1783 in science

The year 1783 in science and technology involved some significant events:

Astronomy

The Meteor of August 18, 1783, as seen from the East Angle of the North Terrace, Windsor Castle, watercolour by Paul Sandby

• February 26 – Caroline Herschel discovers NGC 2360.
• May – John Goodricke presents his conclusions that the variable star Algol is what comes to be known as an eclipsing binary to the Royal Society of London.
• August 18 – Great Meteor passes over Great Britain, exciting scientific interest.^[1][2]
• November 27 – John Michell proposes the existence of black holes ("dark stars").^[3]
• Jérôme Lalande publishes a revised edition of John Flamsteed’s star catalogue in an ephemeris, Éphémérides des mouvemens célestes, numbering the stars consecutively by constellation, the system which becomes known as "Flamsteed designations".^[4]

Aviation

• June 5 – The Montgolfier brothers send up at Annonay, near Lyon, a 900 m linen hot air balloon as a public demonstration. Its flight covers 2 km and lasts 10 minutes, to an estimated altitude of 1600–2000 metres.^[5]
• August 27 – Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launch the first hydrogen balloon in Paris.
• November 21 – The first free flight by humans in a balloon is made by Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes who fly aloft for 25 minutes about 100 metres above Paris for a distance of 9 km.^[5]
• December 26 – Louis-Sébastien Lenormand makes the first ever recorded public demonstration of a parachute descent by jumping from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France using his rigid-framed model which he intends as a form of fire escape.

Botany

• Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard publishes his Dictionnaire Elémentaire de Botanique, contributing to the spread of Linnaean terminology, particularly in mycology.
• Erasmus Darwin begins publication of A System of Vegetables, a translation of Linnaeus in which he coins many common English language names of plants.

Chemistry

• Antoine Lavoisier publishes Réflexions sur le phlogistique, showing the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent, proposing chemical reaction as an alternative theory in a paper read to the French Academy of Sciences in June, names hydrogen and demonstrates that water is a compound and not an element.^[6]
• Discovery of tungsten – José and Fausto Elhuyar find an acid in wolframite which they reduce with charcoal to isolate tungsten.

Earth sciences

• February 5–March 28 – Calabrian earthquakes in Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
• June 8 – The volcano Laki in Iceland begins a major eruption with extensive climatic consequences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.^[7]
• August 4 (Edo period, Tenmei 3) – Mount Asama, the most active volcano in Japan, begins climactic eruption, exacerbating a famine, following a plinian eruption beginning on May 9 (Tenmei eruption).

History of science and technology

• German physician Melchior Adam Weikard publishes a biography of microscopist Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, Biographie des Herrn Wilhelm Friedrich v. Gleichen genannt Rußwurm.

Physics

• Jean-Paul Marat publishes Mémoire sur l'électricité médicale ("Memorandum on Medical Electricity").

Technology

• Henry Cort of Funtley, England, invents the grooved rolling mill for producing bar iron.^[8]
• Thomas Bell patents a method of printing on fabric from engraved cylinders.^[9][10]
• Horace-Bénédict de Saussure publishes Essai sur l'hygrométrie, recording his experiments with the hair hygrometer.

Awards

• Copley Medal: John Goodricke; Thomas Hutchins^[11]

Births

• May 22 – William Sturgeon, English inventor (died 1850)
• June 9 – Benjamin Collins Brodie, English physiologist (died 1862)
• October 6 – François Magendie, French physiologist (died 1855)
• October 22 – Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, Ottoman-born French American polymath (died 1840)
• October 31 – Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, German chemist (died 1857)
• December 18 – Mary Anne Whitby, English scientist (died 1850)

Deaths

• March 30 – William Hunter, Scottish anatomist (born 1718)
• April 16 – Christian Mayer, Moravian astronomer (born 1719)
• September 18 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (born 1707)
• October 29 – Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician and physicist (born 1717)
• November – Carl Linnaeus the Younger, Swedish naturalist (born 1741 )
• December 13 – Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer (born 1717)
• December 16 – Arima Yoriyuki, Japanese mathematician (born 1714)
• Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, German microscopist (born 1717)