InventionS....

1839: Invention of the bicycle The first vehicle that resembled the bicycle was put together in 1645 in France by Jean Theson. It was, however, a four-wheeled machine. A two-wheeled contraption was invented in Germany in about 1816. To ride it, the passenger sat on a seat and propelled himself by running on the ground. The two-wheeled bicycle as we know it today was invented in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1839 by a blacksmith named Kirkpatrick Macmillan. It had a steerable 30-inch front wheel and a 40-inch rear wheel. This bicycle had no pedals or chain-activated gears. There were, instead, two foot pedals attached to rods that connected to the back wheel. The alternate movement of rods on either side propelled the bicycle. Unfortunately for Macmillan, his invention never became popular. It was left to a French father-and-son team, Pierre and Ernest Michaux, to build the bicycle from which the present popularity of the vehicle is derived. By 1865 the Michaux family was producing 400 bicycles a year. 1839: Opium Wars begin By the mid-19th century, China believed itself to be self-sufficient, needing and wanting nothing from the outside. Yet if other countries were to buy Chinese goods without being able to sell anything to China, a large trade deficit would develop. It was this problem that stood behind the Opium Wars. British traders smuggled opium--a dangerous and addictive narcotic--into China. Most of the opium trade was concentrated in the southern part of China, around Canton, because China had restricted the entry of foreigners to this district. In 1839 the government of China decided to rid itself of the opium trade. It confiscated all the opium in warehouses around Canton. This led to open animosity between the British and the Chinese. English sailors killed a Chinese villager a few days after the opium confiscation. When the British authorities refused to turn the sailors over to the Chinese, hostilities broke out. The more powerful British military forces quickly won the conflict. The British then imposed on the Chinese treaties very favorable to England. It was at this time that China was forced to cede Hong Kong to Great Britain. A second Opium War occurred in 1856, when China broke the Treaty of Nanking, which had ended the first war. The second war lasted four years. By the end of the conflict, Great Britain and France forced China to sign the Tientsin treaties, which opened the Yangtze River to foreign ships and legalized the opium trade. Some of the repercussions of this agreement were felt in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. 1840: First postage stamps The sending of communications over long distances has been common for several thousand years. Most such communications were messages from one government official to another. By the late Middle Ages postal systems in Europe were carrying private letters as well. Privately operated and government postal systems were functioning after 1500. In 1837 a British tax reformer named Rowland Hill published a report on postal reform, which revolutionized the whole system. The service was made more efficient, owing mostly to greatly improved transportation. Hill realized that the cost of carrying letters was relatively insignificant and that basing charges on distance was ineffective. He advocated a uniform rate of postage, regardless of distance, and prepayment for mail by the use of postage stamps. Charges would be based on the weight of the letter or package. This is the system still in use today. The system of prepayment by stamps was implemented in England in 1840. Hill's system was quickly adopted in postal systems throughout the world 1841: David Livingstone in Africa For most outsiders in the 19th century, Africa--specifically sub-Saharan Africa--seemed a mysterious continent. The age of European colonization in Africa had not yet arrived when English missionary and explorer David Livingstone set foot in Cape Town on March 14, 1841. He was to spend most of the rest of his life in Africa, doing missionary work and exploring the interior of the continent. He was the first European to travel so extensively into previously uncharted territory. He was determined to open up Africa to Christianity and Western commerce, to find the source of the Nile River, and, if possible, to destroy the slave trade. Livingstone's first expedition lasted until 1849, when he returned to England to publish and lecture on his journey. The information he provided shaped the West's ideas about Africa and encouraged others to take up the work he had begun. During a subsequent expedition, Livingstone's lines of communication were broken, and for five years his exact whereabouts were unknown. An American reporter, Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald, was sent out to look for him. Stanley found Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, an ill and failing man. With Stanley's supplies, Livingston resolved to continue his quest for the Nile's source, but he did not succeed. He died in 1873 in what is now Zambia. 'The Last Journals of David Livingstone' were published the following year. 1841: Unification of Canada From 1791 until 1841 Canada was divided into two main regions: Upper Canada consisted of what is now Ontario, and Lower Canada of what is now Quebec. Both of these Canadas were under British rule, but as outposts of the British Empire they were stagnating economically. Canada's future became a major issue in British politics in the late 1830s. In 1838 John George Lambton, earl of Durham, was sent to Canada as governor-in-chief to study and report on the condition of the colonies. Durham and his secretary, Charles Buller, prepared a report on Canada for Parliament and presented it to the colonial office upon their return early in 1839. The report advocated union of the two Canadas and a greater degree of self-government. Durham also wanted to pressure the French Canadians into adopting the English language and assimilating with the Canadians of British background. The British government agreed in 1840 to the unification of the two Canadas, which became effective in 1841. The two provinces became known afterwards as Canada East and West. Not much self-government was allowed, but a new legislature was established. The French and English provinces each received an equal number of seats. The point of this policy was to ease assimilation of the French citizens; this goal, however, has never been fully achieved. 1844: Invention of the telegraph The first major advance in the communications revolution was the invention of the telegraph in 1844 by Samuel F.B. Morse, an American artist, with the help of his partner, Alfred Vail. Their invention was based on the development of the electromagnet. Morse made an operator key, not unlike a single typewriter key. When depressed it completed an electric circuit and sent a signal to a receiver. The first receiver embossed a code of dots and dashes on a roll of paper. Later receivers had a sounding key to which the receiving operator listened and wrote the messages down directly. The telegraph provided the first effective, rapid, long-distance communication system. It was readily adopted in many nations, and undersea cables were laid to carry messages from one continent to another. Morse himself invented a telegraphic code that bears his name. 1845: Irish potato famine and the great migration Immigration to the United States from Ireland in sizeable numbers began after the War of 1812. Between 6,000 and 9,000 immigrants arrived annually in 1816 and 1817. The numbers grew steadily, since opportunities for the Irish to prosper under British rule were few. Then, a few years later, one of the great human tragedies of the 19th century began in Ireland--the potato famine. It began in 1845, when a cold, wet summer brought potato rot. Virtually the whole crop was wiped out, and almost one million people, nearly one fourth of the population, died of starvation or disease. The famine spurred a great migration from Ireland to the United States. In 1846 the number reached more 92,000. By 1850 it was over 206,000. Gradually the famine subsided, but the land tenure system in Ireland was so unfair that the Irish continued to emigrate by the thousands. Eventually they became one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States. 1846: Development of anesthesia An American physician named Crawford Long began using ether in surgical operations in 1842. He did not publish the results of his work until 1849, however. It was a Boston dentist, William Morton, who in 1846 convinced the medical community that general anesthesia was a practical procedure in surgery. Morton publicly demonstrated the use of ether in an operation to remove a tumor in October 1846. The early use of anesthetics was somewhat hazardous, since there were sometimes unpleasant side effects. Dosage control was also a problem. The dose had to be sufficient to eliminate sensitivity to pain, but not so great that it would paralyze the breathing mechanism and cause death. In addition to ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide were used in the mid-19th century. 1846: Mexican War The original Spanish Empire in North America included not only today's Mexico but the whole of the modern American Southwest--Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and parts of other states. When Mexico won its independence from Spain, this entire area was within its borders, but a clash between the westward-expanding United States and its Mexican neighbor was inevitable. With no well-defined borders, Americans kept pushing their way west in search of land and opportunity. The annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845 led to a dispute about the Texas-Mexico boundary. President James K. Polk sent diplomat John Slidell on a mission to Mexico City to negotiate the differences between the two nations and to purchase New Mexico and California. Mexican officials refused to receive him. Polk then sent troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed border area. Mexico considered this to be an invasion and responded with an attack on the American forces. In May 1846 Congress approved a declaration of war on Mexico. Although American troops were consistently outnumbered by the Mexican army, they were successful in all major engagements. On Feb. 2, 1848 the war was concluded by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Mexico ceded the whole Southwest to the United States in exchange for 15 million dollars. General Taylor became a national hero and was elected president in 1848. 1847: Liberia founded by freed slaves Long before the American Civil War, black slavery was a contentious issue in the United States. Many people who wanted to end slavery were also concerned about the welfare of free black people in the United States. The American Colonization Society believed that the best way to aid these people was to help them to resettle in Africa. With this plan, the country of Liberia was created, and Africa's first republic was formed. American freed slaves first arrived in the area in 1821. The American Colonization Society supervised Liberia until 1847, when its first black governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, declared it an independent republic. Roberts became the nation's first president and worked to expand its borders and end the slave trade in Western Africa. 1848: The Revolutions of 1848 For all the violence that accompanied it, the French Revolution had created a wellspring of hope for the underprivileged masses. Later the promise of the French Revolution had disappeared in the Reign of Terror, the Napoleonic Wars, and the return of oppressive monarchical rule all over Europe. While pressure for change kept mounting, new ideologies, mostly called socialist, gathered large followings. The continued resistance to change by governments made it seem that revolution was the only way to effect change. The year 1848 was pivotal: so ready was Europe for popular revolution that it only took one small spark to set off the conflagration. This spark came in a local rebellion in Sicily in January. France next took up the cause; the monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the Second Republic--which unhappily soon gave way to Louis Napoleon and the Second Empire. Soon revolutions were breaking out in most of Europe, though Russia, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries were not involved. The emperor of Austria withstood the turmoil by promising a new constitution and political reform. German states took a similar approach. Real changes were minimal, though; generally the revolutions failed in achieving their goals because the armies remained loyal to their governments. This was also the year of the 'Communist Manifesto', and rulers began to view the future with alarm. A fresh wind had blown through Europe; in the 20th century it would become a hurricane with the rise of state-sponsored communism. 1848: Gold Discovered in California Fleeing financial woes, John Augustus Sutter left Switzerland for the United States in 1839. He made his way to California and took Mexican citizenship, as California was then part of Mexico. He was given a land grant of 50,000 acres at the junction of the American and Sacramento Rivers, where the city of Sacramento stands today. Within a few years he was prospering, with thousands of head of cattle, horses, and sheep. On Jan. 24, 1848, one of Sutter's workmen, James Marshall, went out to a sawmill he was building on the ranch. There he discovered gold. Ironically, Sutter's good fortune ended when the great American gold rush began. Gold-seekers from all over the United States and abroad inundated Sutter's land, destroying his livestock and property. Penniless, he implored Congress, without success, to redress these wrongs. News of the discovery of gold quickly spread. Thousands of people immediately began leaving the East Coast, Europe, and Asia for California, now a territory of the United States. The first of the great modern gold rushes was on. Later in the century there would be more gold strikes, in the Yukon and Klondike of the far north. Thanks to the gold rush, California was rapidly developed. San Francisco became its leading metropolis, well before people turned their attention to the warmer climate of the present-day Los Angeles area.