1880

Lord Rippon- Viceroy of India

Annasaheb Kirloskar's sangeet "Shakuntal" introduces natya sangeet. Parsee Theatre to have its own immense curtains- a river, a hill behind, upon it a house and a road leading down with tamarind trees on either side.

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Backdrops across painting and theatre

Backdrops opened new worlds that could change rapidly within the space of a show. Huge paintings- 14 or 18 feet high and 26- 28 feet wide, could make any world come alive. A large pond over which floats a gas balloon, sitting in which Tukaram is playing his castenet, crowds of people standing below are looking up, pointing The actors turn their backs to the audience and join the crowd, and then ask " Look, is that a bird? Is that what the pushpak viman looks like? Look!" An astonished swan is frozen mid air to look at the spectacle.

A lonely street where lovers meet under a smouldering afternoon sun

Factories belch smoke the colour of a deep evening sky, the back of a train in the distance, leaving its own trail of smoke, an Parsee gentleman races on his humpbacked tricycle, the wheels have painted clocks on them. Time and speed are money, they say.

Unknown to him, his daughter steals out- there she is behind a pillar, under the shade of the lone tree in the city, meeting her down-on-luck lover.

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painted backdrops, 19th and early 20th century theatre in India

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The first Big Top was brought to India in 1880 by an Englishman Willaim Chirney, who offered 500 gold coins to any Indian who could hassle a horse the way he did. The Raja of Kurdwad's stable hand, Vishnupant Chhatre, took up the challenge, and thus was born Chhatre's Circus, the precusor of other "Indian" circuses: Deval, Parashuram, Lion, Karlekar, Shellar, Rayman, Malabar and Whiteways..

The roof of the circus tent was the sky of the world that you entered. Here anything could and must happen. Limbs turned to jelly inside shimmering costumes, big animals danced and performed for the little ones, clowns were cursed with large boils on their noses for always telling lies. Men fell down like bears and laughed, their paws in the air. Bears wore frilly skirts and over them,bright blouses held together with strings.

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The Big Clock

When the University Library and Clock Tower were inaugrated by the Governor of Bombay, Sir Richard Temple, on February 27, 1880, neither the clock nor the joy bells were in place. They were installed two years later. The contract for the tower clock had been given to Lund and Blockley, at British firm in London that dated back to 1725. In 1879, Mr. George Lund, a member of the Lund family that had been well-known for generations in London with the working of previous metals, jewellery and clocks, came to Bombay under contract from the government to erect the University clock. Unique in design and of intricate worksmanship, it had been constructed in England from Mr. Lund's blueprints. In Bombay it was installed in the fifth storey of the Rajabai Tower, under the personal supervision of Mr. Lund himself. It consisted of the clock dials, twleve and a half feet in diameter, and the carillon machinery consisting of 16 bells and eighing 12 tons. The told cost of the clock and bells was Rs. 30,000.

The musical chimes changed automatically four times a day. The repertoire consisted of 16 different tunes, among them were Handel's symphony, the National Anthem(of that period), the Blue Bells of Scotland, Rule Britannia, Home Sweet Home and Auld Lang Syne. There were tuned to the key of C.

With the university clock in place, Mr. Lund "was prevailed upon" to set up shop in Bombay. Which he did at Sassoon Institute Building, Esplanade Road where a firm of the same name still operates. Turret clocks soon cropped up all over India- in the Kolhapur new palace,the Limbidi Durbar Hall, the Baroda Chimanbai Memorial Tower, the new G.I.P. Railway Terminus among others. But perhaps next to the Univeristy clock, the one that drew most attention was set up in their shop window itself. This was a "wonderful clock" that gave the time of all nations and was made by Mr. Lund himself.

An 1870 image of the Big Clock, the scaffoldings still in place

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1880 (MDCCCLXXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).

Events

January - April

• February 2 - The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.

May - August

• May 13 - In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
• June 29 - France annexes Tahiti.
• July 1 - First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada.
• July 16 - First woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada - Dr. Emily Howard Stowe.

September - December

• September 5 - First successful test of an electric Tram in the world takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• October - terrible winter storm in North America, the "Blizzard of 1880".
• October 15 - Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists.
• October 28 - The first stone was laid for the Clarkson Memorial in Wisbech.
• November - James Garfield defeats Winfield S. Hancock in the U.S. presidential election.
• November 4 - the first cash register was patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio.
• November 11 - Australian bushranger and bank robber Ned Kelly is hanged in Melbourne.
• November 22 - Vaudeville actress Lillian Russell makes her debut at Tony Pastor's Theatre in New York City.
• December 20 - Action at Bronkhorstspruit, the first major action of the First Boer War.
• December 30 - The Transvaal becomes a republic and Paul Kruger becomes its first president.

Unknown date

• Discovery of piezoelectricity by Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie.
• Completion of Cologne cathedral.
• Founding of Science by Thomas Edison.
• Cocaine isolated.
• The British recognise Abdur Rahman Khan as amir of Afghanistan.
• Capuchin catacombs of Palermo are officially closed (there will be some burials afterwards).
• Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the Women's Christian Temperance Union established.

Births

• January 6 - Tom Mix, American actor (d. 1940)
• January 17 - Mack Sennett, Canadian director and producer (d. 1960)
• January 26 - Douglas MacArthur, American general (d. 1964)
• January 28 - Herbert Strudwick, English cricketer (d. 1970)
• January 29 - W.C. Fields, American actor (d. 1946)
• February 5 - Gabriel Voisin, French aviation pioneer (d. 1973)
• February 8 - Franz Marc, German artist (d. 1916)
• February 12 - John L. Lewis, American labor union leader (d. 1969)
• February 21 - Waldemar Bonsels, German writer (d. 1952)
• February 22 - Frigyes Riesz, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1956)
• March 1 - Giles Lytton Strachey, British writer and biographer (d. 1932)
• March 10 - Bronco Billy Anderson, American actor (d. 1971)
• March 11 - Harry H. Laughlin, American eugenicist (d. 1943)
• March 22 - Kuniaki Koiso, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1950)
• March 30 - Sean O'Casey, Irish writer (d. 1964)
• April 13 - Charles Christie, Canadian-born film studio owner (d. 1955)
• April 15 - Max Wertheimer, Father of Gestalt Theory (d. 1943)
• April 18 - Sam Crawford, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1968)
• May 6 - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German painter (d. 1938)
• May 14 - B.C. Forbes, Scottish-born financial publisher (d. 1954)
• May 25 - Jean Alexandre Barré, French neurologist (d. 1967)
• May 25 - Alf Common, English footballer (d. 1946)
• May 29 - Oswald Spengler, German philosopher (d. 1936)
• June 6 - W.T. Cosgrave, Irish politician (d. 1965)
• June 27 - Helen Keller, American spokeswoman for the deaf and blind (d. 1968)
• July 5 - Jan Kubelík, Czech violinist (d. 1940)
• July 21 - Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Slovak General, politician, and astronomer (d. 1919).
• July 24 - Ernest Bloch, Swiss-born composer (d. 1959)
• August 6 - Hans Moser, Austrian actor (d. 1964)
• August 8 - Earle Page, eleventh Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1961)
• August 10 - Robert L. Thornton, American businessman, philanthropist, and mayor of Dallas, Texas (d. 1964)
• August 22 - George Herriman, American cartoonist (d. 1944)
• August 26 - Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet (d. 1918)
• August 31 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (d. 1962)
• September 14 - Archie Hahn, American athlete (d. 1955)
• September 22 - Christabel Pankhurst, English suffragette (d. 1958)
• September 23 - John Boyd Orr, Scottish physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1971)
• October 23 - Una O'Connor, Irish actress (d. 1959)
• November 5 - Richard Oswald, Austrian film director (d. 1963)
• November 6 - Robert Musil, Austrian novelist (d. 1942)
• November 10 - Jacob Epstein, American-born sculptor (d. 1959)
• December 11 - Frank Tarrant, Australian cricketer (d. 1951)
• December 24 - Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist and children's book author (d. 1939)
• December 31 - George Marshall, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1959)
• Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, American equestrian (d. 1925)
• Joseph Trumpeldor, Russian Zionist (d. 1920)
• Gar Wood, American motorboat racer (d. 1971)

Unknown Birth Dates

• William J. Simmons, Founder of the second Ku Klux Klan (d. 1945)
• D. Leigh Colvin, American temperance movement leader and Prohibition Party candidate for presidency in 1936 (d. ?)

Deaths

• January 8 - Joshua A. Norton, self-anointed Emperor Norton I of the United States of America (b. 1811)
• March 31 - Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer (b. 1835)
• May 4 - Edward Clark, Confederate Governor of Texas (b. 1815)
• May 8 - Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (b. 1821)
• July 7 - Lydia Child, American novelist and abolitionist (b. 1802)
• August 17 - Ole Bull, Norwegian violinist (b. 1810)
• October 4 - Jacques Offenbach, German-born composer (b. 1819)
• November 11 - Ned Kelly, Australian bush ranger (hanged)
• December 22 - George Eliot, English writer (b. 1819)