The world's first subterranean transport system, London's underground railway, opened in 1863. The trains were hauled by steam locomotives, similar to those that operated above ground. It was not until 1890 that the first electric subway train entered service, again as part of the London network. Another innovation of the time was the chain-drive bicycle, which was invented by John Kemp Starley in 1885. In the same year, Karl Benz built the first motor vehicle to be propelled by an internal combustion engine -- in other words, the world's first automobile.
The first fully functional transatlantic cable was laid in 1866, stretching between Ireland and Canada. It allowed telegraph messages in Morse Code to be transmitted almost instantaneously from one continent to another. A decade later, in 1876, voice communications were made possible through Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone. The first wireless communication system was the short-range radio built by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. Most people of the time still communicated through the written word, however. Their task was facilitated by the 1873 invention by Christopher Latham Sholes of the typewriter.
One of the most devastating inventions of the 19th century was the machine gun. Although there had been earlier multi-barrel designs, the first true single-barreled machine gun, exploiting the recoil of one bullet to automatically load the next, was designed in 1884 by Hiram Maxim. When perfected, it was capable of firing more than 500 rounds per minute. At sea, an equally deadly weapon was the self-propelled torpedo, invented by Robert Whitehead in 1866. Also dating from the late 19th century is the submarine. The first practical design, commissioned by the United States Navy, was produced by the Holland company in 1898.
The earliest photographs were produced on glass plates, making cameras unwieldy and awkward to use. Photographic film, invented by George Eastman in 1888, proved far more user-friendly. His compact camera, which he called the Kodak, led to an upsurge in the popularity of photography as a pastime. Movies followed soon after: the first motion picture was made in 1894, using the "cinematograph" invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Perhaps the best known inventor of the period, however, was Thomas Edison. He produced his phonograph, the first device capable of making a sound recording, in 1877 -- just two years before his most famous invention, the electric light bulb.