Events in Science & History
17th Century
1600s
1600: First
performace of Shakespear's Hamlet
1604: Supernova observed
by Kepler.
1605: In Advancement
of Learning, Francis Bacon encourages the scientific investigation of the
world. Gunpowder plot fails to blow up the English Parliament. Carvantes
writes Don Quixote.
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1607: English begin to settle
in Virgina.
1609: Galileo uses a telescope
to study the Moon and planets. Kepler's laws published.
1609: Learning of the invention
of the telescope, Galileo becomes the first person to use a refracting telescope
for astromonical observations.
1610s
1610: Johannes
Kepler becomes the first person to realise that the darkness of the night sky
directly conflics with the idea of an infinite Universe filled with bright stars.
He concluded that the Universe must therefore be finite - that in effect, when
we look through the gaps between the stars we see the dark end of the Universe.
Kings james Bible published.
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1610: Galileo's book Messenger
is published, recording his observations of thousands of stars invisible to
the naked eye.
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1615: Completion of St Peter's
in Rome.
1618: The Thirty Years War
begins.
1620s
1620: Pilgrims
land at Plymouth Rock.
1630s
1631: Pierre
Gassendi is the first person to observe a transit of Mercury across the face of
the Sun.
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1632: Christopher Wren born.
1633: Galileo's trial.
1636: Harvard College founded.
1637: Descarte's Discourse
on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences
published.
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1638: Birth of Louis XIV
1640s
1641: First
pendulum clock built by Galileo's son
1642: English Civil War
begins.
1643: Torricelli makes the
first barometer
1649: Charles I beheaded.
1650s
1650: Bishop
Ussher sets the date of the Creation at 4004 BC. Cyrano De Bergerac suggest's
seven ways of flying to the Moon.
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1651: In Leviation,
Thomas Hobbes says that man's life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, & short'.
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1654: Brand Duke Ferdinand
II of Tuscany invents the thermometer.
1655: Titan, the largest
moon of Saturn, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
1656: Huygens develops an
accurate pendulum clock & identifies the true nature of the rings of Saturn.
1659: Huygens observes surface
marking on Mars
1660s
1660: Boyle
publishes his law relating gas pressure and volume. Restoration of the monarchy
in England.
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1661: Construction of Versailles
Palace begins.
1663: John Gregory proposes
the design of reflecting telescope that becomes known as the Gregorian telescope.
Royal Society receives its Charter.
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1664: Robert Hooke discovers
the Great Red Spot on Jupiter Descartes' Trectise on Man says
that animals & man are mechanical objects with no 'vital force' or soul.
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1665: Plague closes Cambridge
University and sends Isaac Newton back home to Woolsthorpe, where he makes many
of his great discoveries. Royal Society starts pubication of the Philosophical
Transactions. Rembrandt van Rijn paints juno,. Plague
strikes England.
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1666: Great Fire of London.
French Royal Academy of Sciences founded.
1668: Isaac Newton reinvents
the reflecting telescope first invented by Leonard Digges in the 16th century,
and becomes the first person to put the invention to practical use.
1670s.
1670: Moliere
writes Le Bourgeos Gentihomme.
1671: The distance to Mars is first measured reasonably
accurately, by a team of French astronomers observing the position of the planet
on the sky from Cayenne, in French Guina, while a team in Paris note its position
at the same time
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1672: Cassegrain publishes the design of the telescope
which becomes known as a Cassegrain telescope. The design was not put into
practice until the 18th century.
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1675: Charles II founds the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Cassini discovers the gap in the rings of Saturn now know as the Cassini division.
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1676: The finite speed of light is determined by
Romer. The British museum is founded
1680s
1680: The
first clocks with minute hands (previously, they only showed the hours)
1683: Turks besiege Vienna.
1685: Birth of Johanh Sebastian
Bach.
1687: Newton's great work,
Philosophioe Naturalis Principia Mathematica is published at the urging
of Edmond Halley, It gives the three fundamental laws describing the dynamical
behaviour of objects, proving that the orbits of the planets around the Sun can
be explained by an inverse square law of gravity.
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1688: In the 'Glorious Revolution'
in England, the Catholic james II is replaced by the Protestant William and Mary,
of the Dutch House of Orange.
1690s
1690: Huygens
publishes Treauise on Light which fully develops his wave theory of light.
Looke publishes his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
1692: Salem witchcraft trials.
1697: Birth of Canaletto.
1698: Steam-powered pump
to remove water from mines patented. Place Vendome completed in Paris.
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- Compiled by D. Brewer - April 2000