Events in Science & History
18th Century
1700s
1700s: Immanauel
Kent suggest that distant nebulae might be complete star systems beyond the Milky
Way. Johannes Kepler discovers the three laws of planetery motion, using
data gathered by Tycho Brahe. These laws become known as Kepler's Lasw.
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1701: Yale University founded
1702: The first daily newspaper,
the Daily Courant, published in London.
***** Jethro Tull invents the machine
drill for planting seeds.
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1704: Isaac Newtonpublishes
his opticks, which sees light as a stream of tiny particles, or corpuscles,
like miniture cannon balls.
***** The Boston Newsletter
is the first American newspaper.
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1705: Edmond Halley publishes
his prediction of the return of the comet that now bears his name.
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1706: Benjamin Franklin
born
1707: Union of England,
Wales & Scotland to form Great Britian.
1710s
1710: Completion
of St Pauls in London
1711: David Hume born.
Alexander Pope writes his Essay on Criticism.
1712: First volume of John
Flamsted's star catalogue published.
***** Newton developsan impreoved
steam engine.
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1714: Gabriel Fahrenheit
devises a mercury thermonometer & uses the temperature scale that will
later be named after him. British government offers a prize of £20,000
for a technique to find longitude at sea.
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1715: First Jacobite rebellion.
1718: Halley becomes the
first person to realise that stars move across the sky &arenot really
'fixed'.
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1719: Daniel Defoe write
Robinson Crusoe.
1720s
1720: Collapse
of the 'South Sea Bubble', a speculative venture in England.
1723: Adam Smith born
1725: Birth of Robert Clive
('Clive of India'). Vivaldi write The Four Seasons.
1726: Jonathan Swift writes
Gulliver's Travels.
1729: James Bradley discovers
aberration, an apparent shift in the position of a starcaused by the finite
speed of light and the motion of the Earth in its orbit around theSun. Through
this he is able to determine the speed of light arriving at a figure = to
308,300km/sec. close to the modern value of 299,798km/sec.
1730s
1732: George
Washington born
1735: John Harrison builds
the first marine chronmometer in an attempt to win the prize offered by the British
Board of Longitude for a way of keeping the time accurately at sea.
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1738: Daniel Bernoulli describes
the behaviour of a gas in terms of the motion of many tiny particles which bounce
around, colliding with one another & with the walls of their container.
1740s
1742: Anders
Celsius invents the temperature scale which now bears his name (formerly the Centigrade
scale).
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1744: Jean-Phillipe Loys
de Cesaux estimates that there would be a star visible in every direction we look
into space provided that the Universe were (in modern terms) 10 to power 11 light
years or more across. To explain why this is not so, he suggests that empty
space simply absorbs the evergy in the light from distant stars, sothat the lightgets
faster & faster as it travels through the Universe Pierre
de Maupertuis states the principle of least action, a formulae version of the
idea that objects (including light rays) follow the quickest possible path.
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1745: Second Jacobite rebellion.
1746: Leonhard Euler uses
Christian Huygens' wave theory of light to explain refraction. Princeton
University founded
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1747: Johnsons' dictionary
published.
1748: First blast furnace
constructed at Bliston in England
1749: Benjamin Franklin
invents the lightning rod.
1750s
Second Half of 18 century:
Boyle takes the first steps toward the modern understanding of elements, &
the way in which different elements combine to form compound substances.
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About 1750: Population of
China reaches 225 million
1750: Pierre de Maupertuis
publishes his Essai de Cosmologie the first work to propound the principle
of least action.
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1752: The Gregorian Calendar
introduced to Britian, and some other parts of the world. To catch up, eleven
days were omitted, so that the day after 3 September became 14 September.
Benjamin Franklin carries out his famous kite experiment.
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1753: George Richmann is
killed by lighting while copying Franklin's kite experiment.
1755: Immanuel Kent suggest
in his book Universal Natural History & Theory of the Heavens that
the planets condensed out of a cloud of primordial matter. University of
Moscow founded.
1756: Birth of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart.
1758: Halley's comet appears
as predicted. The 'Imperial' system of weight & measures formally
established in Britian
1760s
1760: Daniel
Bernoulli discovers that electricity obeys an inverse square law similiar to the
law of gravity.
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1761: Rousseau publishes
Lo nouelle Heloise. John Harrison's 'Number Four' chronometer takes
to the West Indies under test.
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1763: Boston Massace.
1764: Richard Arkwright
patents his Spinning Jenny
1765: James Watt develops
an improved steam engine. John Harrison receives the first half of his prize.
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1767: John Michell suggest
that stars which appear close together on the sky are really physically associated
in space, and not the result of chance juxtaposition at quite different distances
along the line of sight - binary stars hypothesized.
1768: Publication of the
Encyclopedia Britannica starts, initially in weekly installments
1769: Transit of Venus across
the face of the Sun observed by (among others) Captain James Cook in Tahiti.
First meeting of American Philosophical Society.
1770s.
1770: Ludwig
Van Beethoven born
1771: Discovery of Oxygen.
Tobias Smollett writes The Expedition of Henry Clinker.
1773: John Harrison receives
the second half of his prize at the age of 80, after the British Board of Longitude
is told by King George III to stop delaying the award.
***** Boston Tea Party.
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1774: Nevil Maskelyne determines
the mass of the Earth by measuring the amount by which a mountain deflects a plumb
line from the vertical. Priestley discovers Oxygen.
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1775: James Wat's steam
engine patented.
1776: Pierre Simon de Laplace
claims that , if all the forces acting on all objects at any one time were known,
then the future would be completely predictable.
***** Charles Messler compiles a catalogue of more
than 100 star clusters and other objects that might be mistaken for comets.
***** American Declaration of Independence. *****
Adam Smith's World of Nations.
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1777: First performance
of Mozart's Concerto no.9.
1778: James Cook discovers
Hawaii.
1779: Worlds' first Iron
bridge built in Coalbrookdale, England.
1780s
1781: James
Watt patents a system for developing rotary motion from a steam engine
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1783: James Michell becomes the
first person to suggest that there might exist 'dark stars' whose gravitation
is so strong that light cannot escape from them, presenting his ideas to the Royal
Society. Basing his calculations on Newton's theory of gravity, and of light,
he assumed that the particles of light would be affected by gravity in the same
way as any other objects.
***** Montgolfier brothers build
and fly hot-air ballons. On 21 November, Jean de Rozier and Francois Laurent,
in a Montgolfier balloon, become the first humans to fly.
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1784: Benjamin Franklin
invents bifocal spectacles.
1785: Coulomb publishes
his law which says that the force between tow small charged spheres is proportunal
to the product of the two charges, divided by the square of the distance between
them.
***** Seismograph invented.
***** First balloon crossing
of the English Channel.
1786: First experiments
with gas lighting.
1788: Lagrange publishes
his great book, Analytical Mechanics.
***** Antoine Lavoisier publishes
the first list of elements based on Boyle's definition of compound substances,
although he includes substances now known to be compounds and includes caloric
(heat) as an element.
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1789: The storming of the
Bastile on 14 July triggers the French Revolution.
1790s
1790s The
metre is defined, by the National Assembly in revolutionary France, as I ten-millionith
of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
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1791: Metric system is introduced
in France; it is officially adopted in 1795.
1792-1815: Napoleonic Wars.
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1796: Pierre Laplace suggests
independently of John Michell, that there might exist 'dark stars' whose gravitation
is so strong that light cannot escape from them. He also proposes the 'nebular
hypothesis' for the origin of the Solar System.
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1797: First use of Iron
railways, for horse-drawn waggons.
1798: Henry Cavendish determines
the mass of the Earth, estimating that it has an average density of 5.5 times
that of water.
***** Thomas Malthus publishes
(initially anonymously) his Essay on the Principle of Population.
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1799: Discovery of the Rosetta
Stone.
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- Compiled by D. Brewer - April 2000