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1783 in science

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1783 in science

The year 1783 in science and technology involved some significant events:

Contents

Astronomy

  • February 26 – Caroline Herschel discovers NGC 2360.
  • May – John Goodricke presents his conclusions that the variable star Algol is what comes to be known as an eclipsing binary to the Royal Society of London.
  • August 18 – Great Meteor passes over Great Britain, exciting scientific interest.
  • Jérôme Lalande publishes a revised edition of John Flamsteed’s star catalogue in an ephemeris, Éphémérides des mouvemens célestes, numbering the stars consecutively by constellation, the system which becomes known as "Flamsteed designations".

    • Aviation

  • June 5 – The Montgolfier brothers send up at Annonay, near Lyon, a 900 m linen hot air balloon as a public demonstration. Its flight covers 2 km and lasts 10 minutes, to an estimated altitude of 1600–2000 metres.
  • August 27 – Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launch the first hydrogen balloon in Paris.
  • November 21 – The first free flight by humans in a balloon is made by Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes who fly aloft for 25 minutes about 100 metres above Paris for a distance of 9 km.
  • December 26 – Louis-Sébastien Lenormand makes the first ever recorded public demonstration of a parachute descent by jumping from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France using his rigid-framed model which he intends as a form of fire escape.

    • Botany

  • Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard publishes his Dictionnaire Elémentaire de Botanique, contributing to the spread of Linnaean terminology, particularly in mycology.
  • Erasmus Darwin begins publication of A System of Vegetables, a translation of Linnaeus in which he coins many common English language names of plants.

    • Chemistry

  • Antoine Lavoisier publishes Réflexions sur le phlogistique, showing the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent, proposing chemical reaction as an alternative theory in a paper read to the French Academy of Sciences in June, names hydrogen and demonstrates that water is a compound and not an element.
  • Discovery of tungsten – José and Fausto Elhuyar find an acid in wolframite which they reduce with charcoal to isolate tungsten.

    • Physics

    Jean-Paul Marat publishes Mémoire sur l'électricité médicale (Memorandum on Medical Electricity)

    Earth sciences

  • February 5–March 28 – Calabrian earthquakes in Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
  • June 8 – The volcano Laki in Iceland begins a major eruption with extensive climatic consequences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

    • History of science and technology

  • German physician Melchior Adam Weikard publishes a biography of microscopist Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, Biographie des Herrn Wilhelm Friedrich v. Gleichen genannt Rußwurm.

    • Technology

  • Henry Cort of Funtley, England, invents the grooved rolling mill for producing bar iron.
  • Thomas Bell patents a method of printing on fabric from engraved cylinders.
  • Horace-Bénédict de Saussure publishes Essai sur l'hygrométrie, recording his experiments with the hair hygrometer.

    • Awards

  • Copley Medal: John Goodricke; Thomas Hutchins

    • Births

  • May 22 – William Sturgeon, English inventor (died 1850)
  • June 9 – Benjamin Collins Brodie, English physiologist (died 1862)
  • October 6 – François Magendie, French physiologist (died 1855)
  • October 31 – Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, German chemist (died 1857)

    • Deaths

  • March 30 – William Hunter, Scottish anatomist (born 1718)
  • April 16 – Christian Mayer, Moravian astronomer (born 1719)
  • September 18 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (born 1707)
  • October 29 – Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician and physicist (born 1717)
  • November – Carl Linnaeus the Younger, Swedish naturalist (born 1741 )
  • December 13 – Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer (born 1717)
  • December 16 – Arima Yoriyuki, Japanese mathematician (born 1714)
  • Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, German microscopist (born 1717)

    • References

    1783 in science Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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