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William Gilbert
Appointed court physician to Queen Elizabeth, and the summary of his life-long research into magnetism is published as De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de mango magnetc tellure of the magnet, of magnetic bodies, and of the earth as a great magnet. -
Galileo
Is placed under house arrest, on the pope's orders because of his work on astronomy. Finding himself confined to his small estate at arcetri near Florence, his response is typically positive. He settles down to explain and prove his early and less contoversial discoveries in the mechanical sciences. -
Great Plague
Has one unexpected beneficial effect. Causing Cambridge University to close as a precaution, sending the students home. A lot particularly distinguished member of Trinity college, who has recently failedan examination owing to his feeble geometry, travels home to the isolated Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. -
Lucasion professor of Mathematics
Newton is electede the Lucasion professor of Mathematics. His lectures and research are mainly at this stage to do with optics. Invents for his purposes a new and more powerful form of telescope using mirrors (the reflecting telescope, which becomes the principle of all the most powerful instruments until the introductionof radio astronomy). -
Newton
Presents a telescope of this kind to the Royal Society and is elected a member. Later in this same year he describes the Society his experiments with the prism. -
Ewald Georg von Kleist
An amateur scientist, Ewald dean of the cathedral in Kamien, makes an interesting discovery. After partly filling a glassjar with water, and pushing a metal rod thorgh a cork stopper until it reaches the water. Attaches the end of the nail to his friction machine -
Pieter van Musschenbroek
Same principle discovered by Musschenbroek, a physicist in the university of Leydon. As a proffessional, makes much use of the new device in laboratory experiment. Though sometimes called a Kleistian jar, becomes more commonly known as the "Leyden jar". -
Instantaneous
Waston sets up anambitious experiment to discover the speed at which electricity travels. He arranges an electrical circuit more than two miles long, linking the positive and negative metal foils of a Leydon jar. There seems to be no measurable difference between the completion of the circuit and the moment when an observer at the middle of the loop feels the shock. Walton concludes that eletricity is "instantaneous". -
Kite
In Philadelphia Franklin adds a metal tip to a kite and flies it on a wet string into a thunder cloud. The bottom of the string is attached to a Leydon jar. the point is made when the Leydon jar is successfully charged. For the popular audience Franklin makes th effect visible. He attracts sparks from a key attached to the line. The fame soars. -
Joseph Black
Calls this phenomenon latent heat and teaches it in his lectures at the university of Glasgow. An important discovery in itself, it also enables him to be the first to distinguish between energy transferred from a warmer to a colder object and temperature. The amount of energy present at a given moment.
