Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

(Ann) #1

1780 – 1829


His example was emulated by Th e Times in 1808
when Henry Crabb Robinson was commissioned
to cover the Peninsular War.
1798 France, at the Essonne mill: Nicolas Robert
introduces the first paper manufacturing
machine; the first in England established at
Frogmore, Hertfordshire, in 1805 by brothers
Henry and Sealy Fourdriner, and at St Neots,
Huntingdonshire, by John Gamble. Paper output
increased tenfold.

• (^) Prime Minister William Pitt increases the
tax on British newspapers from 1½ pence to
2½ pence and bans the import into the UK of
foreign newspapers.
1800 Bavarian Alois Senefelder takes out English
patent for lithographic process, printing from
the surface of a specially prepared stone.
Photography is incorporated into the printed
page, using lithography, from 1840.
1802 Founding of the Weekly Political Register by
William Cobbett, one of the outstanding jour-
nalist/editors of the nineteenth century. Paper
survives until 1835.
1805 Lord Stanhope’s improved stereotyping
machine set up at Oxford’s Clarendon Press.
1811 Th omas Bensley makes fi rst use in the UK of
the Frederick Koenig steam-driven press to print
in London 3000 sheets of the Annual Register.
1814 Th e Times installs the Koenig press, the most
significant technological advance in printing
since the age of Gutenberg. Th e steam-driven
press made mass production of newspapers a
reality and, in the company of other inventions
in paper manufacture and stereotyping, ushered
in the first age of mass communication. The
initial run was 1100 sheets per hour. Th e fi rst
book to be printed on the power press in the UK
was Johann Blumenbach’s Physiology, in 1817.
1821 In Britain, the Six Acts passed, including
two targeting the radical press.
• (^) Manchester Guardian founded.
1822 Invention of the camera by Frenchman
Joseph Nièpce who produced the fi rst photo-
graph (1826). Also in 1822, William Church’s
letter-founding machine makes for reductions
in production costs. Hand-assembly could cast
between 3,000 and 7,000 letters a day, Church’s
machine between 12,000 and 20,000.
• (^) Sunday Times founded.
1826 Leipzig publisher F.A. Brockhaus applies
Koenig’s steam press to the printing of books.
• (^) First permanently fi xed photograph created by
Nicéphore Nièpce. Th is was taken from an upper
storey at Nièpce’s home at Gras, Chalon-sur-
Saône.
1829 Four-cylinder steam press, invented by
summons to the people of America to rise up in
battle and overthrow British rule. As one English
historian believed: ‘It would be diffi cult to name
any human composition which had an effect
at once so instant, so extended, and so lasting.’
120,000 copies of Common Sense were sold
within three months of publication.
1780 UK: fi rst Sunday newspaper published – the
British Gazette and Sunday Monitor.
1785 Founding of Th e Times newspaper followed
by the Observer in 1791.
• (^) Paris: fortnightly Le Cabinet des Modes is
published, the fi rst fashion magazine.
1787 First recorded advertising agency formed in
London by William Tayler, who for a handling
fee booked advertisements in the provincial
press.
1788 UK: publication of fi rst daily evening news-
paper – Star and Evening Advertiser.
1789 Revolution in France: the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizens is promulgated 27
July; the key to this being the notion of popular
sovereignty. The principles of the Revolution
were to be an inspiration to radicalism in Britain
and a guiding light of the Radical press.
• (^) In turn events in France provoked the authori-
ties in Britain to take repressive measures against
the Radicals and the causes they advocated.
1790 Orator and conservative theorist Edmund
Burke publishes Refl ections on the Revolution in
France condemning the uprising of the common
people.
1791 Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man Part 1
published, a stirringly eloquent riposte to Burke’s
Refl ections.
• (^) English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designs a
‘panopticon’, (the all-seeing one) for the central
inspection of convicts; an idea given new life
in the twentieth century in an age of electronic
surveillance.
• (^) First Amendment to the American Bill of
Rights guarantees the freedom of the press.
1792 First Libel Act becomes law in Britain.
• (^) Part 2 of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man published.
Also Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the
Rights of Women, demanding equal educational
opportunities for women.
1793 John Bell, Yorkshire-born founder of the
Oracle or Bell’s New World becomes the fi rst-
ever foreign correspondent, reporting to his
own paper the fi ghting between the British and
French in the Low Countries. He chose to march
with the French rather than with the forces of the
Duke of York. He reported on the British victo-
ries at Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Villiers-en-Cauche
and Troixelle as well as the defeat at Tournay.

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