1816 in science

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The year 1816 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Botany

• Botanic Gardens, Sydney, established in Australia.

Mathematics

• John Farey notes the Farey sequence.^[1]

Medicine

• René Laennec invents the stethoscope.^[2]
• Caleb Parry publishes An Experimental Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Varieties of the Arterial Pulse, describing the mechanisms for the pulse.^[3]

Mineralogy

• Johann Fischer von Waldheim publishes Essai sur la Turquoise et sur la Calaite in Moscow, the first scientific treatise on the mineral turquoise.

Physics

• Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) discovers stress birefringence.

Technology

• January 9 – Sir Humphry Davy's Davy lamp is first tested underground as a coal mining safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery in north east England.^[4]
• The Spider Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill, a temporary iron-wire footbridge erected across the Schuylkill River, north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the first wire-cable suspension bridge in history.^[5]
• Johann Nepomuk Maelzel begins production of the metronome with a scale.^[6]
• Rev. Robert Stirling obtains a patent in the United Kingdom for the Stirling hot air engine.
• approx. date – Simeon North in New England produces a practicable milling machine for working metal.^[7]

Awards

• Copley Medal: Not awarded

Births

• July 7 – Rudolf Wolf, Swiss astronomer (died 1893)
• July 20 – Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet, English ophthalmologist, histologist and anatomist (died 1892)
• December 13 – Werner Siemens, German electrical engineer (died 1892)

Deaths

• January 2 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, French chemist (born 1737)
• April 7 – Christian Konrad Sprengel, German botanist (born 1750)
• September 28 – Edward Howard, English chemist (born 1774)
• December 15 – Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, English engineer (born 1753)

References

1. Philosophical Magazine 47: 385–86. 1816.
2. Laennec, R. T. H. (1819). "preface". De l’Auscultation Médiate ou Traité du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur. Paris: Brosson & Chaudé.
3. "Parry, Caleb Hillier". Whonamedit?. Retrieved 2011-02-27.
4. Thompson, Roy (2004). Thunder underground: Northumberland mining disasters, 1815-1865. Ashbourne: Landmark. p. 121. ISBN 9781843061694. Retrieved 2013-01-08.
5. Peterson, Charles E. (22 March 1986). "The Spider Bridge: a curious work at the Falls of Schuylkill, 1816". Canal History and Technology Proceedings 5: 243–59.
6. Willems, J. de Vos (1830). "The Metronome". The Harmonicon 8. Retrieved 2011-05-18.
7. Muir, Diana. Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England. Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0-87451-909-9.