December 18 — the first political demonstration in Russia involving workers and students took place on Kazanskaya Square in St. Petersburg. The rally was triggered by the growth of the strike movement in the country. The demonstration was organized and carried out by Narodniks of the Zemlya i Volya group and members of workers’ circles associated with them.
About 400 people gathered in the square. A passionate revolutionary speech was delivered to the crowd by Georgi Plekhanov, a student of the Mining Institute—later a theorist and propagandist of Marxism, a philosopher, and a prominent figure in the Russian and international socialist movement. A young worker, Yakov Potapov, unfurled a red flag. The police tried to disperse the demonstrators. Despite fierce resistance, many participants were brutally beaten; more than 30 were arrested and brought to trial. Five were sentenced to 10–15 years of penal labor, 10 were exiled to Siberia, and three workers, including Potapov, were sentenced to five years’ confinement in a monastery prison on the Solovetsky Islands. A year after being confined in the monastery, Potapov attempted to escape from the stockade. Breaking the bars on his cell window, he jumped from the third floor onto the monastery wall and, wearing only underwear, climbed down beyond the monastery fence. Potapov hoped to find protection and help from pilgrims, but he was seized and imprisoned again. The conditions of his detention were very harsh. He was not allowed out for walks or into the monastery church. Exhausted by this regime, Potapov decided to appeal to the archimandrite. During a service he approached him as he was leaving the church. Coming up for a blessing, he asked him to ease the severe conditions of his imprisonment.
In response, the archimandrite ordered a soldier to take Potapov back to his cell. Then, driven beyond endurance, Potapov struck the abbot in the face. For this act he was sentenced to exile as a settler, and in 1882 he was sent to Yakutsk Oblast.
In 1875 — the Russian engineer Pavel Yablochkov invented the so-called “electric candle” (in which two carbon rods, separated by a porcelain insert, served as conductors for the electricity that maintained an arc), used as a source of light.
He made this invention in Russia, in a Moscow laboratory he had set up with his own funds.
But in his homeland he found neither support nor understanding. Soon Yablochkov found himself in Paris, where he completed the development of the electric candle’s design. The “electric candle” became the first electric source of light.
On March 23, 1876 — the Russian electrical engineer received French patent No. 112024 for its invention, containing a brief description of the candle in its original forms and illustrations of those forms. Yablochkov presented his creation at an exhibition of physical apparatus held on April 15, 1876, in London.
On low metal pedestals, Yablochkov placed four of his candles, wrapped in asbestos and spaced far apart from one another.
He supplied current to the lamps via wires from a dynamo machine located in a neighboring room. With a turn of the handle, the current was switched on, and at once a very bright, slightly bluish electric light flooded the large hall. The success of Yablochkov’s candle exceeded all expectations. The world press was filled with headlines: “The invention of the Russian retired military engineer Yablochkov—a new era in technology”; “Northern light, Russian light—the miracle of our time”; “Russia—the homeland of electricity,” and so on. In many countries, companies were founded to commercially exploit the “Yablochkov candle.” They went on sale and began to spread in enormous quantities. Each candle cost about 20 kopecks and burned for 1.5 hours. After that, a new one had to be inserted into the lantern. Later, lanterns with automatic candle replacement were devised.
In February 1877, fashionable shops of the Louvre in Paris were lit with electric light. Twenty-two AC carbon arc lamps—“Yablochkov candles”—replaced two hundred gas jets.
It was a genuine sensation. Then Yablochkov’s candles flared up in the square in front of the opera house. And in May 1877 they for the first time illuminated one of the most beautiful thoroughfares of the French capital—Avenue de l"Opera. Soon the “Russian light” illuminated city streets, shops, and theaters in many countries.
This invention marked the beginning of the practical use of electric charge for lighting purposes.
March 7 — in the United States, Alexander Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone device he invented, or, as the document itself puts it, for an “improved model of the telegraph.”