TIMELINE KEY
- Topics
Relating to Chemical Engineering.
- A
Digression into Miscellaneous Topics (often Chemistry)
- Concerning
the Rise and Fall of Nations (Wars & Such)
- ~440
BC: Democritus proposes the concept an of atom to describe the
indivisible and indestructible particles that were thought to compose the
substance of all things.
- ~250
BC: Archimedes deduces the law of the levers and could evaluate
the relative density of bodies by observing their buoyancy force when
immersed in water.
- ~240
BC: Eratosthenes of Cyrene, director of Alexandria library, calculates
the size of Earth by measuring the sun's shadow at noon in Siena (Egypt)
and Alexandria.
- ~70:
Pliny the Elder writes his Historia Naturalis, a 39 volume universal
encyclopedia, compiling all that was known about the science of his day.
Pliny died in Pompeii during the eruption of the volcano the year 79.
- ~130:
Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) writes a mathematical and geographical
treatise describing all ancient knowledge concerning distances and locations on
the earth. He also developed a star catalogue with 1022 entries. The
Ptolomeic model placed the earth as the center of the universe; the sun, stars
and planets revolved around the earth in circular orbits. This model remained
the standard interpretation for more than a millennium, until the time of
Copernicus.
- 230:
Romans create life expectancy table for selling "annuities." Average life
expectancy is only 20-30 years.
- 1347:
William Occam enunciates the principle now known as Occam's Razor;
"entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary."
- 1450:
Johann Gutenberg receives from Johann Fust an advance of 800 guilders to
develop his printing press. Probably the first book printed was a
dictionary called Catholicon and then later the Latin Bible.
- 1492:
Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus) arrives on the shores of a new
continent. The continent was later called America in honor to the Italian
cartographer Americo Vespucci.
- 1500:
Leonardo da Vinci points out that animals could not survive in an
atmosphere that could not support combustion.
- 1543:
Copernicus' heliocentric model of the universe was a revision of
the Ptolomeic model which had become too complex and inaccurate to accommodate
the known movement of celestial bodies.
- 1546:
Hieronymus Francastorius wrote on Contagion, the first known discussion
of the phenomenon of contagious infection.
- 1616:
William Harvey demonstrates his findings on the circulation of blood.
In 1628 he published Exercitacio Anatomica Motu Cardis et Sanguinis in
Animalibus, in which he describes the function of the circulatory system,
including the notion of the heart as a mechanical pump.
- 1635:
John Winthrop, Jr., opens America's first chemical plant in
Boston. They produce saltpeter (used in gunpowder) and alum (used in
tanning).
- 1644:
Evangelista Torricelli devises the barometer.
- 1647
Blaise Pascal determines the pressure of air. He also invents a
machine to perform addition and subtraction; the Pascalina, a remote
precursor of calculating machines.
- 1660: Nicaise
Le Febvre, in Trait� de la Chymie held that the function of air in the
respiration was to purify the blood.
- 1662:
Robert Boyle found that the volume occupied by the same sample of any gas at
constant temperature is inversely proportional to the pressure. This statement
is known as Boyle's law.
- 1666:
Fire destroys 3/4 of London. Prompts introduction of fire insurance and
municipal fire departments.
- 1683:
Antoni von Leewenhoek discovers bacteria.
- 1687:
Isaac Newton publishes his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Matematica".
The whole development of modern science begins with this great book. Newton set
the foundations of mechanics, the theory of gravitation, a theory
of light, and also concurrently, with Leibnitz, invents the
calculus.
- 1720's:
Newcomen's steam engine comes into general use.
- 1722:
R�amur publishes "L'art de covertir le Fer Forg� en Acier" solving the
guarded secret of steel-makers; that steel is iron containing just the right
amount of carbon.
- 1749:
England begins a Lead-Chamber Method to produce sulfuric acid.
- 1750's:
Classic British Industrial Revolution begins (often said to last until
1830's, however in many ways it continues to this day).
- 1760's:
James Watt improves on the Newcomen Engine.
- 1761:
Joseph K�lreuter publishes reports in artificial hybridization.
- 1766:
Henry Cavendish discovers "inflammable air" (hydrogen), which he
concluded to be a combination of water and phlogiston (oxygen), since its
combustion yielded water.
- 1770:
John Priestley discovers oxygen and showed that is consumed by
animals and produced by the plants.
- 1772:
Daniel Rutherford describes "residual air", the first published
description of nitrogen.
- 1772:
Joseph Priestley and Jan Ingenhousz investigate photosynthesis.
- 1773:
Stephen Hales makes the first measurement of blood pressure.
- 1775:
Antoine Lavoisier shows that fire is due to the exothermic
reaction between combustible substances and oxygen. He named a gas
discovered by Cavendish, that burned to produce water, hydrogen (Greek, water
producer). Also demonstrated that CO2, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid
contained oxygen.
- 1776:
The United States declares its independence from England.
- 1780:
Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Laplace publish their Memoire on
Heat, in which they reach the conclusion that respiration is a form of
combustion.
- 1781:
The Americans defeat the British in the last major battle of the War of
Independence at Yorktown, Virginia.
- 1781:
Tobacco snuff linked to cancer of nasal passage.
- 1783:
Lazaro Spallanzani performs experiments demonstrating that digestion
is a chemical process rather than a mechanical grinding of the food.
- 1785:
Charles de Coulomb measures the attractive and repulsive forces of
electrically charged particles, and discovered that these forces are
inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
- 1787:
Jacques Alexandre C�sar Charles studies the volume changes of
gases with changes in temperature.
- 1787:
The U.S. Constitution is written.
- 1789:
Nicholas Le Blanc develops his process for converting common salt into
soda ash.
- 1795:
Alessandro Volta shows how to produce electricity by simply putting two
different pieces of metal together, with liquid or damp cloth between them, and
he thus produced the first electrical current battery.
- 1798:
Thomas Robert Malthus publishes his Essay on the Principles of
Population.
- 1800:
Karl Friederich Burdach coins the term "Biology" to denote the
study of human morphology, physiology and psychology.
- 1802:
Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac announces the ideal gas law.
- 1802:
Jean Baptiste Lamarck elaborates a theory of evolution based on
heritable modification of organs.
- 1802:
The E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (Du Pont) is founded and builds
a gunpowder factory along the banks of the Brandywine River near
Wilmington, Delaware.
- 1804:
Nicholas Theodore de Saussure publishes experiments on photosynthesis,
and described the balanced equation of the process.
- 1805:
Geoges Cuvier publishes his Lessons in Comparative Anatomy.
- 1806:
Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Robiquet first isolated an
amino acid, asparagine, from asparagus.
- 1807:
Humprey Davy utilizes electric current to prepare metals from
molecules such as; sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
- 1809:
Jean Baptiste Lamarck investigates the microscopic structure of
plants and animals and perceived that cellular tissue is the general matrix of
all organization. He also published his Philosophie Zoologique, where emphasized
the fundamental unity of life.
- 1809:
Nicolas Fran�ois Appert, inventor and bacteriologist, demonstrates a
procedure for preservation of foods by canning.
- 1810:
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac deduces the equations of alcoholic
fermentation.
- 1811:
Amadeo Avogadro demonstrates that equal volumes of all gases under the
same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules, and that a
fixed number of molecules of any gas will weigh proportional to its molecular
weight. Presently the accepted value for the Avogadro number is 6.023 x 10^23
molecules per gram-mol.
- 1824:
Sadi Carnot publishes his Reflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu,
setting various outstanding principles that constitute the basis of actual
Thermodynamics.
- 1827:
J. B. Fourier outlines atmospheric process by which earth's
temperature is altered, using a hothouse analogy.
- 1828:
Friederich W�hler synthesizes the first organic compound from
inorganic compounds, preparing Urea by reacting lead cyanate with ammonia.
- 1828:
Robert Brown first describes Brownian motion.
- 1830-40:
Justus von Liebeg develops techniques in quantitative analysis and
applied them to biological systems, and the concept that vital activity could be
explained in physicochemical terms.
- 1831:
Michael Faraday shows the relation between magnetism and electricity
is dynamic. He showed that not only was magnetism equivalent to
electricity in motion but also, conversely, electricity was magnetism in motion.
Later, Clerk Maxwell summarized in concise form the electromagnetic theory.
- 1833:
Jean Baptiste Boussingnault recommends the use of iodized salt to cure
goiter.
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