#1843

[whencyclopedia]

Electrical Telegraph

The Electrical Telegraph was invented in 1837 by William Fothergill Cook (1806-1879) and Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) in England with parallel innovations being made by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) in the United States. The telegraph, once wires and undersea cables had connected countries and continents, transformed communications so that messages could be sent and received anywhere in just minutes.

Telegraph Pioneers

The idea of sending signals from one distant place to another has been in use since antiquity, notably with towers using fire beacons. Ships have long used a system of flags (semaphore) to communicate beyond shouting distance. These methods, though, were limited to only very important communications, for more mundane messages people had to use horse-riding messengers that could take several days or even weeks to reach their intended recipient.

The Italian Alexander Volta (1745-1827) invented the electric battery in 1800, necessary for a telegraph machine to be operated anywhere. Then the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) created the first electromagnet in 1825. Ørsted's discovery that an electrical current flowing in a conductor can create a magnetic field – which he noted when observing the effect on a magnetic compass on his desk – was crucial to the telegraph machine since this was the answer to the problem of how to make electrical impulses visible in the form of a moving needle. The French physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) worked to create a theory that explained the relationship between an electrical current and magnetism. The first electric motor was developed by the Englishman Michael Faraday (1791-1867) in 1821. With all of these scientific discoveries put together, inventors now had the theoretical means to send electrical impulses through a wire and then see the effect at the other end. The trick was just how to create a working machine capable of sending and receiving these impulses over long distances and a code by which such impulses could be transformed into words.

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[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Ghost of Christmas Present and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - art by John Leech (1843)

[historical-fashion-polls]

submitted by @edwardian-girl-next-door 🤍🖤🤎

[antiquebee]

Nancy Foy Lawson by William Matthew Prior, 1843

[chic-a-gigot]

La Mode, 25 décembre 1843, Paris. Chapeau de Lemonnier-Pelvey. Fleurs de Constantin. Dentelles de Violard. Etoffes de robes de Gagelin. Mouchoir de Chapron et Cie. Ameublement de Maigret. Envois divers de la Maison de Commission Lassalle, 28 rue Taitbout. Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library

[pastlivesfinery]

Le Follet, 1843 🩵

[mapsontheweb]

Map of Europe by Chinese in 1843 (shortly after Opium war)

[nemfrog]

An uroboros circles the words faith, power, will and truth. The history and philosophy of animal magnetism. 1843.

Internet Archive

[ltwilliammowett]

Description of the uniforms of the Royal Navy from 1843

There is a large list behind it, so take a look at the link.

[s38s73r]

Wesleyan Chapel, Camborne, Cornwall /Kernow

[whencyclopedia]

Second Anglo-Sikh War

The Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-9) once again saw the British East India Company defeat the Sikh Empire in northern India. The war, which started off as a rebellion against British colonial rule, included the high-casualty Battle of Chillianwala, but the conflict was finally won by the EIC with a decisive victory at the Battle of Gujrat in February 1849.

The EIC & the Sikh Empire

The British East India Company had been grabbing territory since its victories at the 1757 Battle of Plassey and the 1764 Battle of Buxar, which gave the British a vast and regular income in local taxes, besides other riches. The EIC kept on expanding and defeated the southern Kingdom of Mysore in the three Anglo-Mysore Wars (1767-1799) and the Maratha Confederacy of Hindu princes in central and northern India in the three Anglo-Maratha Wars (1775-1819). Next came expansion in the far northeast and more victories in the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1815) and the three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824-1885). The next and final target of the EIC was northwest India and the Punjab, the heartland of the Sikh Empire.

The Punjab, located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, is an area which today covers parts of Pakistan and India. The Sikh Empire had risen due to the gradual decline of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857). Sikh territories were divided between 12 misls or armies, each led by a chief who collectively formed a loose confederation. The greatest of Sikh leaders was Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), the 'Lion of Lahore'. He forged the Sikh Empire by modernising the army and conquering Multan and Kashmir (1819), Ladakh (1833), and Peshawar (1834). This expansion rang alarm bells in the offices of the East India Company, especially after their failure in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42) to the north.

In 1839, the Sikhs, Afghans, and British signed a treaty to protect existing borders. Ranjit Singh died in June 1839, and political turmoil weakened the Sikh government's control over its own army. Rajit Singh's youngest son, Duleep Singh (l. 1838-1893), was selected as the new Sikh ruler in 1843, but as he was but a child, his mother, Jind Kaur (aka Rani Jindan, d. 1863), ruled as regent. Jind Kaur supported a military escapade against the British since, even if the Sikhs lost, this would cut the army down to size, perhaps ending the interference of the generals in government affairs and certainly reducing the threat of a military coup.

The EIC exploited the turmoil and conquered the Sindh province (southwest of the Punjab) in 1843. Confident that some of the Sikh misls in the east supported closer ties with the EIC, the British prepared for war in the Punjab and amassed an army of 40,000 men to the southeast of the Sikh state. In the wider world of empires, the British no longer considered the Sikh Empire a useful buffer zone in case of expansion of the Russian Empire into Afghanistan and northern India – the so-called Great Game. The Sikhs would now have to fight the seemingly unstoppable armies of the East India Company.

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[dailysmilingnatsume]

[historical-fashion-polls]

submitted by @edwardian-girl-next-door 💚💜

[antiquebee]

Caroline Stelzner (1808 - 1875), 1843

[chic-a-gigot]

La Mode, 5 octobre 1843, Paris. Chapeaux de velours garnis de plumes de Zacharie. Fleurs de Constantin. Etoffes de robes de Gagelin. Manteau du Pavillon de Hanovre. Dentelles de Violard. Gants de Mayer. Chaussures de Baudrand, 348 St. Honore. Meubles de Maigret. Envois de la Maison de Commission Lassalle et Cie., 28 rue Taitbout. Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Antonio María Esquivel, Portrait of Filomena Sanchez Salvador de la Mancha-Real, c.1843 (detail)

via fineartamerica