1850s
1841 - Volney B. Palmer opens the first American advertising agency, in Philadelphia.
1850 - Advertising in the New York Tribune doubles between October 1849 and October 1850.
1850 - Phineas T. Barnum brings Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" to America, employing newspaper ads, handbills, and broadsides to drum up extraordinary interest in this, until now, unknown-to-Americans international singing star. From being relatively anonymous six months prior to her arrival, she is met at the docks by 30,000 New Yorkers - a result of Barnum's advertising campaign.
1851 - I. M. Singer and Company takes out its first patent for the Singer Perpendicular Action Sewing Machine.
1851 - The first issue of the New York Times (under the name "New-York Daily Times") is published.
1851 -Benjamin Bratt is the first to manufacture and mass-market soap in bar form.
1852 - First advertisement for Smith Brother's Cough Candy (drops) appears in a Poughkeepsie, New York paper - the two brothers in the illustration are named "Trade" and "Mark."
1853 - A Boston court rules that Singer infringed on Elias B. Howe's 1846 sewing machine patent, and Singer pays Howe $15,000 in the settlement.
1853 - Railroad lines reach west as far as the Mississippi River.
1856 - Mathew Brady advertises his services of "photographs, ambrotypes and daguerreotypes" in the New York Herald paper. His inventive use of type in the ad goes against the newspaper industry standard of all-agate and all same-size type used for advertisements in the papers.
1856 - Robert Bonner is the first to run a full-page ad in a paper, advertising his own literary paper, the New York Ledger.
1858 - First Transatlantic cable laid, between Ireland and Newfoundland.
1860s
1860 - 33,000 patents are issued between 1850 - 1860; only 6,000 patents had been issued in the previous decade.
1861 - The first Sunday edition of the re-named New-York Times is published, capitalizing on interest in news of the Civil War.
1861 - There are twenty advertising agencies in New York City.
1863 - James W. Tufts builds and patents a soda-fountain machine for use in his Boston drugstore.
1864 - William James Carlton begins selling advertising space in newspapers, founding the agency that later became the J. Walter Thompson Company, the oldest American advertising agency in continuous existence.
1865 - George P. Rowell and his friend Horace Dodd open their advertising agency in Boston.
1866 - Transatlantic cable becomes operational.
1867 - The magazine Harper's Bazaar premieres.
1867 - Lord & Taylor is the first company to use double-column advertising in newspapers.
1868 - Vanity Fair magazine begins.
1869 - N. W. Ayer and Sons advertising agency is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the following year begins advertising its own agency in both general and trade publications.
1869 - E. C. Allan starts the People's Literary Companion, marking the beginning of the "mail-order" periodical.
1869 - The first advertisement for Sapolio soap is published.
1869 - George P. Rowell issues the first Rowell's American Newspaper Directory, providing advertisers with information on the estimated circulation of papers and thus helping to standardize value for space in advertising.
1860s - Advertising begins to appear in nationally distributed monthly magazines.
1870s
1870 - Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe) appears in a Harper's Weekly advertisement endorsing Waltham watches.
1870 - The Boardwalk in Atlantic City is completed.
1870 - Chesebrough Manufacturing Co., makers of Vaseline, is founded.
1870 - 5,091 newspapers are in circulation, compared to 715 in 1830.
1871 - 121 brand names and trademarks are registered with the US Patent Office.
1872 - Montgomery Ward begins mail order business with the issue of its first catalog.
1872 - The Associated Press extends its news service to 200 papers.
1875 - 1,138 brand names and trademarks are registered with the US Patent Office.
1875 - The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, made by the Remington Co., is first advertised in New York papers; the first successfully selling typewriter, the "Remington No. 2," appears in 1878.
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
1877 - The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 occurs. The labor unrest spreads across the country, affecting freight traffic.
1877 - The Washington Post newspaper begins publication with a circulation of 10,000, costing 3 cents a paper.
1878 - Thomas Edison secures basic patent for a phonograph machine.
1878 - J. Walter Thompson buys out William J. Carlton's small ad agency and renames it after himself.
1878 - The American Cereal Co. introduces Quaker Oats as the first mass-marketed breakfast food.
1879 - Ivory soap is named, four years after the formula was accidentally discovered at Procter & Gamble.
1879 - George Eastman patents a process for making dry photographic plates.
1879 - Frank Woolworth opens his first "five and dime" store.
1879 - John Wanamaker places the first whole-page newspaper advertisement by an American department store.
1870s - Charles E. Hires begins advertising Hires Root Beer in the Philadelphia Ledger, expanding over the next two decades into national magazines.
1870s - $1 million dollars is spent annually advertising Lydia Pinkham's Pink Pills.
1870s - Louis Prang, a lithographer and printer, develops the idea of mass-producing small "trade cards" that could be adapted to the needs of individual advertisers at low cost. Thread companies, such as Clark's O.N.T., are among the first to begin nationwide distribution of advertising trade cards.
1870s - In response to the high volume of outdoor advertising (including posters and signs painted on rocks, buildings and barns) in cities and rural areas, several states begin to impose limitations to protect natural scenery from sign painters.
1880s
1880 - Singer Sewing Machines and McCormick Reapers begin to dominate their respective markets.
1880 - John Wanamaker hires John E. Powers, who brings a fresh style to advertising - an honest, direct and fresh appeal emphasizing the style, elegance, comfort and luxury of products. Powers is later called "the father of honest advertising."
1881 - James Bonsack develops an efficient cigarette-rolling machine; until this point cigarettes (like cigars) have been rolled by hand.
1883 - James B. Duke leases the Bonsack rolling machines. This contract ensures that his cost to manufacture cigarettes will be 25% below his competitors.
1883 - Ladies Home Journal and Life Magazine begin publication.
1884 - Linotype machine invented, advancing the use of color in printing.
1885 - The Washington Monument is dedicated.
1885 - New postal regulations reduce the cost of second class mailing to one cent per pound, allowing an almost immediate increase in the number of new subscription-based periodicals.
1886 - Coca-Cola is invented in Atlanta, Georgia by Dr. John S. Pemberton. Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, penned the name Coca-Cola in the flowing script that is still used in advertising today.
1886 - Cosmopolitan magazine begins.
1886 - Sears, Roebuck & Company begins mail-order business.
1887 - Introduction of the "safety bicycle," which had wheels of equal size.
1887 - Congress enacts the Interstate Commerce Act.
1888 - Printer's Ink, the oldest, most prestigious and largest magazine targeted to advertisers, agencies and copywriters is founded by George P. Rowell.
1888 - Eastman begins advertising the first hand-held Kodak camera.
1888 - Congress establishes the Department of Labor.
1889 - James B. Duke spends 20 per cent of the gross sale of his tobacco company earnings ($80,000) towards advertising.
1889 - Munsey's magazine is started.
1880s - Illustrated trade cards reach the height of their popularity, not only with advertisers but also with the American public, which becomes remarkably interested in collecting them.
1890s
1890 - The American Tobacco Company is founded, absorbing over 200 hundred rival firms, and gains control of the cigarette and smoking tobacco industries.
1890 - Literary Digest begins publication.
1890 - J. Walter Thompson Company's billings total over one million dollars.
1890 - The Sherman Anti-Trust Act becomes the first legislation enacted by the United States Congress to curb concentrations of power that interfere with trade and reduce economic competition. It is named for U.S. senator John Sherman, an expert on the regulation of commerce.
1891 - The precursor organization to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) is created under the name Associated Bill Posters Association of United States and Canada. OAAA is not used as the organizational name until 1925.
1891 - Batten and Co. advertising agency is founded by George Batten in New York, merging with another agency in 1928 to form Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne (BBDO).
1891 - Nathan Fowler, in Advertising Age, recommends that because women make most of the purchasing decisions of their household, manufacturers would do well to direct their advertising messages to them.
1892 - Artemus Ward, advertising for Sapolio Soap, sponsors a Captain Andrews' trans-Atlantic voyage in a 14 foot boat to celebrate Columbus' voyage 400 years earlier. The voyage takes 3 months to complete and is widely followed and reported on in the press, providing free advertising for Sapolio soap.
1892 - Vogue magazine begins publication.
1892 -Sears, Roebuck & Co. mails out 8,000 post cards with imitation handwriting across the country. 2,000 orders are received directly from this promotional campaign.
1892 - The Ladies Home Journal announces it will no longer accept patent medicine advertising.
1893 - McClure's Magazine begins publication.
1893 - The Royal Baking Powder Co. is estimated be the biggest newspaper advertiser in the world.
1894 - The R. C. Maxwell Company, the oldest existing outdoor advertising company in America, is created. The company concentrates primarily in the Middle Atlantic states.
1895 - Fred Pabst, president of Pabst Brewing Company, predicts in an essay that beer will become the national beverage of the United States.
1895 - The first US patent for a gasoline powered automobile is given to Charles Duryea.
1895 - The first American automobile race is run from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois and back. Two out of six cars finish the 54 mile long race, with a winning time of 7 hours, 53 minutes. The winner, Charles E. Duryea, that same year places what may be the first automobile advertisement ever, in The Horseless Carriage
1896 - The Monarch Bicycle Company spends $125,000 on advertising, including $10,000 for a bicycle racing crew that tours the country participating in bicycle races under the Monarch name. The company sells 50,000 bicycles in 1896, up from 1,200 sold in 1893.
1896 - J. Walter Thompson Company begins using the Rock of Gibraltar in its advertising for Prudential Insurance Co.
1896 - Full color lithographic advertising prints for Ivory Soap are sent directly from specialty printers to magazine publishers, who bind them into magazines. This practice is soon taken up by other manufacturers.
1896 - The Duryea Motor Wagon opens Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1898 - The Pepsi-Cola formula is created by Caleb Bradham, a New Bern, NC druggist.
1898 - N. W. Ayer & Sons begin using outdoor advertising.
1898 - The National Biscuit Company is founded, and immediately begins advertising its Uneeda Biscuit, employing the N. W. Ayer & Sons advertising agency for a campaign that became very successful.
1899 - J. Walter Thompson Company opens a London office, possibly the first international office of an American advertising agency.
1899 - Eighty companies are making, or preparing to make, automobiles.
1890s - Advertisements for alcohol - wines, liqueurs, and whiskeys - are placed in popular national magazines, such as Harper's Weekly.
1890s - Women are depicted outside the home in a non-domestic setting for the first time in bicycle ads.
1890s - Advertising manuals increasingly recommend the use of post cards as a low cost means of direct communication with consumers.
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