Newton’s Times
By Ed Uthman <
1642. Newton born on Christmas Day, Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. Pascal invents adding machine
1643. Torricelli invents barometer.
1648. Pascal’s Law, basis of hydraulics.
1650 Ussher establishes 4004 BC as date of Creation. Riccioli discovers first double star.
1651. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
1653. Rudbeck discovers lymphatic system.
1654. Pascal and Fermat lay basis of probability theory.
1656. Huygens discovers Saturn’s rings and it largest satellite, Titan. First pendulum clocks.
1658. Swammerdam discovers red blood cells.
1660. Malpighi discovers capillaries.
1661. Newton enters Trinity College, Cambridge.The Skeptical Chymist, by Robert Boyle, divorces chemistry from alchemy.
1662. Charles II charters Royal Society. Boyle’s Law of gases.
1664. Hooke discovers Great Red Spot of Jupiter.
1665. Newton awarded bachelor’s degree, Cambridge. Hooke discovers cells in slices of cork. Grimaldi’s discovery of diffraction of light published posthumously.
1665-66. Newton flees Great Plague of London; describes white light as a mixture of colors; develops calculus, laws of motion, but does not publish them.
1667. Newton joins faculty at Cambridge.
1668. Newton builds first reflecting telescope. Wallis proposes Law of Conservation of Momentum. Redi performs first controlled experiment in biology (disproving spontaneous generation of maggots). First Stradivarius violin.
1669. Newton becomes Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Brand discovers phosphorus in urine (first recorded discovery of an element). Steno proposes that fossils are remains of ancient organisms, not the work of Satan.
1672. Newton elected to Royal Society.
1675. Roemer makes rough measurement of speed of light by studying Jupiter’s moons.
1676. Newton publishes binomial theorem. Leeuwenhoek discovers microorganisms in pond water.
1678. Huygens proposes wave theory of light.
1679. Newton solves problem of planetary motion under influence of gravity. Papin invents pressure cooker.
1682. Grew describes sexual reproduction in plants.
1683. Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria.
1684. Edmund Halley discovers Newton’s 1679 solution of planetary motion.
1687. Newton’s Principia Mathematica is published (in Latin) by Halley.
1688. Mass production of plate glass.
1695. Newton appointed warden of the Mint.
1698. Voyage of Paramour Pink, first purely scientific seafaring expedition, under command of Halley.
1699. Newton appointed Master of the Mint.
1703. Newton elected president of Royal Society.
1704. Newton’s Opticks published (in English).
1705. Halley predicts 1758 return of 1682 comet that now bears his name.
1707. Floyer invents pulse watch, first precision medical instrument.
1710. First practical rifled firearm, the Pennsylvania rifle.
1712. Newcomen steam engine.
1714. Fahrenheit invents mercury thermometer.
1715. First organized solar eclipse observation, led by Halley.
1718. Halley discovers proper motion of “fixed” stars.
1727. Newton dies on March 20, London, from complications of kidney stones.