1816 in science

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The year 1816 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Botany

• Botanic Gardens, Sydney, established in Australia.

Chemistry

• Veuve Clicquot invents the riddling table process to clarify champagne.

Mathematics

• John Farey notes the Farey sequence.[1]

Medicine

• René Laennec invents the stethoscope.[2]
• Caleb Parry publishes An Experimental Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Varieties of the Arterial Pulse, describing the mechanisms for the pulse.[3]

Mineralogy

• Johann Fischer von Waldheim publishes Essai sur la Turquoise et sur la Calaite in Moscow, the first scientific treatise on the mineral turquoise.

Physics

• Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) discovers stress birefringence.

Technology

• January 9 – Sir Humphry Davy's Davy lamp is first tested underground as a coal mining safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery in north east England.[4]
• The Spider Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill, a temporary iron-wire footbridge erected across the Schuylkill River, north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the first wire-cable suspension bridge in history.[5]
• Johann Nepomuk Maelzel begins production of the metronome with a scale.[6]
• Rev. Robert Stirling obtains a patent in the United Kingdom for the Stirling hot air engine.
• English inventor Francis Ronalds demonstrates the practicability of the electric telegraph but it is rejected as "wholly unnecessary" at this time.[7][8][9]
• approx. date – Simeon North in New England produces a practicable milling machine for working metal.[10]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Not awarded[11]

Births

• January 2 – Anastasie Fătu, Moldavian and Romanian physician and naturalist (died 1886)
• July 7 – Rudolf Wolf, Swiss astronomer (died 1893)
• July 20 – Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet, English ophthalmologist, histologist and anatomist (died 1892)
• December 13 – Werner Siemens, German electrical engineer (died 1892)

Deaths

• January 2 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, French chemist (born 1737)
• April 7 – Christian Konrad Sprengel, German botanist (born 1750)
• September 18 – Bernard McMahon, Irish American horticulturalist (born c. 1775)
• September 28 – Edward Howard, English chemist (born 1774)
• December 15 – Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, English engineer (born 1753)

References

1. Philosophical Magazine 47: 385–86. 1816.
2. Laennec, R. T. H. (1819). "preface". De l’Auscultation Médiate ou Traité du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur. Paris: Brosson & Chaudé.
3. "Parry, Caleb Hillier". Whonamedit?. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
4. Thompson, Roy (2004). Thunder underground: Northumberland mining disasters, 1815-1865. Ashbourne: Landmark. p. 121. ISBN 9781843061694. Retrieved 2013-01-08.
5. Peterson, Charles E. (22 March 1986). "The Spider Bridge: a curious work at the Falls of Schuylkill, 1816". Canal History and Technology Proceedings. 5: 243–59.
6. Willems, J. de Vos (1830). "The Metronome". The Harmonicon. 8. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
7. Ronalds, Francis (1823). Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus. London: Hunter.
8. • Ronalds, Beverley Frances. Sir Francis Ronalds: Father Of The Electric Telegraph. World Scientific, 2016. p. 142. ISBN 1783269197.
   • Ronalds, B. F. (2016). "Sir Francis Ronalds and the Electric Telegraph". International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology. 86: 42–55. doi:10.1080/17581206.2015.1119481. S2CID 113256632.
9. "August 5, 1816: Sir Francis Ronalds' telegraph design rejected". This Month in Physics History. American Physical Society. Retrieved 2020-08-03.
10. Muir, Diana. Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England. Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0-87451-909-9.
11. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 21 July 2020.