1687 Newton, Principia. Until Einstein, Newton's physics forms the foundation of modern science, provides the model for other sciences, and serves as the basic description of the natural laws governing the universe.
1563 Rev. William Lee, born at Woodborough near Nottingham, invents the Stocking Frame, a mechanical device for knitting stockings.
1692 Languedoc Canal connects the Mediterranean with the Bay of Biscay. 240 miles long, with 100 locks, 3 major aqueducts, 1 tunnel, and a summit reservoir. The largest canal project between Roman times and the nineteenth century.
1708 Jethro Tull's mechanical (seed) sower permits large-scale planting in rows, for easier cultivation between the rows.
1709 Abraham Darby uses coke to smelt iron ore, replacing wood and charcoal as fuel.
1712 Thomas Newcomen builds first commercially successful steam engine. Able to keep deep coal mines clear of water. First significant power source other than wind and water.
1714 British Board of Longitude offers £20,000 prize for the first successful method of fixing longitude.
1733 John Kay's flying shuttle.
1741-42 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, returning from Turkey, introduces smallpox inoculation.
1758 First threshing machine.
1761 James Brindley's Bridgewater Canal opens. Barges carry coal from Worsley to Manchester.
1762 John Harrison's No. 4 chronometer wins the British Board of Longitude's prize (see 1714).
1765 James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny, automating weaving the warp (in the weaving of cloth).
1769 Arkwright's "water" (powered) frame automates the weft.
1772 Bridgewater Canal extended to the Mersey, thus connecting with Liverpool. Its success kicks off extensive canal construction ("canal mania").
1774 Priestly isolates oxygen.
1775 Watt's first efficient steam engine, much more efficient than the Newcomen.
1777 Grand Trunk Canal establishes a cross-England route connecting the Mersey to the Trent and connecting the industrial Midlands to the ports of Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull.
1779 First steam powered mills. Crompton's "mule" combines Hargreaves' and Arkwright's machines, fully automating the weaving process.
1781 William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus.
1786 Arkwright puts a Watt engine in the Albion cotton mill, Blackfriars Bridge (photograph), London.
1787 Cartwright builds a power loom.
1789 Thames-Severn Canal links the Thames to the Bristol Channel.
1792 William Murdock (James Watt's assistant) lights his home with coal gas.
1793 Eli Whitney develops his cotton gin (a device to clean raw cotton).
1793 (to 1803) Thomas Telford builds his two great iron aqueducts, over the Dee and the Cierog valleys (photograph).
1795 James Hutton, Theory of the Earth
1796 Edward Jenner develops smallpox vaccination process using cowpox vaccine.
1799 Humphry Davy discovers nitrous oxide (laughing gas), first effective anesthetic.
c. 1800 Oliver Evans (USA) invents conveyer belt; comstructed fully automatede flour mill.
1801 Robert Trevithick demonstrates a steam locomotive.
1803-22 Caledonian Ship Canal cuts clear across Scotland via the Great Glen.
1807 Robert Fulton's "Clermont" first successful steamboat.
1811-15 Luddite riots: laborers attack factories and break up the machines they fear will replace them.
1812 Napoleon's surgeon, Baron Larrey, develops painless amputation.
1812 Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer invent high-speed printing press
1821 Faraday demonstrates electro-magnetic rotation, the principle of the electric motor.
1825 Marc Brunel invents a tunnelling shield, making subaqueous tunnelling possible.
1826-42 Brunel builds the first subaqueous tunnel, under the Thames.
1827 Berkeley Ship Canal connects Sharpness (on the Severn) to Gloucester.
1829 Braille perfects his reading method for the blind.
1830 Manchester–Liverpool railway begins first regular commercial rail service.
1831 Von Liebig discovers chloroform; Faraday discovers electro-magnetic current, making possible generators and electric engines.
1831 British Association for the Advancement of Science founded
1834 Charles Babbage develops his analytic engine--the forerunner of the computer.
1834 Fox Talbot produces photographs.
1835 Colt revolver
1837
Morse develops the telegraph and Morse Code.
1837 Great Western — first ocean-going steamship.
1838 Daguerre perfects the Daguerrotype.
1839 Fox Talbot introduces photographic paper.
1839 Fox Talbot introduces photographic paper.
Sir James Young Simpson appointed chair of Midwifery, University of Edinburgh. Uses chloroform as anaesthetic.1840 Whewell, Philosophy of Inductive Sciences.
1842 Crawford Long uses ether in a minor operation; Richard Owen coins term Dinosaur.
1843 Great Britain — first large, iron, screw-propelled steamship
1843 Typewriter invented.
1844
Robert Chambers, Vestiges
of the natural history of creation (at Project Gutenberg).
1844 Commercial use of Morse's telegraph (Baltimore to Washington).
c. 1845 Turret-lathe.
1846
Pneumatic tire patented
1846 First telegraph cable laid under the Channel.
1846 Ether used in a major operation.
1846 Elias Howe invents sewing machine.
1847 Boole, Mathematical Logic.
1849 Monier develops reinforced concrete.
1849 John Snow discovers transmission of cholera. Ignored by the medical community.
1850 Petrol (gasoline) refining first used.
1850 Isaac Singer commercializes sewing machine
1850 Natural Science Honours School established at Oxford.
1851 Singer invents first practical sewing machine.
1851 Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge.
1853 Elisha Otis invents the elevator safety brake making skyscrapers possible
1854 Bessemer invents steel converter.
1855 William Thomson and William Rankine proclaim a new science of thermodynamics or "energetics," Regius Chair of Technology founded at Edinburgh.
1855
Yale lock invented;
1855 H. Spencer, Principles of Psychology.
1856 Bessemer's converter enables mass production of steel W.
1856 W. H. Perkin produces aniline dyes, permitting brightly colored cottons.
1857 Pasteur experiments with fermentation.
1858 First Trans-Atlantic Cable completed
1858 Cathode rays discovered.
1859 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.
James Clerk Maxwell, "Kinetic Theory of Gases
1859 Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania.
1859 Etienne Lenoir demonstrates the first successful gasoline engine.
1860 Science degrees at University of London.
1861 Universal milling machine invented;
1861 Machine gun.
1861 James Clerk Maxwell creates first color photograph.
1863 Siemens-Martin open hearth process (along with the Bessemer converter) makes steel available in bulk. Steel begins to replace iron in building: steel framing and reinforced concrete make possible "curtain-wall" architecture — i.e., the skyscraper.
1864 Maxwell's Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
1867 Lister demonstrates the use of carbolic antiseptic.
1867 Alfred Nobel produces dynamite, the first high explosive which can be safely handled.
1869 Mendeléev produces the Periodic Table.
c. 1870 Automatic lathe
1873
Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
Christopher Sholes invents the Remington typewriter.
1873 James Clerk Maxwell states the laws of electro-magnetic radiation
1876 Bell invents the telephone.
1876 Robert Koch discovers the anthrax-causing micro-organism, demonstrates its life cycle and explains how it causes disease after long dormancy.
1877 Thomas Edison invents the phonograph
1877 Gilchrist-Thomas basic process permits using wider range of ores for manufacturing steel
1878 Microphone invented.
1879 Edison invents the incandescent lamp.
1882 Koch isolates tuberculosis bacillus.
1883 First skyscraper (ten stories) in Chicago.
1883 The Brooklyn Bridge opens. This large suspension bridge, built by the Roeblings (father and son), is a triumph of engineering.
1884 Maxim invents the machine gun, making possible mass slaughter and beginning the mechanization of warfare.
1884 Carl Kohler uses cocaine as a local anesthetic.
1884 Koch isolates the cholera bacillus.
1885
Benz develops first automobile to run on internal- combustion engine.
1885 Pasteur develops hydrophobia vaccine.
1886 R.H. Fitz identifies appendicitis.
1888 Hertz produces radio waves.
1889 Eiffel Tower.
1890 Wm. James, Principles of Psychology
1890 Koch develops tuberculin, which can be used to test for tuberculosis.
1892 Rudolf Diesel invents his namesake.
1894 William Ramsay discovers argon, first of the inert gases.
1895 Lumière brothers develop Cinematograph.
1895 Roentgen discovers X-rays.
1896 Marconi patents wireless telegraph.
1896 Becquerel discovers radioactivity in uranium.
1897 Joseph Thomson discovers particles smaller than atoms.
1898 Ramsay and Travers discover krypton, neon and xenon.
1899 Aspirin invented.
1900 Planck develops quantum theory.
1900 First Zeppelin built.
1900 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
1901 1901 Marconi transmits first trans-Atlantic radio message (from Cape Cod).
1903 Wright brothers make first powered flight.
1905 Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity.
1908 Henry Ford mass-produces the Model T.
1910 Paul Ehrlich develops Salvarsan, the first drug devised to overwhelm a micro-organism (syphilis) without offending the host.
1919 London to Paris air service begun.
1920 James Smathers develops the first electric typewriter.
1922 Radio broadcasting begins.
Last modified 24 July 2019