Page 10 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Timeline

A Montgolfier
brothers poster for
1735 one of their wildly
popular balloon
The Swedish Carl
demonstrations,
Linnaeus (pictured where visitors
below) introduces could witness
a two-part classifica- untethered flight
tion scheme for
1705 plants based on
counting the female
Benefiting from a
1660 Dutch grant to study pistils and male
the flowers and stamens in flowers.
London’s Royal Society Although easy to use,
is among the first insects of Suriname, its focus on sexual
organisations being Maria Sibylla Merian organs make it
established to (pictured above) is controversial. 1783
exchange scientific one of the earliest He later extends Hot air balloons invented
information through explorers to his binary system to by the French Montgolfier
an international travel with a solely animals, inventing brothers enable human
network. In contrast scientific mission. labels such as beings to fly for the very
with university scholars, Her beautiful Homo sapiens. first time and cause an
their members empha- illustrations and international sensation.
sise the importance of meticulous investi- Symbolically signifying the
instruments and gations make her a progress of science in an
experiments, and founding figure in era of revolutionary
demonstrate how the science of politics, they are later used
scientific research can entomology (the for research into the
be practically and study of insects). atmosphere.
commercially valuable.
1700

1706 1765

The world’s first Steam engines had long been used to
electrical machine is pump water out of Cornish mines, but by
invented by Francis inventing a separate condenser, James
Hauksbee, a former Watt makes them far more efficient: they
draper, to entertain the use less coal to produce the same power.
fellows of London’s Royal Watt’s steam engines drive the factories
Society. Hauksbee and trains of the industrial revolution that
pumps the air out of a makes Britain wealthy.
glass globe, then
produces an eerie glow
Newton’s own annotated copy inside by rotating it
of the Principia Mathematica against the friction of an
assistant’s hands. ALAMY/BRIDGEMAN/GETTY
1687
Building on the innovations of
his predecessors, in his Mathe-
matical Principles of Natural
Philosophy Isaac Newton makes
mathematics central to science.
He sets out his three laws of
motion, and introduces gravity to A replica of
James Watt’s
integrate the Earth within the
1765 steam
heavens by a single principle of engine, the
attraction varying with distance. invention that
helped propel
the industrial
revolution

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