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ESP Timelines

Comparative Timelines

The ESP Timeline (one of the site's most popular features) has been completely updated to allow the user to select (using the timeline controls above each column) different topics for the left and right sides of the display.

Select:

New Left Column

New Left Column

Dates

Decade

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New Right Column

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1490

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1491

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1492

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1493

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1494

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1495

French gunners begin using cast-iron cannonballs rather than stones.

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1496

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1497

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1498

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1499

image German Benedictine abbot and polymath Johannes Trithemius writes Steganographia, a major work on cryptography. The book is published in 1606. This book is in three volumes, and appears to be about magic — specifically, about using spirits to communicate over long distances. However, since the publication of a decryption key to the first two volumes in 1606, they were discovered to be actually concerned with cryptography and steganography. Until recently, the third volume was widely believed to be solely about magic, but the "magical" formulas have now been shown to be covertexts for yet more material on cryptography. The book was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1609 and removed in 1900.

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1500

image Chinese legendary adventurer Wan Hu attempts to leave the Earth by sitting on a chair with 47 rockets tied to it, holding a kite in each of his hands, and flying into the sky after his servants were ordered to light the fuses to the rockets. But the rockets exploded and Wan Hu was gone when the air cleared. While most authorities consider the story apocryphal, some Chinese scholars believe that foreigners from several different countries in the west were unlikely to fabricate such a story out of thin air. The tale may be based on the stories told by European missionaries who arrived in China since the late Ming dynasty, and then passed on by word of mouth. Alternatively, these European and American scholars may have indirectly relied on records in an ancient Chinese document that has been subsequently lost.

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1501

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1512

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1518

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1520

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1521

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1522

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1523

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1524

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1525

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1526

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1527

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1528

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1529

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1530

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1531

image Sebastian Münster publishes Horologiographia, a treatise on the construction of sun dials.

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1532

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1533

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1534

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1535

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1536

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1537

image Niccolò Tartaglia publishes Nova Scientia, a treatise on gunnery science. This was Tartaglia's first published work and was described by Matteo Valleriani as: ... one of the most fundamental works on mechanics of the Renaissance, indeed, the first to transform aspects of practical knowledge accumulated by the early modern artillerists into a theoretical and mathematical framework. Then dominant Aristotelian physics preferred categories like "heavy" and "natural" and "violent" to describe motion, generally eschewing mathematical explanations. Tartaglia brought mathematical models to the fore. One of his findings was that the maximum range of a projectile was achieved by directing the cannon at a 45-degree angle to the horizon.

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1538

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1539

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1540

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1541

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1542

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1545

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1547

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1548

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1549

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1550

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1551

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1552

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1553

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1554

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1555

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1556

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1557

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1558

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1559

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1560

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1561

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1562

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1563

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1564

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1565

Roger Taverner writes his Arte of Surveyinge.

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1566

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1567

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1568

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1569

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1570

Giovanni Padovani publishes a detailed treatise on the construction of sundials, Opus de compositione et usu multiformium horologiorum solarium, in Venice.

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1571

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1572

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1573

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1574

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1575

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1576

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1577

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1578

English seaman William Bourne publishes a manual, Inventions or Devises, Very Necessary for all Generalles and Captaines, as wel by Sea as by Land, including an early theoretical description of a submarine.

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1579

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1580

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1581

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1582

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1583

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1584

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1585

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1586

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1587

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1588

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1589

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1590

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1591

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1592

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1593

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1594

Bevis Bulmer sets up a system at Blackfriars, London, for pumping a public water supply.

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1595

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1596

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1597

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1598

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1599

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1600

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1601

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1602

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1603

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1604

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1605

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1606

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1607

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1608

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1609

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1610

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1611

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1612

The first flintlock musket likely created for Louis XIII of France by gunsmith Marin Bourgeois.

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1613

Richard Braithwaite coined the phrase ‘computer’.

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1614

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1615

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1616

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1617

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1618

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1619

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1620

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1621

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1622

image Slide Rule invented by William Oughtred

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1623

Francis Bacon develops a method of steganography that used an underlying binary code for the letters of the alphabet.

image Wilhelm Schickard designs a calculating machine.

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1624

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1625

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1626

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1627

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1628

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1629

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1630

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1631

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1632

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1633

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1634

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1635

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1636

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1637

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1638

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1639

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1640

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1641

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1642

Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline constructed

image The mezzotint printmaking method was invented by the German amateur artist Ludwig von Siegen. Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a "rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. A high level of quality and richness in the print can be achieved.

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1643

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1644

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1645

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1646

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1647

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1648

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1649

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1650

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1651

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1652

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1653

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1654

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1655

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1656

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1657

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1658

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1659

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1660

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1661

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1662

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1663

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1664

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1665

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1666

Samuel Morland builds a mechanical calculator that will add and subtract

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1667

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1668

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1669

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1670

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1671

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1672

image Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invents the Staffelwalze (stepped drum, or stepped reckoner), the first mechanical calculator that could perform all four mathematical operations. Its intricate precision gearwork, however, was somewhat beyond the fabrication technology of the time; mechanical problems, in addition to a design flaw in the carry mechanism, prevented the machines from working reliably. Despite the mechanical flaws, it suggested possibilities to future calculator builders. The operating mechanism, invented by Leibniz, called the stepped cylinder or Leibniz wheel, was used in many calculating machines for 200 years, and into the 1970s with the Curta hand calculator. In discussing his invention, Leibniz wrote Indignum enim est excellentium virorum horas servii calculandi labore perire, qui Machina adhibita vilissimo cuique secure transcribi posset — For it is unworthy of distinguished men to waste their time with slavish calculations, which can be done safely with the use of this machine by anyone else.

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1673

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1674

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1675

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1676

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1677

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1678

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1679

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1680

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1681

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1682

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1683

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1684

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1685

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1686

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1687

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1688

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1689

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1690

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1691

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1692

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1693

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1694

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1695

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1696

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1697

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1698

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1699

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1700

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1701

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1702

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1703

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invents the Binary System

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1704

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1705

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1706

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1707

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1708

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1709

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1710

Jakob Christoph Le Blon, an engraver, invents three-color printing.

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1711

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1712

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1713

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1714

image Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit constructs a mercury thermometer with a temperature scale.

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1715

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1716

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1717

image Johann Heinrich Schulze makes fleeting sun prints of words by using stencils, sunlight, and a bottled mixture of chalk and silver nitrate in nitric acid, simply as an interesting way to demonstrate that the substance inside the bottle darkens where it is exposed to light.

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1718

Porcelain is first manufactured in Vienna.

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1719

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1720

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1721

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1722

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1723

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1724

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1725

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1726

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1727

Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light.

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1728

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1729

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1730

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1731

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1732

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1733

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1734

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1735

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1736

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1737

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1738

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1739

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1740

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1741

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1742

The Microscope Made Easy, by Henry Baker, introduces the construction and use of the microscope to the layman.

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1743

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1744

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1745

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1746

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1747

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1748

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1749

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image Carolus Linnaeus's Philosophia Botanica rejects any notion of evolution and continues his work in classifying plants.

1750

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image Linnaeus's Species Plantarum completes his development of the use of binary nomenclature in botany. The work still provides the foundation for the modern classification of species.

image Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis's Système de la Nature provides a theoretical speculation on heredity and the origin of species by chance.

1751

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1752

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1753

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1754

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1755

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1756

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1757

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1758

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1759

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image Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter'S Vorläufige nachricht von einigen das geschlecht der pflantzen betreffende versuche and beobachtungen describes his research in heredity in plants.

1760

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Jean-Baptiste Robinet's five-volume De la nature claims that organic species form a linear scale of progress, without gaps.

image Between 1761 and 1766, Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter (Germany) demonstrates that hybrid offspring receive traits from both parents (pollen and ovule transmit genetic information), and are intermediate in most traits. First scientific hybrid produced (tobacco). Demonstrates the identity of reciprocal crosses. Notes hybrid vigor, segregation of offspring (parental and non-parental types) from a hybrid.

1761

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image Charles Bonnet's Considerations sur les corps organisées gives his theory of "preformation" — the idea that each creature is already preformed in miniature in the egg, and that the egg contains all future generations in even smaller scale, ad infinitum.

1762

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1763

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1764

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1765

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1766

image Bifocal spectacles are invented by Benjamin Franklin.

First fire escape patented, consisting of a wicker basket on a pulley and chain.

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1767

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1768

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image Charles Bonnet's Philosophical palingenesis, or ideas on the past and future states of living beings contains his view that the females of every species contain the germs of all future generations.

1769

image James Watt patents the modern steam engine, which finds wide use in manufacturing. It is an early milestone of the Industrial Revolution.

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1770

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1771

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1772

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1773

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1774

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1775

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1776

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1777

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1778

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The peculiar inheritance of human color-blindness reported to The Royal Society of London by Michael Lort.

1779

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1780

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1781

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1782

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1783

image Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier make first public balloon flight.

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1784

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1785

First balloon flight across English Channel (Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries).

image French balloonists Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and Jules Romain are killed when their Royal Balloon crashes near Boulogne, France, June 15, 1785, in what is considered the first aerial disaster.

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1786

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1787

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1788

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image Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (Attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants) claims incorrectly that all plant structures are modified leaves, but clearly espouses evolution.

1789

Bourbon Whiskey is first created by Elijah Craig in Bourbon, Kentucky.

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1790

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1791

Charles Babbage is Born

John Stone, Concord, Massachusetts, patents a pile driver.

image New York City traffic regulation creates first one-way street.

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1792

Guillotine first used (to execute highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier).

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1793

France becomes first country to use the metric system.

image Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin (cotton enGINe), a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. By reducing the labor of removing seeds, the cotton gin made cotton growing more profitable, thereby raising demand for slave labor. The first federal census of 1790 counted 697,897 slaves; by 1810, there were 1.2 million slaves, a 70 percent increase. Slavery spread from the seaboard to some of the new western territories and states as new cotton fields were planted, and by 1830 it thrived in more than half the continent. Within 10 years after the cotton gin was put into use, the value of the total United States crop leaped from $150,000 to more than $8 million.

image Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather) publishes Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life.

James Hutton publishes An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge. Buried in the 2,138-page philosophical tome is a chapter about variety in nature in which Hutton anticipates Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

image John Dalton's Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colors gives an early account of red-green color blindness, which he refers to as Daltonism, since he is afflicted with the condition.

1794

(no entry for this year)

image James Hutton's Theory of the Earth published, interpreting certain geological strata as former sea beds. Hutton proposes geological theory of gradualism.

1795

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1796

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1797

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image Publication of Thomas Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population, a work that Darwin asserted helped him frame the principle of evolution by natural selection.

1798

(no entry for this year)

image The first mammoth fossil fully documented by modern science is discovered near the delta of the Lena River in 1799 by Ossip Schumachov, a Siberian hunter. Schumachov allows it to thaw (a process taking several years) until he can retrieve the tusks for sale to the ivory trade in Yakutsk. He then abandons the specimen, allowing it to decay before its recovery. In 1806, Russian botanist Mikhail Adams rescues what remained of the specimen and brought it to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The specimen, which became known as the Adams Mammoth, is stuffed and mounted, and continues to be on display at the Zoological Institute.

Charles White publishes An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables, a treatise on the great chain of being, showing people of color at the bottom of the human chain.

1799

(no entry for this year)

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1800

image Thomas Wedgwood conceives of making permanent pictures of camera images by using a durable surface coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He succeeds only in producing silhouettes and other shadow images, and is unable to make them permanent.

image Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Système de Animaux sans Vertèbres (System for Animals without Vertebrae) includes a classification system for invertebrates and a preliminary view of his ideas of evolution.

1801

(no entry for this year)

In Natural Theology, William Paley uses the analogy of a watch requiring a watchmaker to argue that the universe implies an intelligent designer.

1802

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1803

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1804

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1805

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1806

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1807

image Robert Fulton develops the first practical steamboat, the Clermont, which sails from New York City to Albany and back.

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1808

(no entry for this year)

image 12 Feb 1809

Charles Darwin is born

image Jean Baptiste de Lamarck's theory of evolution presented with the publication of his Philosophie Zoologique, which emphasized the fundamental unity of life and the capacity of species to vary.

1809

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1810

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1811

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1812

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image Swiss-French botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle introduces the word TAXONOMY in his lifelong project of a 21-volume plant encyclopedia. Seven volumes are published during his lifetime, the remainder after his death.

1813

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1814

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1815

Ada, Lady Lovelace, is Born

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1816

image Nicéphore Niépce succeeds in making negative photographs of camera images on paper coated with silver chloride, but cannot adequately "fix" them to stop them from darkening all over when exposed to light for viewing.

image Georges Cuvier's Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation (The animal kingdom, distributed according to its organization) gives an account of the whole animal kingdom, dividing it into four distinct groups.

1817

(no entry for this year)

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1818

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image Christian Friedrich Nasse formulated Nasse's law: hemophilia occurs only in males and is passed on by unaffected females.

1820

The Arithmometer was the first commercially successful mechanical calculator patented

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1821

image Michael Faraday invents the electric motor and generator.

Etienne Geoffroy publishes Anatomical Philosophy discussing similarities between skeletal structures — such as bat wings, paws and hands — that support the evolutionary claims of Lamarck. He also argues that arthropods and vertebrates have similar but inverse body plans, an assertion that will ultimately be widely accepted.

image Between 1822-1824, Thomas Andrew Knight, John Goss, and Alexander Seton all independently perform crosses with the pea and observe dominance in the immediate progeny, and segregation of various hereditary characters in the next generation. However, they do not study later generations or determine the numerical ratios in which the characters are transmitted.

1822

Charles Babbage takes first steps in the construction of machines that would compute numbers

image Nicéphore Niépce abandons silver halide photography as hopelessly impermanent and tries using thin coatings of Bitumen of Judea on metal and glass. He creates the first fixed, permanent photograph, a copy of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, by contact printing in direct sunlight without a camera or lens. It is later destroyed; the earliest surviving example of his "heliographic process" is from 1825.

image Thomas Andrew Knight confirms reports of dominance, recessivity, and segregation in peas, but does not detect regularities.

1823

image Physicist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) describes the liquification of chlorine in On fluid chlorine. Faraday finds that gasses of certain kinds, when kept under constant pressure, will condense until they cool. This latter discovery ushers in the beginning of mechanical methods of refrigeration.

Small-scale drilling for oil begins at Baku, a Russian port city on the west coast of the Caspian Sea, now the capital of Azerbaijan. The drilling marks the beginning of the modern petroleum industry, and by 1900 nearly half the world's oil will come from the Baku oil fields.

(no entry for this year)

1824

image Nicéphore Niépce makes the first durable, light-fast camera photograph, similar to his surviving 1826-1827 photograph on pewter but created on the surface of a lithographic stone. It is destroyed in the course of subsequent experiments.

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1825

The Erie Canal (from Albany to Buffalo, New York) opens on October 26, connecting the Midwestern U.S. with the Atlantic Ocean, via the Great Lakes, and stimulating the development of Fort Dearborn (know today as Chicago), Cleveland and Columbus Ohio, and upstate New York cities like Rochester, Syracuse and Little Falls.

The first passenger steam railway opens, between Stockton and Darlington, England.

(no entry for this year)

1826

image Photograph by Joseph Ni pce: View from the Window at Le Gras, the world's first permanent photograph.

image The first photographic images produced by Joseph-Nicéphore Ni pce

image Karl Ernst von Baer first demonstrated the mammalian ovum; he regarded the sperm cells as "Entozoa," i.e., parasites, and named them spermatozoa.

1827

(no entry for this year)

A year after discovering the mammalian egg cell, Karl Ernst von Baer publishes Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere tracing the developmental history of animals.

image Publication of Karl Ernst von Baer's The Embryology of Animals which strongly opposed preformationism.

1828

(no entry for this year)

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1829

image The first steam locomotive to operate on a U.S. railroad begins service between Carbondale and Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The engine, "The Stourbridge Lion", has been imported from the Stephenson Engine Works in London.

image Charles Lyell's multi-volume Principles of Geology appear (between 1830 amd 1833), advancing the theory of uniformitarianism, i.e., the view that geological formations are explainable in terms of forces and conditions observable at present.

1830

(no entry for this year)

image Charles Darwin joins the crew of the HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist. The Beagle plans a two-year voyage to map the coast of South America. This turns out to be a five-year trip.

Patrick Matthew publishes On Naval Timber and Arboriculture with an appendix describing what Charles Darwin will later name natural selection. After becoming aware of Matthew's hypothesis, Darwin will acknowledge it in a reprint of On the Origin of Species.

image Robert Brown published his observations reporting the discovery and widespread occurrence of nuclei in cells.

1831

(no entry for this year)

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1832

image In November, the New York and Harlem Railroad begins service, and heralds the start of rapid mass transit in New York City. Two horse-drawn rail cars operate every 15 minutes between 14th Street and Prince Street, along the Bowery. The fare is 25 cents.

image The first volume of the five-volume Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Researches on Fossil Fishes) by Jean-Louis-Rodolphe Agassiz is published.

1833

Ada Lovelace Meets Charles Babbage

(no entry for this year)

1834

image Hércules Florence, a French-Brazilian painter and the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, coined the word photographie for his technique, at least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography.

image Charles Babbage invents the "analytical engine" — the forerunner of the modern computer.

image While serving as scientific officer on the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin visits the Galapagos Islands. He observes that the many varieties of finches on the islands seem to have developed from a common ancestor found on the mainland of South America.

1835

image Henry Fox Talbot produces durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper and conceives the two-step negative-positive procedure used in most non-electronic photography up to the present.

(no entry for this year)

1836

Alonzo D. Phillips, a shoemaker from Springfield, Massachusetts, patents the phosphorous match.

Charles Darwin formulates the theory of natural selection to explain evolution. Fearful of the reaction his theory will cause, he delays publishing.

1837

Charles Babbage published a paper describing a mechanical computer that is now known as the Analytical Engine

image Samuel F. B. Morse sends his first message by electric telegraph — "What hath God wrought!" — on an experimental line between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland.

image image M. J. Schleiden and T. Schwann develop the cell theory. Schleiden notes nucleoli within nuclei.

1838

The S.S. Sirius and the S. S. Great Western are the first ships powered entirely by steam to cross the Atlantic. Both ships are designed by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859).

(no entry for this year)

1839

image Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre perfects and presents the daguerreotype process as the first publicly available photographic process (which for nearly twenty years was also the one most commonly used). To make the image, a daguerreotypist would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish, treat it with fumes that made its surface light sensitive, expose it in a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting; make the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor; remove its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment, rinse and dry it, then seal the easily marred result behind glass in a protective enclosure.

image Henry Fox Talbot publicly introduces the paper-based process he worked out in 1835, calling it "photogenic drawing", but it requires much longer exposures than the daguerreotype and the results are not as clear and detailed.

image John Herschel introduces hyposulfite of soda (now known as sodium thiosulfate but still nicknamed "hypo") as a highly effective fixer for all silver-based processes. He also makes the first glass negative.

image Sarah Anne Bright creates a series of photograms, six of which are known to still exist. These are the earliest surviving photographic images created by a woman.

image Although a bicycle consisting of a frame and wheels has existed for years, blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan (1813-1878), introduces the first bicycle in its modern form, with brakes and pedals. The bike has iron tires and weighs nearly 60 pounds.

image Inventor Erastus Brigham Bigelow (1814-1879) introduces the power loom in Massachusetts.

image The first electric clock is built by physicist Carl August Steinheil (1801-1870).

image Charles Darwin's Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle appears.

Martin Barry expressed the belief that the spermatozoon enters the egg.

1840

image First American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera.

image The first postage stamp, called the "Penny Black" and bearing the image of Queen Victoria, is issued in England.

image The oil-immersion microscope is invented by Giovanni Battista Amici (1786-1863), a former professor of mathematics who is now the director of the observatory at the Royal Museum in Florence, and an astronomer to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The objective lens of this microscope is immersed in a drop of oil which sits on top of the object under study; this helps to minimize aberrations caused by the light source.

(no entry for this year)

1841

image William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype process, the first negative-positive process making possible the first multiple copies.

image Henry Fox Talbot introduces his patented calotype (or "talbotype") paper negative process, an improved version of his earlier process that greatly reduces the required exposure time.

In Paris, street lights made from arc lamps are demonstrated.

image Charles Darwin's book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs being the first part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, is published. During the year Darwin composes an abstract of his theory of species evolution.

image Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (1817-1891) publishes Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Pollens. His paper describes cell division in plants with remarkable accuracy, and discusses seed formation in flowering plants.

1842

(no entry for this year)

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1843

image Jerome Increase Case, a 24 year-old farmer from Oswego County, New York, introduces the J. I. Case Threshing Machine. The J. I. Case Company will manufacture farm equipment and will become the largest thresher producer in the world.

image The first tunnel under the Thames opens on March 25, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859). {a]The Thames Tunnel{/a} connects Rotherhithe and Wapping, London. Although it was a triumph of civil engineering, the Thames Tunnel was not a financial success. It had cost a fortune to build — £454,000 to dig and another £180,000 to fit out — far exceeding its initial cost estimates. Proposals to extend the entrance to accommodate wheeled vehicles failed owing to cost, and it was only used by pedestrians. It became a major tourist attraction, attracting about two million people a year, each paying a penny to pass through.

image Charles Darwin first outlines his thoughts on natural selection in an unpublished essay.

image Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist, publishes (anonymously) his Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, an early book outlining an evolutionary view of the natural world.

image The second part of the Geology of the Beagle, Charles Darwin's Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, is published. Darwin's book claims to supply evidence for the geological theories of Charles Lyell (1797-1875), from areas that Lyell himself had never seen.

image That all the cells in an organism are generated from successive divisions of the egg cell is described by Rudolf Albert von Kölliker (1817-1905). Kölliker shows that the egg is itself a cell.

1844

image In Hartford, Connecticut, dentist Horace Wells (1815-1848) uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic; he is the first to do so.

(no entry for this year)

1845

image Francis Ronalds invents the first successful camera for continuous recording (the first "movie camera") of the variations in meteorological and geomagnetic parameters over time. A copy of Ronalds' paper describing describing his device maybe obtained HERE.

image The bridge spanning the Allegheny River, at Pittsburgh, designed by engineer John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869), opens in May. It is the first wire cable suspension aqueduct bridge in the world.

(no entry for this year)

1846

image Nitroglycerine is discovered by chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1811-1870), although he uses to term "pyroglycerine". Because of the risks involved in its production, it will not be manufactured commercially for more than a decade.

image The lock-stitch sewing machine is patented by Elias Howe (1819-1867).

Jakob Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann announce that cells are the basic units of all living structures.

1847

image The rotary, or "lightning" printing press is patented by Richard March Hoe (1812-1886). It is used first by the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

image On the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate skeleton, by Richard Owen (1804-1892), is published. In the book Owen argues that the skull, and other parts of the body, are formed by the modification of the vertebra of different animals.

Richard Owen describes "homologies" — similarities of design in bird wings, fish fins and human hands.

1848

image Edmond Becquerel makes the first full-color photographs, but they are only laboratory curiosities: an exposure lasting hours or days is required and the colors are so light-sensitive that they sometimes fade right before the viewer's eyes while being examined.

image Botanist Carl Friedrich von Gärtner (1772-1850) publishes Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreiche. The book describes thousands of experiments, many involving the production of hybrids, on more than 500 species of plants. Mendel will study this book in detail when he attends the University of Vienna in the early 1850s, and will cite the book in the opening of his paper of 1865.

1849

image A unmanned Montgolfier balloon is used to drop bombs on Venice. This is the first time a bombing has been conducted from the air.

(no entry for this year)

1850

image "Bibless overalls" made of canvas are sold by the 20 year-old Levi Strauss in San Francisco. Within three years he will switch to denim and dye his pants indigo blue.

(no entry for this year)

1851

Arithmometer: first commercially successful mechanical calculator launched

image The fast-acting Collodion process invented by Frederick Scott Archer. Images require only two or three seconds of light exposure. Collodion process, mostly synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Collodion is normally used in its wet form, but can also be used in humid ("preserved") or dry form, at the cost of greatly increased exposure time. The latter made the dry form unsuitable for the usual portraiture work of most professional photographers of the 19th century. The use of the dry form was therefore mostly confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.

image Isaac Singer patents the continuous-stitch sewing machine.

The Erie Railroad, now controlled by Daniel Drew, becomes the first rail line connecting the Great Lakes with New York City, and begins to compete with the Erie Canal as a transportation route.

(no entry for this year)

1852

In South Bend, Indiana, Clement and Henry Studebaker found Studebaker Brothers. Joined by a third brother, John, in 1858, the company will become the world's largest maker of wagons and carriages.

image In Sweden, safety matches are patented by J. E. Lundstrom.

image The brown paper bag is invented.

The elevator is invented, facilitating the future development of skyscrapers.

The U.S. state of Pennsylvania adopts a non-standard railroad gauge in order to prevent New York's Erie Railroad from establishing a route, through Pennsylvania, to Ohio.

(no entry for this year)

1853

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1854

image André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri credited with introduction of the carte de visite (English: visiting card or calling card) format for portraiture. Disdéri uses a camera with multiple lenses that can photograph eight different poses on one large negative. After printing on albumen paper, the images are cut apart and glued to calling-card-size mounts. Photographs had previously served as calling cards, but Disdéri's invention of the paper carte de visite (i.e. "visiting card") enabled the mass production of photographs. On 27 November 1854 he patented the system of printing ten photographs on a single sheet (although there is no evidence that a system printing more than eight actually materialized). Disdéri's's cartes de visite were 6×9 cm, about the size of conventional (nonphotographic) visiting cards of the time, and were made by a camera with four lenses and a sliding plate holder; a design inspired by the stereoscopic cameras. The novelty quickly spread throughout the world. According to a German visitor, Disdéri's studio became "really the Temple of Photography - a place unique in its luxury and elegance. Daily he sells three to four thousand francs worth of portraits". The fact that these photos could be reproduced inexpensively and in great quantity brought about the decline of the daguerreotype and ushered in a carte de visite craze as they became enormously popular throughout Europe and the United States. Disdéri also invented the twin-lens reflex camera.

image Alfred Russel Wallace publishes "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species," anticipating Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

image Rudolf Virchow states the principle that new cells come into being only by division of previously existing cells: Omnis cellula e cellula.

1855

image image A mercury pump is developed by inventor Heinrich Geissler, to produce vacuum tubes. The first cathode rays will be observed in these tubes, after they are modified and improved by Sir William Crookes.

image Engineer Frederick Taylor carries out "time-motion" studies of workers with the idea of making their labor more efficient. He will pioneer the "scientific management" of the workplace.

image The remains of the first known example of what come to be known as the "Neanderthals" is found in a cave near Düsseldorf, in the Neander Valley. The discovery was made by limestone quarry miners and consists of a skullcap, two femora, the three right arm bones, two of the left arm bones, ilium, and fragments of a scapula and ribs. The fossils were given to Johann Carl Fuhlrott, a local teacher and amateur naturalist. The first description of the remains was made by anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen and the find was announced jointly in 1857.In 1997, the specimen was the first to yield Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA fragments. The description of this discovery represents the beginning of paleoanthropology as a scientific discipline.

Louis Agassiz publishes Essay on Classification advocating a theory of multiple creations and contradicting both evolution and Noah's ark.

image Gregor Mendel, a monk at the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Brünn, Austria (now Brno, Czechoslovakia), begins breeding experiments with the garden pea, Pisum sativum.

1856

image A railway bridge spanning the Mississippi opens between Rockville, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa. Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer, will defend the legality of the bridge before the Supreme Court, in response to a "right of way" suit brought by a steamship company.

image During Easter vacation from London's Royal College of Chemistry, 18-year-old William Henry Perkin synthesized mauve, or aniline purple — the first synthetic dyestuff — from chemicals derived from coal tar. Mauve was enthusiastically adopted by the fashion industry in England and synthetic dyes quickly destroyed the market for natural substances derived from plants like indigo and madder. Perkin's creation was an accident — he was trying to synthesize quinine.

image The "Bessemer process" for making inexpensive steel, which involves using blasts of cold air to decarbonize melted pig iron, is developed by inventor Henry Bessemer.

The 458-mile Wabash and Erie Canal opens after 24 years, and is the largest canal ever dug in the U.S. By 1860, however, sections will begin to be close, and, unable to compete for railroads, the entire Canal will be closed by 1874.

(no entry for this year)

1857

image In Burrville, Connecticut, commercial production of Gail Borden's patented "condensed milk" begins. The product is made from skim milk, without any fat and without a number of nutrients found in cow's milk.

In California, Tokay, Zinfandel, and Shiraz grapes (all from Hungary) are first planted, and Italian honeybees are introduced. This is the beginning of the U.S. wine and honey industries. In North America, honey bees are an artificially introduced and invasive species.

image Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen (along with Henry Roscoe) publish a design for a laboratory burner in Poggendorff's Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 100:84-85.

Rudolf Virchow finalizes the cell theory originally announced by Schleiden and Schwann 11 years earlier by declaring that cells are the basic units of all living things, and all cells are formed by the division of existing cells.

image Alfred Russel Wallace sends to Darwin a manuscript — "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" — that shows clearly that Wallace has independently formulated a model of evolution by natural selection.

image image Darwin's and Wallace's ideas are jointly presented to the Linnaean Society of London.

1858

J. Schweppe & Co. Ltd. patents a quinine tonic water that they will begin selling in 1880.

image John Landis Mason patents a reusable glass jar.

image Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1859

image In Titusville, Pennsylvania, commercial production of petroleum begins, with drilling of the first well by Edwin Laurentine Drake. The well will produce approximately 400 gallons/day.

image The first internal combustion engine is developed by Jean-Joseph-Etienne Lenoir. The engine uses coal gas.

image Louis Agassiz attacks Darwin's the origin of species, rejecting the idea of evolution of the species and arguing that each species was created separately.

image Thomas Henry Huxley (sometimes known as Darwin's bulldog) clashes with Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce about evolution at the annual meeting of The British Association for the Advancement of Science, in what has come to be known as the Huxley-Wilberforce debate.

Bishop Wilberforce is supposed to have asked Huxley sarcastically whether "it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey." Huxley responded, "If then the question is put to me whether I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape." Or words to that effect.

1860

Herman Hollerith was born 29th February 1860

image Emil Erlenmeyer invents the flask.

image image Between 1861 and 1862, Max Johann Sigismund Schultze (Germany) and Heinrich Anton de Bary (Germany) establish the essential unity of protoplasm in all living cells.

1861

image Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer

image James Clerk Maxwell presents a projected additive color image of a multicolored ribbon, the first demonstration of color photography by the three-color method he suggested in 1855. It uses three separate black-and-white photographs taken and projected through red, green and blue color filters. The projected image is temporary but the set of three "color separations" is the first durable color photograph.

(no entry for this year)

1862

(no entry for this year)

Alfred Russel Wallace describes the "Wallace line," the dividing line between Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan fauna, in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London.

image image Dominique Alexandre Godron and Charles Victor Naudin (France) independently report experiments in plant hybridization. Naudin confirmed Sageret's work, in general discussed work of the early hybridizers, and reported dominance and segregation in Datura (jimsonweed) hybrids. He did not deal with single characters and reported no statistical observations on the second generation. His theoretical explanation of his facts was a forerunner of Mendel's ideas, but inferred rather than deduced.

1863

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1864

(no entry for this year)

Franz Schweigger-Seidel and A. von la Valette St. George (Germany) independently prove that a spermatozoon is a single cell and contains nucleus and cytoplasm

image Gregor Mendel presents his work on inheritance in peas to the Brünn Natural History Society. The results are published the following year.

1865

(no entry for this year)

German zoologist Ernst Haeckel publishes General Morphology of Organisms, the first detailed genealogical tree relating all known organisms, incorporating the principles of Darwinian evolution.

image Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (Häckel) hypothesizes that the nucleus of a cell transmits its hereditary information.

image Mendel publishes his work on heredity, Versuche über Pflanzen Hybriden.

1866

(no entry for this year)

H. S. Bidwell (United States) reports controlled pollination in maize.

1867

(no entry for this year)

image Charles Darwin publishes The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, in which he offers his own theory of heredity, which he called the "Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis."

Ernst Haeckel publishes Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, subdividing humanity into 12 separate species. He also asserts that evolution consists of 22 phases, the 21st being the "missing link" between apes and humans.

Thomas Henry Huxley publishes "On the Animals which are Most Nearly Intermediate between Birds and Reptiles," arguing that birds are descendants of dinosaurs. This suggestion will not be taken very seriously for another century.

1868

image Louis Ducos du Hauron patents his numerous ideas for color photography based on the three-color principle, including procedures for making subtractive color prints on paper. They are published the following year. Their implementation is not technologically practical at that time, but they anticipate most of the color processes that are later introduced.

Wallace Clement Ware Sabine becomes the first acoustical engineer and uses acoustic principles to design Boston's Symphony Hall.

image Francis Galton publishes Hereditary Genius. In it he describes a scientific study of human pedigrees from which he concludes that intelligence has a genetic basis.

1869

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1870

(no entry for this year)

image Publication of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man, in which the role of sexual selection in evolution is described for the first time.

Lord Kelvin suggests that "the germs of life might have been brought to the Earth by some meteorite," an idea that will enjoy support a century later.

image Johann Friedrich Miescher isolates a substance which he calls NUCLEIN from the nuclei of white blood cells. The substance was soluble in alkalis but not in acids and came to be known as nucleic acid.

image Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet showed the importance of statistical analysis for biologists and laid the foundation of biometry.

1871

Richard Leach Maddox invents the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process. Negatives no longer had to be developed immediately. Long before his discovery of the dry gelatin photographic emulsion, Maddox was prominent in what was called photomicrography - photographing minute organisms under the microscope. The eminent photomicrographer of the day, Lionel S. Beale, included as a frontispiece images made by Maddox in his manual 'How to work with the Microscope'.

image Ferdinand Julius Cohn coined the term BACTERIUM and founded the study of bacteriology.

1872

(no entry for this year)

image Anton Schneider observed and described the behavior of nuclear filaments (chromosomes) during cell division in his study of the platyhelminth Mesostoma. His account was the first accurate description of the process of mitosis in animal cells.

1873

QWERTY keyboard invented

image Hermann Wilhelm Vogel discovers dye sensitization, allowing the blue-sensitive but otherwise color-blind photographic emulsions then in use to be made sensitive to green, yellow and red light. Technical problems delay the first use of dye sensitization in a commercial product until the mid-1880s; fully panchromatic emulsions are not in common use until the mid-20th century.

(no entry for this year)

1874

Thomas J. Watson Sr. is born

The first electric tram operates in New York City.

image Eduard Strasburger accurately described the processes of mitotic cell division in plants.

image Francis Galton demonstrates the usefulness of twin studies for elucidating the relative influence of nature (heredity) and nurture (environment) upon behavioral traits.

image Oscar Hertwig concludes from a study on sea urchins that fertilization in both animals and plants consists of the physical union of the two nuclei contributed by the male and female parents.

1875

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1876

image image Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield begin systematic evaluation of sensitivity characteristics of photographic emulsions — the science of sensitometry. They also invent a photographic exposure estimation device known as an actinograph. In 1920, William Bates Ferguson edits a memorial volume: The Photographic Researches of Ferdinand Hurter & Vero C. Driffield: Being a Reprint of Their Published Papers, Together With a History of Their Early Work & a Bibliography of Later Work on the Same Subject.

image Hermann Fol reports watching the spermatozoan of a starfish penetrate the egg. He was able to see the transfer of the intact nucleus of the sperm into the egg, where it became the male pronucleus.

1877

image Phonograph Invented by Edison On December 15th, Thomas Edison applied for a patent for his phonograph. Edison initially believed it would be used to record business sessions, or family voices. Edison became famous with this invention and was invited to the White House for a demonstration.

image Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne proposed the term ENZYME (meaning "in yeast") and distinguished enzymes from the micro-organisms that produce them.

1878

Willgodt T. Odhner granted a patent for a calculating machine

image Eadweard Muybridge uses a row of cameras with trip-wires to make a high-speed photographic analysis of a galloping horse. Each picture is taken in less than the two-thousandth part of a second, and they are taken in sufficiently rapid sequence (about 25 per second) that they constitute a brief real-time "movie" that can be viewed by using a device such as a zoetrope, a photographic "first".

Heat ripening of gelatin emulsions is discovered. This greatly increases sensitivity and makes possible very short "snapshot" exposures.

image The world's first oil tanker — the Zoroaster — is launched, in the Caspian Sea. The ship was designed by Ludvig Nobel, the brother of Alfred Nobel.

The first electric street lighting appears, in London.

image From 1879 through 1882, Walther Flemming describes and names CHROMATIN, MITOSIS, and the SPIREME. He makes the first accurate counts of chromosome numbers and accurately drew the "longitudinal splitting" of chromosomes.

1879

(no entry for this year)

image image image Throughout the decade of 1880-1890, Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger, Edouard van Beneden, and others elucidate the essential facts of cell division and stressed the importance of the qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells.

1880

image James Albert Bonsack invents the first automated cigarette-rolling machine after seeing a tobacco company offer a prize for the first machine to roll and cut a cigarette. The Bonsack machine could roll up to 210 cigarettes per minute, compared to the average of four cigarettes per minute that could be rolled by hand. The Bonsack machine revolutionized the cigarette industry by making it possible to mass-produce inexpensive cigarettes.

(no entry for this year)

1881

(no entry for this year)

Walther Flemming publishes accurate depictions of cell division (mitosis) in Zellsubstanz, Kern und Zelltheilung.

image Eduard Strasburger coins the terms CYTOPLASM and NUCLEOPLASM.

image W. Flemming discovers lampbrush chromosomes and coins the term MITOSIS.

1882

The first hydro-electric plant opens, in Wisconsin.

image August Weismann points out the distinction in animals between the somatic cell line and the germ cells, stressing that only changes in germ cells are transmitted to further generations.

image Edouard van Beneden announced the principles of genetic continuity of chromosomes and reported the occurrence of chromosome reduction at germ cell formation. The sperm and egg are haploid and fertilization restores the diploid chromosome number.

image Wilhelm Roux offers a possible explanation for the function of mitosis.

image William Keith Brooks, a professor at The Johns Hopkins University, publishes The Law of Heredity: A Study of the Cause of Variation and the Origin of Living Organisms. Although this speculative work did not significantly advance the understanding of heredity, brooks' thinking is important because during his career he provided instruction to and supervised the early research of Thomas H. Morgan, Edmund Beecher Wilson, and William Bateson — ultimately some of the most important contributors to the new science of genetics.

1883

Scheutz invents the first printing calculator

image German engineer Gottlieb Daimler creates a portable engine that leads to the age of the automobile.

image image image image During 1884-88, identification of the cell nucleus as the basis for inheritance was independently reported by Oscar Hertwig, Eduard Strasburger, Albrecht von Kölliker, and August Weismann.

image Gregor Mendel dies on January 6th, without ever knowing that his work on peas would lead to the transformation of biological research.

image image image Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger and Edouard van Beneden demonstrate that chromosome doubling occurs by a process of longitudinal splitting. Strasburger describes and names the PROPHASE, METAPHASE, and ANAPHASEstages of chromosomal division.

1884

image August Weismann formulates the germ-plasm theory which held that the germ plasm was separate from the somatoplasm and was continuous from generation to generation.

image Carl Rabl theorized the individuality of chromosomes in all stages of the cell cycle.

image Walther Flemming observed sister chromatids passing to opposite poles of the cell during mitosis.

1885

image James Dewar invents a thermos bottle in which heat is prevented from leaking via vacuum between two glass walls. The model becomes known as the Dewar Flask.

image The world's first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Company Building, is erected in Chicago.

image Francis Galton devised a new useful statistical tool, the correlation table.

image Hugo de Vries (Holland) discovers aberrant evening primrose plants at Hilversum, Holland. Experiments with these extending over 15 years formed the basis for his mutation theory of evolution.

1886

(no entry for this year)

image August Weismann elaborated an all-encompassing theory of chromosome behavior during cell division and fertilization and predicted the occurrence of a reduction division (meiosis) in all sexual organisms.

image Edouard van Beneden demonstrated chromosome reduction in gamete maturation, thereby confirming August Weismann's predictions.

image Wilhelm Roux put forth the suggestion that the linearly arranged qualities of the chromosomes were equally transmitted to both daughter cells at meiosis.

1887

Dorr E. Felt was granted a patent for the Comptometer.

Introduction of the Comptometer by Felt & Tarrant Co

Celluloid film base introduced.

German anatomist W. von Waldeyer names chromosomes.

image Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer names the CHROMOSOME.

image Theodor Boveri verifies August Weismann's predictions of chromosome reduction by direct observation in Ascaris.

1888

Babbage's Analytical Engine Operates For The First Time

Burroughs Receives Patent for Calculating Machine

Introduction of its adder-lister by William Seward Burroughs

image Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera.

Louis Le Prince makes Roundhay Garden Scene. It is believed to be the first-ever motion picture on film.

image John Boyd Dunlop, trained as a veterinary surgeon, devises the first practical pneumatic tire in response to a request from his son for a more comfortable tricycle. His first effort involved an inflated section of garden hose, fitted to the rear wheels of the tricycle. Although born in Scotland, Dunlop spent most of his life in Northern Ireland, where his image occurs on the current £10 note, issued by the Northern Bank.

image Francis Galton publishes Natural Inheritance. In it he describes the quantitative measurement of metric traits in populations. He thus founds biometry and the statistical study of variation. Ultimately, he formulates the Law of Ancestral Inheritance, a statistical description of the relative contributions to heredity made by one's ancestors.

1889

Herman Hollerith lodges patent for Punch Card technology

Nintendo is founded

The first commercially available transparent celluloid roll film is introduced by the Eastman Company, later renamed the Eastman Kodak Company and commonly known as Kodak.

image The numerical equality of paternal and maternal chromosomes at fertilization was established by Theodor Boveri and Jean-Louis-Léon Guignard.

1890

Herman Hollerith designs tabulating machines for 1890 U.S. Census

Hypertext Pioneer Vannevar Bush Is Born

US Census Bureau announces results using Herman Hollerith's machine

(no entry for this year)

1891

Gabriel Lippmann announces a "method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference".

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson develops the "kinetoscopic" motion picture camera while working for Thomas Edison.

image Publication of August Weismann's book Das Keimplasma (The Germ Plasm) emphasized meiosis as an exact mechanism of chromosome distribution.

1892

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1893

(no entry for this year)

image Hans Driesch expounded the view that all nuclei of an organism were equipotential but varied in their activity in accordance with the differentiation of tissues.

image Karl Pearson published the first in a long series of contributions to the mathematical theory of evolution. Methods for analyzing statistical frequency distributions were developed in detail.

image William Bateson's Materials for the Study of Variation emphasized the importance of discontinuous variations, foreshadowing the rediscovery of Mendel's work.

1894

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1895

Auguste and Louis Lumière invent the cinématographe.

image Cornflakes are invented in Battle Creek, Michigan, by John Harvey Kellogg — the chief medical officer of the Battle Creek sanitarium.

image E. B. Wilson publishes The Cell in Development and Heredity. This influential treatise (ultimately reprinted in several editions) distills the information compiled concerning cytology in the half-century since Schleiden and Schwann put forth the cell theory.

1896

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1897

America's first subway opens, in Boston.

Russian physicist Alexander Popov uses an antenna to transmit radio waves over a distance of 5 km.

(no entry for this year)

1898

Kodak introduces the Folding Pocket Kodak.

image image L. Cuénot (France) working with animals, and Strasburger (Germany) working with plants, advance theory that sex is controlled within the germ cell, not by environment.

Richard Altmann renames "nuclein" as NUCLEIC ACID.

The First International Congress of Genetics held in London.

image William Bateson writes a paper on hybridisation and cross-breeding as a method of scientific investigation that anticipates Mendel's rediscovery.

1899

(no entry for this year)

image H. de Vries adopts the term MUTATION to describe sudden, spontaneous, drastic alterations in the hereditary material of Oenothera.

T. H. Montgomery studies spermatogenesis in various species of Hemiptera. He concludes that maternal chromosomes only pair with paternal chromosomes during meiosis.

1901

Herman Hollerith patents Apperatus For Punching Record Cards

image Kodak introduces the 120 film format.

image The Metro subway opens in Paris.

image Archibald Garrod, a British physician, reports that alkaptonuria (a human disease) seems to be inherited as a Mendelian recessive.

image C. E. McClung argues that particular chromosomes determine the sex of the individual carrying them, not just in insects, but perhaps in other species (including man).

image Walter Sutton concludes that (a) chromosomes have individuality, (b) that they occur in pairs, with one member of each pair contributed by each parent, and (c) that the paired chromosomes separate from each other during meiosis.

image T. Boveri studies sea urchin embryos and finds that in order to develop normally, the organism must have a full set of chromosomes, and from this he concludes that the individual chromosomes must carry different essential hereditary determinants.

image William Bateson coins terms that will become essential to describing findings in the new science of heredity: GENETICS, F1, F2, ALLELOMORPH (later shortened to ALLELE), HOMOZYGOTE, HETEROZYGOTE, and EPISTASIS.

1902

Arthur Korn devises practical telephotography technology (reduction of photographic images to signals that can be transmitted by wire to other locations).Wire-Photos are in wide use in Europe by 1910, and transmitted to other continents by 1922.

image The concepts of PHENOTYPE, GENOTYPE, and SELECTION were introduced and clearly defined by Wilhelm Ludwig Johannsen.

1903

The first motor taxis appear in London

(no entry for this year)

1904

The Rolls-Royce company is founded in Britain.

K. S. Merezhkovsky suggests that chloroplasts originated as a cyanobacterium swallowed by a protozoan, i.e., algal and plant cells result from two independent organisms that became symbionts. The idea will be largely forgotten until it is suggested again in the 1960s.

image Lucien Claude Cuénot performs crosses between mice carrying a gene that gives them yellow fur. Since they always produce yellow furred and agouti offspring in a 2:1 ratio, he concludes they are heterozygous. (In 1910, W. E. Castle and C. C. Little will show that yellow homozygotes die in utero. This dominant allele is thus the first gene shown to behave as a homozygous lethal.)

1905

The first motorized buses operate in London.

image The first neon signs appear.

image image William Bateson and Reginald Crundall Punnett report the discovery of two new genetic principles: LINKAGE and GENE INTERACTION.

1906

Computer Pioneer Grace Hopper is Born

(no entry for this year)

1907

The Autochrome plate is introduced. It becomes the first commercially successful color photography product.

image Godfrey Harold Hardy, a Cambridge mathematician, writes a letter to the editor of Science, suggesting that Mendelian mechanisms acting alone have no effect on allele frequencies. The letter begins, I am reluctant to intrude in a discussion concerning matters of which I have no expert knowledge, and I should have expected the very simple point which I wish to make to have been familiar to biologists. However,... This short (less than one page) letter constitutes Hardy's entire lifetime contribution to the field of biology, yet still forms the mathematical basis for population genetics.

1908

Kinemacolor, a two-color process known as the first commercial "natural color" system for movies, is introduced.

General Motors Corporation is formed.

image The Ford Motor Company produces the first Model T. Ultimately, more than 15 million will be produced.

image T. H. Morgan, later to become the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for work in genetics, writes a paper expressing doubts about the profusion of Mendelian explanations for inherited properties.

image A. E. Garrod publishes Inborn Errors of Metabolism, the earliest discussion of the biochemical genetics of man (or any other species).

image George H. Shull advocates the use of self-fertilized lines in production of commercial seed corn. The hybrid corn program that resulted, created an abundance of foodstuffs worth billions of dollars.

H. Nilsson Ehle puts forward the multiple-factor hypothesis to explain the quantitative inheritance of seed-coat color in wheat.

image W. Johannsen's studies of the inheritance of seed size in self-fertilized lines of beans leads him to realize the necessity of distinguishing between the appearance of an organism and its genetic constitution. He invents the terms PHENOTYOPE and GENOTYPE to serve this purpose, and he also coins the word GENE.

1909

Kodak announces a 35 mm "safety" motion picture film on an acetate base as an alternative to the highly flammable nitrate base. The motion picture industry discontinues its use after 1911 due to technical imperfections.

The plastic age begins with the first commercial manufacture of Bakelite.

(no entry for this year)

1912

Thomas Edison introduces a short-lived 22 mm home motion picture format using acetate "safety" film manufactured by Kodak.

Vest Pocket Kodak using 127 film.

image A. H. Sturtevant, an undergraduate working with Morgan at Columbia, provides the experimental basis for the linkage concept in Drosophila and produces the first GENETIC MAP.

1913

image Roland Garros, a French aviator, becomes the first person to fly across the Mediterranean. Garros' original plan was to fly from St. Raphael in France to Bizerta, Tunisia, with the possibility of a fueling stop on Sardinia. En route, the trip seemed to be going well, so he skipped the refueling stop and flew directly to Bizerta, where he arrived at 1:45pm, with about five liters of fuel left in his tank.

image Oskar Barnack develops a prototype camera for testing 35mm movie film. This device, now often referred to as an UR-Leica, was quickly recognized as a miniature camera for producing still images. A dozen years later, the first commercially available 35mm still camera was marketed as the Leica I.

Kodak makes 35 mm panchromatic motion picture film available on a bulk special order basis.

image Hans Geiger unveils his radiation detector.

1914

Thomas J. Watson Sr. joins C-T-R

Kodak introduces the Autographic film system.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil, made in Kinemacolor, is the first dramatic feature film in color released.

image Calvin Bridges identifies strains of mutant fruit flies with extra pairs of wings. Decades later, these strains will help biologists understand Hox genes that control the head-to-toe anatomy of widely varying animals.

image Frederick Twort discovers a virus capable of infecting and destroying bacteria.

image image image image Thomas Hunt Morgan, Alfred Henry Sturtevant, Calvin Blackman Bridges, and Hermann Joseph Muller publish The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity. This monograph provides the first systematic description of the actual mechanisms that control inheritance as evidenced in the Mendelian model. Here, for the first time, the gene is made real.

1915

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1916

(no entry for this year)

image British polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson publishes On Growth and Form arguing that the forms Darwinian natural selection can produce through evolution are constrained by physical and mathematical laws, and that organic structures often emulate inorganic natural structures. His analysis led the way for the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns and body structures are formed in plants and animals. Thompson's description of the mathematical beauty of nature and the mathematical basis of the forms of animals stimulated thinkers as diverse as Julian Huxley, Conrad Hal Waddington, Alan Turing, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Eduardo Paolozzi, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe.

image C. B. Bridges discovers the first chromosome deficiency in Drosophila.

image Felix Hubert D'Herelle, independently of Frederick Twort, discovers a virus capable of infecting and destroying bacteria, which he calls a BACTERIOPHAGE.

1917

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1918

Core memory inventor Jay Forrester is born

image Thomas Hunt Morgan and coworkers publish The Physical Basis of Heredity, a book-length summary of the rapidly growing findings in genetics.

image C. B. Bridges discovers chromosomal duplications in Drosophila.

image T. H. Morgan calls attention to the equality in Drosophila melanogaster between the number of linkage groups and the haploid number of chromosomes.

1919

ENIAC Designer Presper Eckert Is Born

(no entry for this year)

1920

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1921

(no entry for this year)

Lillian V. Morgan discovers attached-X chromosomes in Drosophila.

1922

Kodak makes 35 mm panchromatic motion picture film available as a regular stock.

A. E. Boycott and C. Diver describe "delayed" Mendelian inheritance controlling the direction of the coiling of the shell in the snail Limnea peregra. A. H. Sturtevant suggests that the direction of coiling of the Limnea shell is determined by the character of the ooplasm, which is in turn controlled by the mother's genotype.

image C. B. Bridges discovers chromosomal translocations in Drosophila.

1923

Integrated Circuit Co-Inventor Jack Kilby is Born

Harold Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp for strobe photography.

The 16 mm amateur motion picture format is introduced by Kodak. Their Cine-Kodak camera uses reversal film and all 16 mm is on an acetate (safety) base.

(no entry for this year)

1924

C-T-R becomes IBM

Tennessee schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes is tried for teaching evolution in the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial." Two-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan leads the prosecution. Labor lawyer Clarence Darrow leads the defense and goads Bryan into declaring that humans are not mammals. The conviction will be overturned on a technicality, and the anti- evolution law will remain on the books for decades.

image A. H. Sturtevant analyzes the Bar-eye phenomenon in Drosophila and discovers position effect.

1925

First patent for a transistor in Canada lodged

January 1925 Douglas Engelbart is Born

Supercomputer Pioneer Seymour Cray is Born

image The Leica I 35mm still camera was introduced at the Leipzig Spring Fair in Germany, thereby launching the 35mm format for portable photography.

A. H. Sturtevant finds the first inversion in Drosophila.

1926

Kodak introduces its 35 mm Motion Picture Duplicating Film for duplicate negatives. Previously, motion picture studios used a second camera alongside the primary camera to create a duplicate negative.

image Bernard O. Dodge initiates genetic studies on Neurospora.

image H. J. Muller reports the artificial induction of mutations in Drosophila by x-rays.

image J. B. S. Haldane suggests that the genes known to control certain coat colors in various rodents and carnivores may be evolutionarily homologous.

1927

(no entry for this year)

image Frederick Griffith discovers type-transformation of pneumococci. This lays the foundation for the work of Avery, MacLeod, and McCarthy (1944).

image L. J. Stadler reports the artificial induction of mutations in maize, and demonstrates that the dose-frequency curve is linear.

1928

Introduction of 80-columns card format

(no entry for this year)

1929

Herman Hollerith Died

image R. A. Fisher publishes Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, a formal analysis of the mathematics of selection.

1930

(no entry for this year)

C. Stern, and independently H. B. Creighton and B. McClintock, provide the cytological proof of crossing over.

1931

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1932

"Flowers and Trees", the first full-color cartoon, is made in Technicolor by Disney.

Kodak introduces the first 8 mm amateur motion picture film, cameras, and projectors.

Robert Broom publishes The Coming of Man: Was it Accident or Design? arguing that evolution is really driven by spiritual agencies, some with conflicting priorities, and that mankind is the ultimate aim of all evolution.

image T. H. Morgan receives a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his development of the theory of the gene. He is the first geneticist to receive this award.

image Barbara McClintock demonstrates in maize that a single exchange within the inversion loop of a paracentric inversion heterozygote generates an acentric and a dicentric chromatid.

T. S. Painter initiates cytogenetic studies on the salivary gland chromosomes of Drosophila.

1933

(no entry for this year)

(no entry for this year)

1934

IBM 405 Alphabetical Accounting Machine introduced

The 135 film cartridge is introduced, making 35 mm easy to use for still photography.

image C. B. Bridges publishes the salivary gland chromosome maps for Drosophila melanogaster.

G. W. Beadle and B. Ephrussi and A. Kuhn and A. Butenandt work out the biochemical genetics of eye-pigment synthesis in Drosophila and Ephestia, respectively.

image J. B. S. Haldane is the first to calculate the spontaneous mutation frequency of a human gene.

1935

Becky Sharp, the first feature film made in the full-color "three-strip" version of Technicolor, is released.

Introduction of Kodachrome multi-layered color reversal film (16 mm only; 8 mm and 35 mm follow in 1936, sheet film in 1938).

A. H. Sturtevant and T. Dobzhansky publish the first account of the use of inversions in constructing a chromosomal phylogenetic tree.

1936

At Cambridge Alan Turing invented the principle of the modern computer

Konrad Zuse Files For Patent

Agfacolor Neu (English: New Agfacolor) color reversal film for home movies and slides.

Introduction by IHAGEE of the Ihagee Kine Exakta 1, the first 35 mm SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera.

T. Dobzhansky publishes Genetics and the Origin of Species — a milestone in evolutionary genetics.

1937

Alan Turing Defines the Universal Machine

ILLIAC IV Designer Slotnick is born

The Atanasoff–Berry Computer first conceived

(no entry for this year)

1938

Zuse Z1 built by Konrad Zuse

E. L. Ellis and M. Delbrück perform studies on coliphage growth that mark the beginning of modem phage work. They devise the "one-step growth" experiment, which demonstrates that after the phage adsorbs onto the bacterium, it replicates within the bacterium during the "latent period," and finally the progeny are released in a "burst."

1939

Hewlett Packard Founded

Agfacolor negative and positive 35 mm color film stock for professional motion picture use (not for making paper prints).

The View-Master 3-D viewer and its "reels" of seven small stereoscopic image pairs on Kodachrome film are introduced.

(no entry for this year)

1940

(no entry for this year)

G. W. Beadle and E. L. Tatum publish their classic study on the biochemical genetics of Neurospora and promulgate the ONE-GENE, ONE-ENZYME theory.

K. Mather coins the term polygenes and describes polygenic traits in various organisms.

1941

Zuse Z3 machine completed

Ernst Mayr publishes Systematics and the Origin of Species, and Julian Huxley publishes Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. Both books are significant contributions to the neo darwinian synthesis combining elements of natural selection, genetics, mutation, population biology and paleontology.

S. E. Luria and T. F. Anderson publish the first electron micrographs of bacterial viruses. T2 has a polyhedral body and a tail.

1942

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer is completed

Kodacolor, the first color film that yields negatives for making chromogenic color prints on paper. Roll films for snapshot cameras only, 35 mm not available until 1958.

1943

The Colossus Mark 1 computer is delivered to Bletchley Park

The First Computing Journal

Work begins on ENIAC

Theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes What is Life? arguing that living organisms store and pass along information, perhaps using something like Morse code. This book will inspire James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who will share the Nobel prize for discovering the structure of DNA.

O. T. Avery, C. M. MacLeod, and M. McCarty describe the pneumococcus transforming principle. The fact that it is rich in DNA suggests that DNA and not protein is the hereditary chemical.

1944

First Harvard Mark 1 shipped

image S. E. Luria demonstrates that mutations occur in bacterial viruses.

1945

Grace Hopper recorded the first actual computer "bug"

Patent is Filed for the Harvard Mark I

Vannevar Bush publishes his ideas for MEMEX, a proto-hypertext system and forerunner to the World Wide Web

1946

Alan Turing Proposal For 'ACE' Automatic Computing Engine

ENIAC Unveiled

ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer was announced

Frederick Williams Receives Patent for RAM device

(no entry for this year)

1947

J Lyons executives report on the potential of computers to automate clerical work

The Williams tube won the race for a practical random-access memory

Dennis Gabor invents holography.

Harold Edgerton develops the Rapatronic camera for the U.S. government.

image H. J. Muller coins the term dosage compensation.

J. Lederberg and N. Zinder, and, independently, B. D. Davis develop the penicillin selection technique for isolating biochemically deficient bacterial mutants.

1948

IBM´s Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator was built

The Manchester Baby, the world's first stored program computer, ran its first program

Edwin H. Land introduces the first Polaroid instant camera.

image The Hasselblad 1600F camera is introduced.

A. D. Hershey and R. Rotman demonstrate that genetic recombination occurs in bacteriophage.

J. V. Neel provides genetic evidence that the sickle-cell disease is inherited as a simple Mendelian autosomal recessive.

1949

EDSAC performed its first calculations

EDSAC ran its first programs

EDVAC goes onlline

Jay Forrester Records "Core Memory" Idea

Professor Bill Phillips unveils Phillips Hydraulic Economic Modelling Computer at the LSE

The Contax S camera is introduced, the first 35 mm SLR camera with a pentaprism eye-level viewfinder.

At a Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, Ernst Mayr argues that all hominid specimens so far found should be categorized in the genus Homo: H. transvaalensis, H. erectus, and H. sapiens.

E. Chargaff lays the foundations for nucleic acid structural studies by his analytical work. He demonstrates for DNA that the numbers of adenine and thymine groups are always equal and so are the numbers of guanine and cytosine groups. These findings later suggest to Watson and Crick that DNA consists of two polynucleotide strands joined by hydrogen bonding between A and T and between G and C.

E. M. Lederberg discovers lambda, the first viral episome of E. coli.

1950

The first Elliott 152 computer appeared

Zuse sold first Z4 computer

Barbara McClintock publishes a paper describing "jumping" genes that can move around within an organism's genome.

1951

Ferranti Mark 1 delivered to Manchester University

LEO I computer became operational

The first UNIVAC was delivered

UNIVAC-1 goes online

A. D. Hershey and M. Chase demonstrate that the DNA of phage enters the host, whereas most of the protein remains behind.

F. Sanger and his colleagues work out the complete amino acid sequence for the protein hormone insulin, and show that it contains two polypeptide chains held together by disulfide bridges.

J. Lederberg and E. M. Lederberg invent the replica plating technique.

N. D. Zinder and J. Lederberg describe transduction in Salmonella.

1952

CBS News Uses UNIVAC Computer to Predict Election

Grace Hopper completes the A-0 Compiler

Heinz Nixdorf founded Nixdorf Computer

Bwana Devil, a low-budget polarized 3-D film, premieres in late November and starts a brief 3-D craze that begins in earnest in 1953 and fades away during 1954.

image image J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick propose a model for DNA comprised of two helically intertwined chains tied together by hydrogen bonds between the purines and pyrimidines.

W. Hayes discovers polarized behavior in bacterial recombinations. He isolates the Hfr H strain of E. coli and shows that certain genes are readily transferred from Hfr to F- bacteria, whereas others are not.

1953

IBM announces the Model 650 computer

Jay Forrester installed magnetic core memory at MIT

(no entry for this year)

1954

20th September First FORTRAN Program Runs

IBM Announces Model 705 Computer

Jack Tramiel starts Commodore

Leica M Introduced

image S. Benzer works out the fine structure of the rII region of phage T4 of E. coli, and coins the terms CISTRON,RECON, and MUTON.

1955

Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs is Born

Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft Corporation, was born

English Electric Deuce Computers introduced

ENIAC is retired

F. Jacob and E. L. Wollman are able experimentally to interrupt the mating process in E. coli and show that a piece of DNA is inserted from the donor bacterium into the recipient.

1956

First keyboard used to input data

IBM brings out the Magnetic Disk Memory

IBM introduces the IBM 350

Jay Forrester Receives Patent on "Core" Memory

Pegasus, produced by Ferranti Ltd., went into service in March 1956

Wang Sells Core Memory Patent to IBM

Francis Crick proposes the "central dogma" of genetic information transfer: DNA specifies RNA and RNA specifies cell proteins.

V. M. Ingram reports that normal and sickle-cell hemoglobin differ by a single amino acid substitution.

1957

BCS - British Computer Society is Founded

CDC Introduces 1604 Computer

DEC is founded

Ferranti Mercury Introduced

FORTRAN-1 is formally published

May 1957 LEO II Installed

First Asahi Pentax SLR introduced.

First digital computer acquisition of scanned photographs, by Russell Kirsch et al. at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now the NIST).

Frederick Sanger receives a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin.

George W. Beadle, Edward L. Tatum, and Joshua Lederberg share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for Beadle and Tatum's discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events, and for Lederberg's discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria.

image F. H. C. Crick suggests that during protein formation the amino acid is carried to the template by an adaptor molecule containing nucleotides and that the adaptor is the part that actually fits on the RNA template. Crick thus predicts the discovery of transfer RNA.

F. Jacob and E. L. Wollman demonstrate that the single linkage group of E. coli is circular and suggest that the different linkage groups found in different Hfr strains result from the insertion at different points of a factor in the circular linkage group that determines the rupture of the circle.

M. Meselson and F. W. Stahl use the density gradient equilibrium centrifugation technique to demonstrate the semiconservative distribution of density label during DNA replication in E. coli.

1958

Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit

Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxiribonucleic acid.

J. Lejeune, M. Gautier, and R. Turpin show that Down syndrome is a chromosomal aberration involving trisomy of a small telocentric chromosome.

R. L. Sinsheimer demonstrates that bacteriophage phiX174 of E. coli contains a single-stranded DNA molecule.

1959

COBOL is introduced

The Xerox 914 is the first office copier for sale

AGFA introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.

Nikon F introduced.

Alister Hardy promotes his Homo aquaticus or "aquatic ape" hypothesis to the British Sub Aqua Club. He will follow up this announcement with several magazine articles.

1960

DEC released its first mini computer: PDP-1

image image F. Jacob and J. Monod publish "Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins," a paper in which the theory of the OPERON is developed.

1961

Clive Sinclair founds Sinclair Radionics

Computerized spreadsheets for use in business accounting developed

LEO III completed in 1961

Minivac 601 Computer Launched

Robert Noyce Awarded Patent for "Integrated Circuit"

Human geneticist James Neel develops the "thrifty genotype" hypothesis that human ancestors endured feast-famine cycles that made the human body very effective in storing fat for lean times.

image image image James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in elucidating the structure of DNA.

1962

"Music from Mathematics" LP was created using an IBM 7090 computer

The first commercial Modem manufactured

The Machester Atlas was inaugurated on 7th December 1962

(no entry for this year)

1963

Douglas Engelbart Invents the Mouse

First edition of the ASCII standard was published.

Theodore H (Ted) Nelson coins the word Hypertext

Kodak introduces the Instamatic.

(no entry for this year)

1964

BASIC language developed

First operation of BASIC

First operation of Ferranti Atlas

Graphic tablet developed

IBM releases the System 360 range of commercial computers

Introduction of CDC 6600

Introduction of DEC PDP-7 18-bits minicomputer

First Pentax Spotmatic SLR introduced.

1965

Commodore Business Machines (CBM) is founded.

DEC unveils the PDP-8,

Introduction of Wang 300 electronic calculator

Moore's Law coined

Willi Hennig works on a new approach to assessing evolutionary relationships, known as cladistics. Although it will be hotly debated, this technique will eventually become standard practice in paleontology, botany and zoology.

1966

Introduction of DEC PDP-9

The hand-held pocket calculator was invented at Texas Instruments in 1966

Lynn Sagan (later Lynn Margulis) hypothesizes that chloroplasts originated as cyanobacteria, and that mitochondria originated as bacteria. She suggests that both were engulfed by other cells and began functioning as symbionts.

1967

Barclays Bank in the UK claims to have installed the first cash dispenser

Elliott Automation merged with English Electric

Introduction of DEC PDP-10

First MOS 10 by 10 active pixel array shown by Noble

A.G. Cairns-Smith publishes a paper suggesting that the first life on Earth might have been fine-grained clay crystals. He will publish on this topic several more times before his death, but the experimental evidence will remain scant, perhaps in part because sufficient technology doesn't yet exist to test the hypothesis.

Robert W. Holley, Har Gobind Khorana, and Marshall W. Nirenberg share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.

1968

CDC Introduces the 7600 Supercomputer

Douglas C. Engelbart publicly demonstrates the mouse

IBM tests a 8in floppy disc

Integrated Circuits First Used in Apollo Moon shot

Introduction of HP-9100 desk calculator

Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore found Intel Corporation

T J Watson and IBM granted patent for the DRAM

1969

AMD Advanced Micro Devices is founded

ARPANET launch the world's first successful packet-switched wide area computer network

DEC PDP-15 Introduced

First flight to Moon of Apollo XI with Raytheon Apollo Guidance Computer

Honeywell releases the H316 "Kitchen Computer",

Intel announces a 1 kilobit RAM chip

Plessey buys out Ferranti's numerical Control Interests

(no entry for this year)

1970

5200 computers installed in Britain

Computer terminals in homes predicted for 1980

DEC introduces the PDP-8/E

IBM 370/145 introduced

Open University to install ICL 32K 1902A computer

Univac 1110 is introduced

UNIX is developed

Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

Five pairs of adult wall lizards are moved between two islands in Croatia. Over the next few decades, the lizards on the new island will evolve larger heads, stronger bites, and a greater tolerance for an herbivorous diet than the original lizard population.

1971

Burroughs introduces L500 Visible Record Model

DEC launches Giant Mini PDP-11/45

DEC launches PDP-11/03

Decsystem 10 introduced

First Network Email sent by Ray Tomlinson

IBM's Thomas J Watson retires

Intel Introduces the World's First EPROM

Intel Launches the First Microprocessor - The 4004

Nixdorf merge with AEG-Telefunken

Olivetti launches P602 "minicomputer"

1972

£1.3m RAF order for Cossor Terminals

370/125 and OCR reader from IBM

ARPA Network - UK gets link to major US network

ASC developed by Texas Instruments

Atanasoff Official "Inventor" of Computer

Atari Introduces Pong

Burroughs Launch L8000 Range of Computers

Burroughs launches L7000 range on UK market

C programming language developed

Clive Sinclair introduces the first pocket calculator

Development of standard OS to be halted

First e-mail program developed

First Infra-red Data Link transmission in the UK

Flat screen terminal introduced by Burroughs

Foundation of Cray Research Inc by Seymour Cray

Fujitsu and Hitachi in joint deal

GE Time Sharing Service

Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP-35

Honeywell's 700 range comes to the UK

IBM's DOS/VS

NCR 399

Problems with IBM 370/155 and 370/165

Sigma 6

SITA Network

Space Craft Pioneer 10 & 11 use Custom CPU in TTL

Terminal range boosted by Burroughs TC 3500

The Future of ICL as a British-controlled going concern

The Intel 8008 was introduced

The Magnavox Odyssey, the first video game console, is released

UK launch for Burroughs L8000 range

Worlds first IBM 370/135 installed in Britain

Integrated Photomatrix (Noble) demonstrates for 64 by 64 MOS active pixel array

Half in jest, Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggest that ancient aliens may have seeded the early Earth with DNA, and all life on this planet arose from that.

Peter and Rosemary Grant begin a long-term study of finches on the Galápagos Islands. In succeeding years, as they watch finches adapt to alternating wet and dry conditions, the Grants will uncover evidence that evolution proceeds more rapidly than what Darwin estimated.

Taking a line from Through the Looking Glass, Leigh Van Valen establishes the "Red Queen" hypothesis of coevolution between predator and prey: "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

1973

8" floppy & first "Hard Drive introduced by IBM

Bob Metcalfe invents Ethernet

Britain exports more computing equipment than it imports

Gary Kildall writes CP/M

IBM 370/145 product range released

IBM in Nigeria

IMSAI is founded. In 1973

The Micral was the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer

Xerox Alto personal computer was developed at Xerox PARC

Fairchild Semiconductor releases the first large image forming CCD chip: 100 rows and 100 columns of pixels.

(no entry for this year)

1974

GA LSI 12/16 and LSI16

introduction of Intel 8080 2MHz microprocessor

MITS completes the first prototype Altair 8800 microcomputer

NCR 250-6000

Philips P852M

The Z-80, 8 bit processor is designed by Zilog Corp

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center designed the Alto

Mary-Claire King and Allan Wilson publish their finding that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences differ by roughly 1 percent, meaning humans have more in common with chimps than chimps do with gorillas. King and Wilson suggest that humans and chimps differ largely in the DNA that switches on and off genes.

David Baltimore, Renato Dulbecco, and Howard Temin share Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell.

1975

Bill Gates and Paul Allen sign a licensing agreement with MITS

CP/M operating system finished

Cray 1A announced

First meeting of the Homebrew Club

Microsoft Founded

MITS Altair launched on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine

Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors.

Overturning the classifications introduced by R. H. Whittaker seven years earlier, Carl Woese proposes to divide all living things into three categories: Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya.

1976

Apple 1 Released

Burroughs introduce the large B7700 series

Dec System 20 introduced

Intel introduce SBC-80/10 "computer on a card"

Last slide rule manufactured today

Seymour Cray demonstrates CRAY-1 - The first vector-processor supercomputer

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne Found Apple Computer Inc.

The 5 1/4" flexible disk drive was introduced

Steadicam becomes available.

Submersible vehicle Alvin reveals deep sea vents on the ocean floor that give rise to an ecosystem owing nothing to photosynthesis. This finding prompts speculation that life on Earth first arose in deep-sea, not shallow-water, ecosystems.

Fred Sanger and collaborators publish the first complete DNA sequence of an organism, a bacteriophage, or virus infecting bacteria.

1977

Commodore International shows its Commodore PET 2001

Radio Shack announces TRS-80 computer

Science of Cambridge Ltd Formed

The Apple II launched

The MK14 was introduced by Science of Cambridge

The RCA CDP1802 microprocessor was used in the Galileo spacecraft

1978

Acorn Computers Ltd formed in Cambridge, UK

Texas Instruments introduced Speak & Spell

VisiCalc Spreadsheet is born

image Fresh out of law school and short on cash, Robert Heggestad buys an antique cabinet on an installment plan from a Virginia antique shop. The cabinet turns out to contain some 1,700 plant and invertebrate specimens from the personal collection of Alfred Russel Wallace.

1979

"VisiCalc" introduced

Acorn System 1 Launched

Apple II+ Launched

Microsoft moves from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Bellevue, Washington

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus describe genetic mutations affecting the body plan of the fruit fly Drosophila, and identify genes controlling the basic body plans of all animals. These genes will eventually be known as Hox genes.

Paul Berg, Walter Gilbert, and Frederick Sanger share a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Berg cited for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA, and Gilbert and Sanger cited for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids. This is Sanger's second Nobel, the first having come in 1958 for his work on the structure of insulin.

1980

Acorn Atom Launched

Apple Computer’s Initial Share Offering

Microsoft Signs Contract with IBM to Create Operating System

Sinclair ZX80 Launched

The Apple III was announced

(no entry for this year)

1981

Acorn BBC Micro Launched

HP-41 calculator Used In Space Shuttle

IBM announced that it was launching a personal computer using an Intel 8088

IBM introduces personal computer with Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0

Introduction of Osborne portable computer in a suitcase

Microsoft incorporates

Sinclair ZX81 Computer Launched

Space Shuttle uses Intel 8086 and RCA 1802

The first ‘portable’ computer is launched

VIC-20 Released in Europe & US

(no entry for this year)

1982

Commodore 64 Released

Dragon 32 Released

Introduction of Cray X-MP supercomputer

Introduction of Intel 80286 at 6 MHz, with 134,000 transistors

Sinclair launches the ZX Spectrum computer

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Launched

1983

Apple Lisa Launched

Introduction of spreadsheet program 1-2-3 by Lotus,

Microsoft Introduced 2-button Mouse

Microsoft Introduces Windows

The famicom is released in Japan

David Raup and Jack Sepkoski publish the controversial claim that mass extinctions are regularly spaced at 26 million years.

1984

Apple launches Macintosh 128K

Creation of Dell Computer Corporation by Michael Dell

First ARM Processors Powered Up

IBM and Compaq introduce the IDE interface

IBM’s new 3480 cartridge tape system introduced

Introduction of IBM PC/AT based on Intel 80286

Macintosh 512K Launched

Novelist William Gibson coins the term cyberspace

(no entry for this year)

1985

Commodore 128 Released

Cray X-MP Supercomputer Begins Operation

First Commodore Amiga Released

Introduction of Intel 386

Microsoft Windows Launched

Olivetti buy 49% of Acorn Computers

Steve Jobs founds NeXT Computers Inc.

(no entry for this year)

1986

Acorn BBC Master Compact Launched

Acorn BBC Master Launched

Apple Macintosh Plus launched

First PC virus is released with "Brain"

Microsoft moves to corporate campus in Redmond, Washington

Microsoft stock goes public

Nintendo NES released

Kodak scientists invent the world's first megapixel sensor.

Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann announce that all humans share a common ancestor who lived in Africa as recently as 150,000 years ago. Because the discovery is based on examination of mitochondrial DNA, the ancestral entity will be given the popular (and somewhat misleading) name of "Mitochondrial Eve." The controversial finding will be supported by another discovery in 2000.

1987

Commodore release the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 2000

Macintosh II released

Windows 2 was launched

Molecular biologist John Cairns describes experiments suggesting that bacteria facing environmental stress can "direct" their mutations to produce favorable adaptations. Directed mutation will remain a controversial idea, but the possibility that organisms mutate at a greater rate (hypermutation) under environmental stress will gain more acceptance.

1988

IBM announces 3 millionth PS/2 personal computer

RISC OS is released

The first worm experience appears

The NeXT (68030 CPU) computer is introduced after two years of research

Unisys takes over Convergent Technologies

1989

Apple introduces the Macintosh SE/30

Apple Macintosh Portable Released

ICL introduces DRS model 40 and 45

Tim Berners-Lee toyed with the idea of web pages and hyperlinks

The Human Genome Project is launched with the goal of sequencing all 3 billion base pairs of human DNA by 2005.

1990

Commodore releases the Amiga 3000

Hubble Space Telescope uses 386 processor

Introduction of IBM RS/6000

Microsoft launches Windows 3.0

Chicxulub crater is discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula, supporting the asteroid impact theory first suggested in 1980.

1991

Apple releases the PowerBook 100

First E-mail From Space Is Sent from a Mac Portable

Linus Torvalds from Finland releases Linux version 0.02

Silicon & Synapse founded

Sun Microsystems Starts Java Technology

(no entry for this year)

1992

Commodore releases the the Amiga 500+

Internet freed from Government control

Microsoft Releases Windows 3.1

Photo CD created by Kodak.

1993

Apple Newton Message Pad announced

Commodore released the CD32 model

Compaq Introduces Presario

Foundation of Nvidia

IBM Announces a loss of $4.97m for 1992

Intel Ships "Pentium" Chip"

Introduction of Apple Newton PDA

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory begins work on image-capturing devices using CMOS or active pixel sensors.

(no entry for this year)

1994

Netscape Communications Corporation is founded

Silicon & Synapse changes its name to Blizzard Entertainment

Yahoo founded January 1994

Nikon introduces the first optical-stabilized lens.

1995

Microsoft launches Windows 95

Nvidia's NV1 launched

"Kodak DC40 and the Apple QuickTake 100 become the first digital cameras marketed for consumers."

Using "molecular clock" estimates of mutation rates, Greg Wray and collaborators hypothesize that metazoan phyla diverged from each other 1 billion years ago, or even earlier. In other words, they argue that metazoans existed hundreds of millions of years before the earliest metazoan fossils (about 600 million years old) yet found.

1996

Apple Computer buys NeXT

eBay is founded by Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar

Eastman Kodak, FujiFilm, AgfaPhoto, and Konica introduce the Advanced Photo System (APS).

(no entry for this year)

1997

IBM's Deep Blue Beats Gary Kasparov at Chess

IBM announces RS/6000 SP Deep Blue

zon.com, an online bookseller, goes public

first known publicly shared picture via a cell phone, by Philippe Kahn.

(no entry for this year)

1998

Apple Release the iMac

Foundation of Google by Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Introduction of Apple iMac

Microsoft launches Windows 98

(no entry for this year)

1999

Napster the first file sharing program introduced

Nvidia releases GeForce 256

The Millennium bug is taken seriously

Based on studies of Y chromosomes, Peter Underhill publishes his finding that all modern humans share a common ancestor, bolstering the 1987 announcement from Cann and Wilson. This suggests a "bottleneck" event (population crash) among human ancestors living in Africa roughly 150,000 years ago.

Sally McBearty and Alison Brooks publish "The Revolution that Wasn't" challenging the long-held notion of a "big bang" in human intellectual evolution approximately 40,000 years ago. Instead, they cite evidence for earlier appearances of modern behavior.

2000

Intel ES7000 server from Unisys introduced

Microsoft launches Windows 2000

J-SH04 introduced by J-Phone, the first commercially available mobile phone with a camera that can take and share still pictures.[13]

image Alfred Sturtevant's A History of Genetics is republished jointly by the Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Sturtevant provides an insider's perspective (he created the FIRST GENETIC MAP ) to this first-rate summary of the foundations of classical genetics.

CLICK TO BUY THIS BOOK

The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (Human Genome Project) publishes the initial sequence and analysis of the human genome in Nature Magazine. Celera Genomics simultaneously publishes a draft human genome sequence in Science Magazine.

Leland H. Hartwell, R. Timothy Hunt, and Sir Paul M. Nurse share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.

2001

Apple Launches a New Music Device - The iPod

Microsoft Releases Windows XP

(no entry for this year)

2003

Microsoft launches Windows Server 2003

Peter Brown, Mike Morwood and collaborators announce the find of a 1-meter- tall hominid skeleton on the Indonesian island of Flores. Found near the remains of giant lizards and pygmy elephants, the new species is formally named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the "hobbit." Though some suspect it's a kind of malformed, small-brained midget, this interpretation will be answered by braincase scans, wrist bones too primitive to be Homo sapiens, and the announcement of several more individuals of the same species. Later studies will suggest direct ancestry from Homo erectus, although another study will argue the remains really indicate Down syndrome. The species is initially given an estimated age as young as 11,000 years, but later research will indicate an age of at least 50,000 years.

2004

Firefox 1.0 Introduced

First Ubuntu Linux operating system Released

Microsoft returns $75 billion to shareholders

(no entry for this year)

2005

Google now indexes over 8 billion pages

AgfaPhoto files for bankruptcy. The production of Agfa brand consumer films ends.

Jean Moliner, Gerhard Ries, Cyril Zipfel and Barbara Hohn publish their findings on stressed plants that not only mutate at a greater rate, but also pass an increased mutation tendency to their offspring.

Andrew Z. Fine and Craig C. Mello share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of RNA interference — gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.

Roger D. Kornberg was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.

2006

Microsoft announces Bill Gates transition

Dalsa produces a 111 megapixel CCD sensor, the highest resolution at that time.

After studying grunting fish, Andrew Bass and colleagues report that the part of the brain controlling volcalization is extremely primitive, and propose that vertebrates evolved the ability to communicate through sound some 400 million years ago.

2008

Android operating system released

The HD player war comes to an end

Virus Found On Computer In Space Station

Polaroid announces it is discontinuing the production of all instant film products, citing the rise of digital imaging technology.

Gabriele Gentile and colleagues describe a previously overlooked pink iguana, referred to as "rosada," on the Galápagos Islands. The pink lizard species may represent the earliest divergence of land animals on the island chain that Charles Darwin made famous.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak share a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath share a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.

2009

FujiFilm launches world's first digital 3D camera with 3D printing capabilities.

Kodak announces the discontinuance of Kodachrome film.

Ryan Kerney announces the discovery of algae (Oophila amblystomatis) living inside spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) embryo cells — the first discovery of a photosynthetic symbiont living inside vertebrate cells.

Candy makers Hershey and Mars finance competing genomic sequences for cacao (the primary ingredient of chocolate).

Robert G. Edwards receives the Nobel prize in Medicine "for the development of in vitro fertilization"

2010

Apple iPad Launched in the UK

Apple Surpasses Microsoft as Most Valuable Technology Company

First Tweet sent to Twitter on VIC-20

Two studies released in the same week indicate that modern Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians descended from an earlier migration out of Africa than did other populations. Further, the studies suggest that participants in the earlier migration interbred with Denisovans.

Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann share the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity"

2011

Steve Jobs retires as CEO of Apple

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, dies age 56

Lytro releases the first pocket-sized consumer light-field camera, capable of refocusing images after being taken.

2012

Google Brain watches Youtube, recognises cats.

Wii U released

Wikipedia and others Go Dark in protest anti-piracy law

Based on new genetic research, David Reich, Svante Pääbo and collaborators announce at a Royal Society of London meeting that Denisovans bred with Neanderthals, ancestors of people now living in East Asia and Oceania, and another group of extinct archaic humans who were genetically dissimilar to both Neanderthals and modern humans. A few weeks later, Matthias Meyer, Svante Pääbo and coauthors describe the oldest hominin DNA sequence to date, from a 400,000-year-old femur from Spain's Sima de los Huesos. The mitochondrial DNA indicate an unexpected link to Denisovans.

Using genetic material from more than 300 individuals, including aboriginal Australians from the Northern Territory, a team of geneticists argues that Australians — long believed isolated from other populations for some 45,000 years — received substantial gene flow from India about 4,230 years ago.

James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof share the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells"

2013

Edward Snowden Leaks Top Secret Documents

PlayStation 4 released

Suicide of Aaron Swartz

Xbox One released

2014

Amazon buys Twitch for £585m

Android watches go up for preorder

Bill Gates returns to Microsoft as Technology Adviser

Bletchley park officially opens to the public

Facebook buys Oculus

Facebook buys WhatsApp

Nvidia at GPU Technology Conference

The Queen opens a new 'Information Age' Gallery at the Science Museum

Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, Arhat Abzhanov and colleagues announce that they have reverse engineered dinosaur snouts in chicken embryos by altering beak- building gene expressions.

Stephen Hackley publishes a review article arguing that human brains retain vestigial neural circuitry, the same circuitry that currently allows other mammals (and once allowed our ancient ancestors) to orient their ears toward novel stimuli.

William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura share the Nobel prize in Medicine "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites" and Tu Youyou receives a Nobel {rize in Medicine "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria"

2015

Apple posts biggest quarterly profit in history

Apple reveals Apple Watch

Microsoft reveals HoloLens headset

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2019

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2020

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2021

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2022

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2023

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2024

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2025

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2026

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2027

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2028

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2029

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ESP Quick Facts

ESP Origins

In the early 1990's, Robert Robbins was a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, where he directed the informatics core of GDB — the human gene-mapping database of the international human genome project. To share papers with colleagues around the world, he set up a small paper-sharing section on his personal web page. This small project evolved into The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project.

ESP Support

In 1995, Robbins became the VP/IT of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. Soon after arriving in Seattle, Robbins secured funding, through the ELSI component of the US Human Genome Project, to create the original ESP.ORG web site, with the formal goal of providing free, world-wide access to the literature of classical genetics.

ESP Rationale

Although the methods of molecular biology can seem almost magical to the uninitiated, the original techniques of classical genetics are readily appreciated by one and all: cross individuals that differ in some inherited trait, collect all of the progeny, score their attributes, and propose mechanisms to explain the patterns of inheritance observed.

ESP Goal

In reading the early works of classical genetics, one is drawn, almost inexorably, into ever more complex models, until molecular explanations begin to seem both necessary and natural. At that point, the tools for understanding genome research are at hand. Assisting readers reach this point was the original goal of The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project.

ESP Usage

Usage of the site grew rapidly and has remained high. Faculty began to use the site for their assigned readings. Other on-line publishers, ranging from The New York Times to Nature referenced ESP materials in their own publications. Nobel laureates (e.g., Joshua Lederberg) regularly used the site and even wrote to suggest changes and improvements.

ESP Content

When the site began, no journals were making their early content available in digital format. As a result, ESP was obliged to digitize classic literature before it could be made available. For many important papers — such as Mendel's original paper or the first genetic map — ESP had to produce entirely new typeset versions of the works, if they were to be available in a high-quality format.

ESP Help

Early support from the DOE component of the Human Genome Project was critically important for getting the ESP project on a firm foundation. Since that funding ended (nearly 20 years ago), the project has been operated as a purely volunteer effort. Anyone wishing to assist in these efforts should send an email to Robbins.

ESP Plans

With the development of methods for adding typeset side notes to PDF files, the ESP project now plans to add annotated versions of some classical papers to its holdings. We also plan to add new reference and pedagogical material. We have already started providing regularly updated, comprehensive bibliographies to the ESP.ORG site.

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Timeline

The new, dynamic Timeline from the Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project gives users more control over the timeline display.

We seek your suggestions for timeline content, both for individual events and for entire subjects.

To submit a correction or a recommendation or to propose new Timeline content (or to volunteer as a Timeline Editor), click HERE.

The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project needs help: with acquiring content, with writing, with editing, with graphic production, and with financial support.

CLICK HERE to see what ESP needs most.

ESP Picks from Around the Web (updated 06 MAR 2017 )