1881 in science

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The year 1881 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• 22 May – John Tebbutt discover the long-period comet, C/1881 K1 (also known as the Great Comet of 1881, Comet Tebbutt, 1881 III, 1881b).^[1]

Biology

• October – Charles Darwin publishes his last scientific book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms.
• L. S. Poliakov describes the wild horse discovered by Nikolai Przhevalsky in Mongolia in 1879 as a new species, Przewalski's horse (Equus przewalski poliakov).^[2][3]
• The first systematic study in forensic entomology is conducted by physician and entomologist Hermann Reinhard in Germany.^[4]

Chemistry

• Friedrich Beilstein publishes the first edition of his Handbuch der organischen Chemie.

History of science and technology

• The birch bark Bakhshali manuscript, incorporating perhaps the earliest known use of mathematical zero, is unearthed near Bakhshali in British India.
• Publication in England of a pioneering study in industrial archaeology, H. A. Fletcher's "The archaeology of the west Cumberland iron trade".^[5]

Mathematics

• Simon Newcomb makes the first statement of Benford's law.^[6]

Medicine

• July 13 – Dr. George Goodfellow performs the first laparotomy to remove a bullet.
• September 25 – The first modern Caesarean section is performed successfully by German gynecologist Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer in Meckesheim using the transverse incision technique.
• December – Eduard von Hofmann carries out autopsy studies of the nearly 400 victims of the Vienna Ringtheater fire, carbon monoxide poisoning being held an underlying cause of death.
• Louis Pasteur discovers a vaccine for anthrax.
• Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor, first proposes that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes rather than direct human contact.^[7]
• French obstetrician Étienne Stéphane Tarnier introduces a form of neonatal incubator (couveuse) for routine care of premature infants at the Paris Maternité.^[8]
• English ophthalmologist Waren Tay publishes the first description of the genetic disorder which will become known as Tay–Sachs disease.^[9]
• approx. date – The non-invasive sphygmomanometer, for the measurement of blood pressure, is invented by Samuel Siegfried Karl von Basch.^[10]

Metrology

• The International Congress of Electricians, meeting in Paris, makes significant progress in definition of the International System of Units.^[11]

Technology

• March 1 – The Cunard Line's SS Servia, the first steel transatlantic liner, is launched at J. & G. Thomson's yard at Clydebank in Scotland.^[12]
• May 16 – The Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway, the world's first electric tramway, is opened in Berlin by Siemens & Halske.^[13]
• June – The positive-buoyancy powered submarine "Fenian Ram" (Holland Boat No. II), designed by John Philip Holland, is first submersion-tested in New York City.
• August 30 – French inventor Clément Ader demonstrates his théâtrophone system which delivers the first example of transmitted binaural 2-channel stereophonic sound, delivered over telephone wires from the operatic stage of the Palais Garnier to the International Exposition of Electricity in Paris.^{[14][15][16][17]}
• September 26 – Godalming becomes the first town in England to have its streets illuminated by electric light (hydroelectrically generated).^[18]
• October 10 – Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre opens in London, the world's first public building to be fully lit by electricity, using Joseph Swan's incandescent light bulbs.^[12][19][20] The stage is first lit electrically on December 28.^[21]
• December 21 – SS Aberdeen, the first oceangoing ship successfully powered by a triple expansion steam engine, designed by Alexander Carnegie Kirk, is launched at Robert Napier and Sons' yard at Govan in Scotland.
• Nikolay Benardos introduces carbon arc welding, the first practical arc welding method.^[22]
• Peter Herdic patents the Herdic horse-drawn cab in the United States.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Karl Adolph Wurtz^[23]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Peter Martin Duncan

Births

• January 29 – Alice Catherine Evans (died 1975), American microbiologist.
• January 31 – Irving Langmuir (died 1957), American chemist.
• March 17 – Walter Rudolf Hess (died 1973), Swiss physiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• April 28 – Edith A. Roberts (died 1977), American plant ecologist.
• May 1 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (died 1955), French paleontologist and philosopher.
• August 6 – Alexander Fleming (died 1955), British bacteriologist.
• September 18 – Vera Lebedeva (died 1968), Soviet Russian pediatrician.
• October 4 – George Constantinescu (died 1965), Romanian engineer.
• October 11 – Lewis Fry Richardson (died 1953), British mathematical physicist.
• October 22 – Clinton Davisson (died 1958), American physicist.
• November 9 – Margaret Reed Lewis (died 1970), American cell biologist.
• November 13 – Ludwig Koch (died 1974), German Jewish animal sound recordist.

Deaths

• February 3 – John Gould (born 1804), English zoologist.
• March 26 – Lovisa Åhrberg (born 1801), Swedish surgeon.
• May 14 – Mary Seacole (born 1805), Jamaican-born nurse.
• May 19 – Joseph Barnard Davis (born 1801), English craniologist, physician and anthropologist.
• May 26 – Jakob Bernays (born 1824), German philologist.
• June 16 – George Rolleston (born 1829), English physician and zoologist.
• June 23 – Matthias Jakob Schleiden (born 1804), German biologist.
• June 29 – Maurice Raynaud (born 1834), French physician.
• July 27 – Hewett Watson (born 1804), English biologist.
• October 31 – George W. DeLong (born 1844), American Arctic explorer.
• November 30 – Jean-Alfred Gautier (born 1793), Swiss astronomer^[24]

References

1. "THE GREAT COMET OF 1881". The South Australian Advertiser ( Adelaide, South Australia). 8 June 1881. letter from C. Todd
2. "Przewalski's horse". TAKH. 2009. Archived from the original on 2012-03-02. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
3. Hellemans, Alexander; Bunch, Bryan (1988). The Timetables of Science. Simon & Schuster. p. 304. ISBN 0671621300.
4. with; Moritz Brauer, Friedrich (1882). "Beiträge zur Gräberfauna" ["Contributions on the fauna of graves"]". Verh. k. & k. zool.-bot. Ges. Wien. 31: 207–210.
5. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Archaeological Society 5:5–21.
6. Newcomb, Simon (1881). "Note on the frequency of use of the different digits in natural numbers". American Journal of Mathematics. 4: 39–40. doi:10.2307/2369148. JSTOR 2369148.
7. Chaves, Carballo E. (2005). "Carlos Finlay and yellow fever: triumph over adversity". Military Medicine. 170: 881–5. doi:10.7205/milmed.170.10.881. PMID 16435764.
8. Dunn, P. M. (2002). "Stéphane Tarnier (1828–1897), the architect of perinatology in France". Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition. 86 (2): F137–9. doi:10.1136/fn.86.2.f137. PMC 1721389. PMID 11882561.
9. Tay, Waren (1881). "Symmetrical changes in the region of the yellow spot in each eye of an infant". Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society. 1: 55–57.
10. Booth, Jeremy (1977). "A short history of blood pressure measurement". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. 70 (11): 793–9. doi:10.1177/003591577707001112. PMC 1543468. PMID 341169.
11. Borvon, Gérard (March 2008). "Dans les coulisses du Congrès international des électriciens de 1881". Histoire de l'électricité et du magnetisme. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
12. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 434–435. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
13. "The Siemens tram from past to present" (PDF). Siemens. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2011-06-16.
14. "Chronomedia: 1880-1884". Terra Media. 2005-11-20. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
15. Lange, A. (2002-03-31). "Le Premier Medium Electrique De Diffusion Culturelle: Le Theatrophone De Clement Ader (1881)". Histoire de la télévision. Archived from the original on 2015-12-20. Retrieved 2007-11-21.
16. "The Telephone at the Paris Opera". Scientific American: 422–23. 1881-12-31. Archived from the original on 2021-02-25.
17. Crook, Tim (1999). Radio drama: Theory and practice. Psychology Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 978-0-415-21603-6.
18. "Godalming Power Station". Engineering Timelines. Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2010-07-06.
19. "The Savoy Theatre". The Times. London. 1881-10-03. p. 7.
20. Burgess, Michael (January 1975). "Richard D'Oyly Carte". The Savoyard: 7–11.
21. "Savoy Theatre". The Times. 1881-12-29. p. 4. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
22. "Beginnings of submerged arc welding" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
23. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
24. Marcel Golay: Alfred Gautier in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.