Gardens, staying up late, smoking cigarettes and drinking copious amounts of coffee, and playing dominoes, chess, billiards, cards, and gambling. In September, he will return to Graz, but without enrolling in his third year of university.

Bell Telephone Company is the largest telephone service provider in the United States. In 1987, it was dissolved by antitrust regulations.

Notorious bank robber Jesse James is killed in the ensuing shootout during a Minnesota bank robbery.

Tsarist Russia. During this thirty-year period, 486 people were sentenced to death, or 17 people per year, throughout Russia, including those convicted of common crimes. From 1906 to 1908, during the years of the first revolution, death sentences soared to 2,200 people (45 per month!), only to then decline dramatically due to popular discontent. In the subsequent Soviet period, from October 1918 to October 1919, 16,000 people were executed (well over a thousand per month!!!).

Thomas Alva Edison writes an interminable patent application for a super acoustic telegraph transfer system that practically exploits the concept of time division that predates time division multiple access (TDMA) protocols by a century.