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Speed of Light Measured
Olaf Roemer, who was surrounded by a vast collection of now-antique utensils, studied a fair amount of astronomy beforerealising the connection b etween the distance and making an estimate to the speed of light. -
Discovery of the Atom
In the 1800's, John Dalton, an English chemist, performed various experiments with chemicals that unveiled matter, and showed that there were actually elementary lumpy particles. -
First Battery
Alessandro Volta, created the Voltaic Pile, that is the worlds first energy creating battery. He made it with alternating sheets of zinc and copper, dipped in brine between each layer, thus resulting in a working battery. -
Invention of Plastics
In 1839, Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered a process in which sulfur reacted with crude rubber when heated and then cooled. The rubber became resilient upon cooling; it could stretch, but it snapped back to its original shape.
Charles Goodyear had discovered the process now known as vulcanization, which made rubber more durable -
The Periodic Table
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev, collaged all of the scientists of the world's elemental discoveries into a table format for the rest of the world, calling it the Periodic Table, with all elements sorted into atomic mass order. -
Discovery of X-Ray
On 8 Nov, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (accidentally) discovered an image cast from his cathode ray generator, projected far beyond the possible range of the cathode rays (now known as an electron beam)
A week after his discovery, Rontgen took an X-ray photograph of his wife's hand which clearly revealed her wedding ring and her bones -
The Discovery of Penicillan
In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming observed that colonies of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus could be destroyed by the mold Penicillium notatum, proving that there was an antibacterial agent there in principle. This principle later lead to medicines that could kill certain types of disease-causing bacteria inside the body. -
First Atomic Bomb Test
Alamogordo, 5:29 a.m., the Manhattan project, came to a finish with the first ever uranium bomb test successfully dropped and explosively concluding the experiment. -
Invention of Carbon Dating
Willard Libby, while working at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s, developed the radiocarbon dating technique still widely used by archaeologists today. Libby, who took part in the Manhattan Project and won a 1960 Nobel Prize, discovered that by measuring the amount of carbon-14 compared to the amount of carbon-12 in organic remains, researchers could establish approximate age estimates for artifacts. -
DNA Discovery
Dr James Watson who, along with Professor Francis Crick, Dr Rosalind Franklin (and Professor Maurice Wilkins), discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, following the studies of many other great scientists.
