1877
Thomas Edison develops the gramophone and phonograph.
Butler is appointed assistant professor of physics at Princeton University. He accompanies the Princeton Geological Expedition to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, serving as a photographer. Many of the specimens secured by this expedition were displayed in the Elisabeth Marsh Museum, established in 1874 by Arnold Guyot, Princeton’s first Blair Professor of Geology, in what is now the Faculty Room in Nassau Hall.
“Few today know the enormous saving of time and trouble, to the outdoor photographer, brought about by the invention of the dryplate. Eastman’s motto ‘You touch the button, we do the rest’ means little to a ‘kodaker.’ But if the latter had ever tried wet-plate photography in the Rocky Mountains, he would think differently and gratefully about it.” –Howard Russell Butler
Read more about Princeton’s 1877 scientific expeditions:
http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2013/11/13/pages/6409/index.xml