1879

Phalke's family moved to Bombay when his father joined the teaching staff of the Wilson/Elphinstone College

---

1879-86 Bombay

The birth of the Indian National Congress

The clock of Rajabai Towers

Buying shoes, taking measurements

Shakuntala

The photographic gun is invented to take photo sequences of birds in flight.

Phalke's brother from Baroda brings home an oleograph of Raja Ravi Verma's

The thought of Bombay excites Phalke, but he is saddened by the seperation from his friend. Somewhere, he is hurt.

He takes his frustration out on his sister, who is teasing him for his tears. He is around nine years old.

With his parents, uncle, brother and sister, Phalke first crosses the sacred Godavari river from Trymbak to Nasik.

They then catch a train bound for Bombay.

That evening on the train, Phalke's father takes out a miniature ritual yagnavedi in metal to perform his evening puja.

From the train we see, at a far distance, a huge bellows camera being carried on a bullock cart handled by eight Lilliputian men.

As within, a ritual is taking place, the train stops and the eight men assemble and load the Gulliver-like camera to take a single profile shot of the entire length of the train.

The sight of the huge machine mesmerizes Phalke, the boy.

The train moves on.

After a while, it enters a cave-like Victoria Terminus, almost as though entering a camera obscura, and halts.

A crowd gets off.

Phalke is seperated from his family and gets lost.

Darkness descends.

He is alone in a deserted Victoria Terminus, bewitched by the carvings of gargoyles, lizards, lions, tigers,flora and fauna, like in a fairyland.

Suddenly it starts to rain, and everything comes to life.

Streams of water pour out of the stone mouths of mythical monsters, frothing at the jaws.

Phalke is shaken, shivering with cold, crying for his father in the dark.

But it is still unreal twilight outside VT station that a group of boys from the JJ School of Arts sit with hammers and knives, carving out figures on the terraces and the tops. The cotton loaders are teasing a Victoria look-alike, a mad woman at the fountain outside.

Picking up leaves as if to build a nest, small birds move above.

A Victoria enters and drags a woman away by the hair.

A mad dog chases Phalke through a backdrop- streets, railways lines, ships and factories.

He enters a palace and finds the princess stretching her arms and calling his name, and then metamorphising into a frightening old woman.

With a jerk, Phalke comes awake.

He is fifteen years old. And he has to run for his examination at Sir JJ School of Art.

He has been woken by his father, is fed by his mother, and sent off for the exam.

As he sketches the live model sitting nude, the hands and toes of the drawing keep disappearing.

As in the peeling frescos of Ajanta, where we see the same students taking photographs of the frescoes, or tracing through the cross hairs of the camera obscura prints being enlarged.

The JJ School boys have come to Ajanta and are living in camps outside the caves.

Mr. Griffith and Mr. Pestonjee are conducting a class about Ajanta, and discussing the differences between the art of Raja Ravi Verma and that of Ajanta.

Phalke and his colleagues talk to Lady Hardinge, the future Vicergine of India, and to Abanindranath Tagore.

Young Phalke is being teased- he has to leave for Nasik the next day, for he is getting married.

His bride, Kamala, is twelve years old.

Together they play the ritual wedding games, spouting water from their mouths into other's face, trying to snatch the supari from each other's fists, feeding the other while calling him names, almost reminiscent of the frescoes at Ajanta.

After the wedding day, the boy Phalke manages to talk to his child bride one last time before leaving her behind.

Going from Trymbak to Nasik, he crosses the Godavari River by boat.

---

The Zoopraniscope projector was designed by Muybridge to project glass discs projecting sequences of pictures painted from the photographic series.

First electrified railroad. Arc lamp, Ball-bearing.

---

Edison lit up a street in Menlo Park and invited people to see his incandescent bulb. The bulb itself had been invented decades earlier, but this was the first time that such a practical version had been made, moreover, publicly demonstrated. Besides, it was part of a larger system of production.. the Edison generator. Each flamboyant demonstration by the The "Wizard of Menlo Park", was like a private Mount Rushmore, that ensured him a loud presence in the history of inventions.

---

In the military accounts department for 15 years now, Vasudeo Balwant Phadke is used to the presence of paper. Plenty of paper, many files, and a pride in knowing how to write in English.

That afternoon in the large stone cavern of the office, in a cool darkness, Vasudeo metamorphoses. His hair shrinks first, becomes unruly. Then his toes flow out in curves ending in a flourish of nails. His eyes open wide, then wider, and redden with angry veins. His fingers let go of their role as a pen clutch. They open up begin to flow wildly like pennants in a blue sky. His long fingered hand sweeps the table clean and makes all on it disappear, out of sight, under it- the inkpot falling on the papers and all the wretched English that was written on them. The papers astrew on the floor.

No one notices? Or people just let it be. They know his grievance..he had applied for leave to meet his ailing mother, but the leave application had taken its time touring so many desks, that his mother had died meanwhile.

Like a slow caterpillar, the quiet Vasudeo had been standing in corners, watching the wrestlers at Lahuji's Gajpeth talimkhana for a while. He saw upper caste revolutionaries, including Tilak, had been frequenting this place run by a lowly Mang. They were seeking the pulse of Parsuram, the warrior brahman.. they came to the Mang to find it. And what a fighter he was, Lahuji! And he spoke so well.

Even as the office ate away so many of his precious hours, Vasudeo would make his way to the talimkhana when he could.. and with every conversation made there, with every energetic roll of body he made on the sand there, he was spinning himself his chrysalis.

When the chrysalis finally moulted, a fine angry face with light eyes unfurled itself with glorious creases all over its skin. The printing machines in Pune would go made making his images, soon. He would serve paper no more, paper would serve him.

In one fell swoop, one bearded man had defeated another.. Lytton's Arms Act and Vernacular Press Act were both rubbished, as the lithographic presses found new energy to run and bring out images, and a government clerk took to arms.

When the butterfly-brahman-bandit flew over the landscape on a horse, leading an army of Ramoshis, he was followed by skyfuls of screeching parrots that flew away from the Chitrashala prints. He wanted no more truck with the ill kept bodies, prone to acidity, of his own community. He would never keep writing in a file again either, he fought, and he lived among those who fought. Their first joyous raid was at the house of a local business man in a village in Pune district..there, in his vault, was the collections of income tax to hand over to the government. Vasudeo and his army looted the British loot, and decided they would work to give it back to the people.

---

When two strong men come face to face though they come from the ends of the earth Coleridge

---

Template:Yearbox Template:C19YearInTopic

1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January-March

• January 1 - The Specie Resumption Act takes effect. The Greenback is valued the same as Gold for the first time since the Civil War.
• January - The current constitution of The State of California, US was ratified.
• January 2 - Fred Spofforth claims the first Hat-trick in test cricket.
• January 11 - Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• January 22 - Zulu troops massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorke's Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting.
• February 12 - At New York City's Madison Square Garden the first artificial ice rink in North America opens.
• February 14 - At Antofagasta, Chile: Chilean troops disembark in this port, then Bolivian. This is the beginning of the War of the Pacific between Chile and the joint forces of Peru and Bolivia.
• February 15 - Women's rights: American President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
• February 22 - In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of 5 and 10-cent Woolworth stores.
• February 27 - The discovery of saccharin is announced.
• March 3 - The United States Geological Survey is created
• March 12 - Anglo-Zulu War: A British force over one-hundred strong is ambushed and destroyed by Zulu forces.
• March 13 - Marriage of The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria, to Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia.
• March 14 - Albert Einstein: German-born physicist who would go on to revolutionize modern Physics.
• March 28 - Anglo-Zulu War: British forces suffer a defeat at the Battle of Hlobane.
• March 29 - Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.

April-December

• April 3 - Anglo-Zulu War: British forces successfully lift the two-month Siege of Eshowe.
• April 21 (San Jacinto Day) - Texas governor Oran M. Roberts authorized the establishment of Sam Houston Normal Institute (today known as Sam Houston State University).
• May 26 - Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.
• May 30 - New York City's Gilmores Garden is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
• May 30 - A F4 tornado struck Irving, Kansas, killing 18 people and injuring 60.
• June 14 - Sidney Faithorn Green, an Anglican priest in the Church of England, is tried and convicted for using Ritualist practices
• July 4 - Anglo-Zulu War: The Anglo-Zulu War effectively ends at the Battle of Ulundi.
• July 4 - Taughannock Giant unearthed on the shore of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, New York (later proven to be a hoax).
• July 19 - Doc Holliday kills for the first time after a man shoots-up Holliday's New Mexico saloon.
• August 21 - Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist appeared in Knock to local people.
• October 7 - Dual Alliance formed by Germany and Austria-Hungary
• October 21 - Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric light bulb (it lasted 13 1/2 hours before burning out).
• December 28 - The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses as a train passed over it, killing 75.
• December 30 - The Pirates of Penzance is first performed (Paignton, Devon, England).
• December 31 - Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time (Menlo Park, New Jersey).

Unknown dates

• Hall effect discovered by Dr. Edwin Hall.
• Somerville College founded.
• Stefan-Boltzmann law discovered by Jožef Stefan.
• Football first played in Shepshed.
• Irish Land League convinces tenants of Charles Boycott and neighboring townsfolk to isolate him by noncooperation - first boycott
• Ferdinand Cheval begins to build his Palais Idéal in France
• The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) was formed

Births

January-April

• January 1 - E. M. Forster, English writer (d. 1970)
• January 3 - Grace Coolidge, First Lady of the United States (d. 1957)
• January 12 - Ray Harroun, American race car driver (d. 1968)
• January 13 - Melvin Jones, American founder of Lions Clubs International (d. 1961)
• January 28 - Francis Picabia, French painter and poet (d. 1953)
• February 18 - MAESIL, Korean strategist and halo professional (d. 1989)
• February 22 - J. N. Brønsted, Danish chemist (d. 1947)
• February 26 - Frank Bridge, English composer (d. 1941)
• March 8 - Otto Hahn, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
• March 14 - Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)
• March 26 - Othmar Ammann, Swiss-born engineer (d. 1965)
• March 30 - Coen de Koning, Dutch speed skater (d. 1954)
• April 16 - Gala Galaction, Romanian writer (d. 1961)
• April 20 - Paul Poiret, French couturier (d. 1944)
• April 26 - Owen Willans Richardson, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)
• April 29 - Sir Thomas Beecham, English conductor (d. 1961)

May-December

• May 6 - Bedřich Hrozny´, Czech orientalist and linguist (d. 1952)
• May 17 - Simon Petlyura, Ukrainian independence fighter (d. 1926)
• May 19 - Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, American-born politician (d. 1964)
• May 19 - Viscount Waldorf Astor, British businessman and politician (d. 1952)
• May 22 - Alla Nazimova, Ukrainian-born stage and film actress (d. 1945)
• May 23 - Dezső Lauber, Hungarian sportsman (d. 1966)
• May 25 - Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-born statesman and newspaper publisher (d. 1964)
• June 3 - Raymond Pearl, American biologist (d. 1940)
• July 1 - Léon Jouhaux, French labor leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1954)
• July 5 - Wanda Landowska, Polish harpsichordist (d. 1959)
• August 8 - Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary (d. 1919)
• August 13 - John Ireland, English composer (d. 1962)
• August 31 - Emperor Yoshihito, 123rd Emperor of Japan (d. 1926)
• September 2 - An Jung-geun, assassin of the Japanese politician Ito Hirobumi (d. 1910)
• September 6 - Joseph Wirth, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1956)
• September 14 - Margaret Sanger, American birth control advocate (d. 1966)
• September 15 - Joseph Lyons, tenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1939)
• September 20 - Victor Sjöström, Swedish film actor and director (d. 1960)
• October 2 - Wallace Stevens, American poet (d. 1955)
• October 3 - Warner Oland, Swedish-born actor (d. 1938)
• October 5 - Francis Peyton Rous, American pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1970)
• October 9 - Max von Laue, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1960)
• October 21 - Joseph Canteloube, French composer and singer (d. 1957)
• October 29 - Franz von Papen, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1969)
• November 4 - Will Rogers, American humorist (d. 1935)
• November 10 - Patrick Pearse, Irish patriot (d. 1916)
• November 26 - Charles W. Goddard, playwright and screenwriter (d. 1951)
• December 3 - Nagai Kafu, Japanese writer (d. 1959)
• December 10 - Jouett Shouse, American politician (d. 1968)
• December 18 - Paul Klee, Swiss artist (d. 1940)
• December 28 - Billy Mitchell, U.S. general and military aviation pioneer (d. 1936)

Unknown dates

• Joseph Campbell, Northern Irish poet and lyricist (d. 1944)
• Robert Wilson Lynd, Northern Irish essayist and writer (d. 1949)

Deaths

• February 11 - Honoré Daumier, French caricaturist and painter (b. 1808)
• February 23 - Albrecht Graf von Roon, Prime Minister of Prussia (b. 1803)
• February 25 - Charles Peace, British criminal (executed) (b. 1832)
• March 1 - Joachim Heer, Swiss politician (b. 1825)
• March 30 - Thomas Couture, French painter and teacher (b. 1815)
• April 30 - Sarah Josepha Hale, American author (b. 1788)
• June 1 - Napoleon Eugene, Prince Imperial, son of French Emperor Napoleon III (b. 1856)
• August 30 - John Bell Hood, America Confederate general (b. 1831)
• November 5 - James Clark Maxwell, Scottish physicist (b. 1831)
• August 11 - George Willison Adams, Ohio abolitionist (b.1799)