1676 in science

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The year 1676 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

• Summer – The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed near London.^[1]
• December 7 – Danish astronomer Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, obtaining a speed of 140,000 miles per second (approximately 25% too slow).
• Edmond Halley arrives on the island of Saint Helena, having left the University of Oxford, and sets up an astronomical observatory to catalogue stars from the Southern Hemisphere.

Biology

• Antony Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria, observed with the microscope.^[2]
• Francis Willughby's Ornithologiae is published by John Ray, the foundation of scientific ornithology.^[3][4][5][6]

Medicine

• William Briggs publishes an anatomy of the eye (the first in England), Ophthalmographia, at Cambridge.^[7]
• Thomas Sydenham publishes the textbook Observationes mediciae, the enlarged 3rd edition of his Methodus curandi febres.

Paleontology

• The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.^[8]

Physics

• Robert Hooke first reveals Hooke's law as a Latin anagram.^[9]

Technology

• July 7 – The first clocks using a form of deadbeat escapement, constructed by Thomas Tompion to a design by Richard Towneley, are installed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

Births

• May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (died 1754)
• Caleb Threlkeld, Irish botanist (died 1728)
• Maria Clara Eimmart, German astronomer, engraver and designer (died 1707)

Deaths

• May 25 – Johann Rahn, Swiss mathematician (born 1622)
• September 4 – John Ogilby, English cartographer (born 1600)

References

1. Chambers, R. (1878). The Book of Days.
2. "How bacteria was discovered by the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek". India Today. September 17, 2018. Retrieved 2021-08-30.
3. Egerton, Frank N. (October 2005). "A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 18: John Ray and His Associates Francis Willughby and William Derham" (PDF). Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 86 (4): 301–313. doi:10.1890/0012-9623(2005)86[301:ahotes]2.0.co;2. Retrieved 2011-04-26.
4. Keynes, Sir Geoffrey (1976). John Ray, 1627–1705: a bibliography 1660–1970. Amsterdam: Van Heusden. p. 52.
5. Raven, Charles E. (1942). John Ray, naturalist: his life and works. Cambridge University Press.
6. Newton, Alfred (1893). Dictionary of Birds. London: Black.
7. Kaplan, Barbara Beigun (2004). "Briggs, William (c.1650–1704)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/3413. Retrieved 2011-10-10. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
8. Sarjeant, William A.S. (1997). "The earliest discoveries". In Farlow, James O.; Brett-Surman, Michael K. (eds.). The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 3–11. ISBN 0-253-33349-0.
9. The anagram is given in alphabetical order, ceiiinosssttuv, representing Ut tensio, sic vis – "As the extension, so the force": Petroski, Henry (1996). Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0674463684.