1784: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
The Ottoman Turks accept Russian annexation of the Crimea in the Treaty of Constantinople signed January 6 (see 1783). Construction has begun on a naval base and fortress that is given the name Sevastopol (see Crimean War, 1854).
The Holy Roman Emperor Josef II abrogates the Hungarian constitution July 4 following a revolution in Transylvania. He removes the crown of Hungary to Vienna and suppresses Hungarian feudal courts.
The Continental Congress meets at Annapolis and ratifies the Treaty of Paris January 14, bringing the War of Independence to a formal end. Thomas Jefferson serves on a congressional committee that studies how the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River should be governed. The committee submits its Report on Government for Western Territory March 1, but while the United States claims sovereignty over the region, Native American tribes in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys continue to govern their own territories; Britain, France, and Spain have their own designs on the region (see Northwest Ordinance, 1787). Congress remains in session until August 13.
India's governor general Warren Hastings resigns his office amidst charges of imperious behavior and returns to England, where he becomes the subject of a parliamentary inquiry with a view to impeachment (see 1782). His Whig opponents suggest that he provided aid to the nabob of Oudh against the Rohiilla Afghans, connived in the forfeiture of property belonging to the dowager princesses (begums) of Oudh, and punished the Zemindar of Benares for not complying with a demand for aid in the first Mahratta War. He has in fact worked to make British rule acceptable to the Indians—appointing native revenue officers, codifying the law, unifying currency, paving Calcutta's streets, founding schools, creating a postal service, and improving the water supply, despite almost constant opposition from members of his own council, top brass in the British Army, East India Company directors, French imperial rivals, Afghan tribesmen, and the English-language press (see 1788).
The India Act that becomes law in Britain August 13 establishes a new constitution for the 184-year-old East India Company. Put through by Prime Minister William Pitt, it prohibits company interference in native affairs, forbids any declaration of war except in the event of aggression, and makes Company directors answerable to a board appointed by the crown (see 1783; Sepoy Rebellion, 1857).
Burma's king Bodawpaya invades the maritime kingdom of Arakan on the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, captures its king Thamada, and takes 20,000 prisoners home as slaves (see 1785).
Spain's Carlos III undertakes administrative reforms in the nation's American colonies, creating 18 intendancies in place of the numerous alcadldias mayores and corregimientos. The intendancy of New Spain (Mexico) is paramount, but each intendant is given a substantial degree of autonomy in its sphere, with responsibility for improved education and social conditions plus the development of useful arts and sciences, all with a view to increasing economic production.
Ethiopian strongman Mikael Sehul is defeated in battle by a coalition of Galla (Oromo) nobles after 25 years of rule (see 1769). He is permitted to return to his native Tigray Province and dies at Adwa at age 92 (approximate), having ended the nation's ancient Solomonid dynasty.
Serfdom is abolished in Denmark by Andreas Bernstorm, who was dismissed as prime minister in 1780 but has been recalled to office.
Britain transports to Maine and Louisiana all Acadians who have remained in Nova Scotia and lower New Brunswick since the expulsion order of 1755 (see Poetry, 1847). Another 1,600 Acadians arrive in Louisiana.
New Hampshire adopts a constitution that deprives women of their right to vote (see Massachusetts, 1780).
Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke by Pennsylvania-born explorer John Filson, 37, includes a map, offers an inaccurate history, and describes in vivid terms the region that Filson visited for the first time last year (see Boonesborough, 1775).
Parliament further lowers British import duties on tea (see 1773). The lower duties end the smuggling that has accounted for so much of the nation's tea imports and hurt the East India Company as the rewards become too small to justify the risks.
Britain receives her first bale of American cotton as long-staple cotton comes into widescale production in the sea islands off the Carolina and Georgia coasts (see Whitney, 1792).
The Bank of New York is organized February 24 at the Merchant's Coffee House, where merchants (including Robert Bowne) have met in response to an advertisement placed in the New York Packet February 23 by local attorney Alexander Hamilton, now 27, who calls on the "Gentlemen of this City to establish a Bank on liberal principles." The bank opens for business at the Wanton House June 9 with a capital of $500,000 and will erect its own building in 1797 at 48 Wall Street (see Bank of the Manhattan, 1799).
Economic depression begins in America.
China receives her first American ship at Guangzhou (Canton). Financed by English-born merchants William Duer, 37, of New York, Robert Morris of Philadelphia, and Daniel Parker of Watertown, Massachusetts, the 360-ton Empress of China out of New York carries a cargo of ginseng root, prized by Chinese physicians as a therapeutic drug and an aphrodisiac. Major Samuel Shaw, aide-de-camp in the Revolution to General Henry Knox, barters the cargo for $30,000 worth of tea and silk, the investors receive a 25 percent return on their capital, Shaw becomes first U.S. consul at Guangzhou, and more Americans are encouraged to enter the China trade, including Salem's Elias Hasket Derby (see 1783; Brown, 1787; Gray, 1790).
Steam engine inventor James Watt improves his engine with what he calls "one of the most ingenious, simple pieces of mechanism I have contrived" (see 1782). He uses an arrangement of connected rods that guide the piston rod in a perpendicular motion and gives the engine a parallel motion that enables it to drive machinery of all kinds (see cotton mill, 1785).
Express mail coaches introduced in Britain make it possible for travelers (and mail) to cover long distances in much shorter time than by ordinary coach or canal boat.
Yorkshire engineer Joseph Bramah of 1778 water-closet fame exhibits a new lock in his shop window with a sign offering a 200-guinea prize to anyone who can pick it (the lock will defy repeated efforts for 67 years before a mechanic finally gets it to open after 51 hours' work) (see Barron, 1778). So complex is Bramah's lock that producing it in quantity will first require the creation of new machine tools that are precisely engineered, so Bramah will engage Kentish blacksmith Henry Maudslay, now 13, as an apprentice to build such tools (see slide-rest, 1794; Chubb lock, 1818).
French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, 41, pioneers quantitative chemistry, introducing modern names for chemical substances while retaining the old symbols of alchemy. Having disproved the late Georg E. Stahl's 1700 "phlogiston theory" of combustion, Lavoisier relates respiration to combustion, says that oxygen is essential to combustion, and demonstrates the indestructability of matter (see 1789; Ingenhousz, 1779). Lavoisier measures the amount of "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen) consumed in respiration and combustion and the amount of carbon dioxide and heat produced; assisting him is French mathematician-astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace, 35.
Experiments on Air by chemist-physicist Henry Cavendish shows that water results from the union of hydrogen and oxygen. Now 53, Cavendish has been the first to discover the true nature of hydrogen and determine its specific gravity. He has determined the specific gravity of carbon dioxide and now shows that water is produced from an explosion of two volumes of hydrogen ("inflammable air") with one of oxygen ("dephlogisticated air").
"An Attempted Theory on the Structure of Crystals" ("Essai d'une théorie sur la structure des cristaux") by French mineralogist-clergyman René Just Haüy, 41, enunciates the geometrical law of crystallization and founds the science of crystallography. Haüy has broken a crystal of calcareous spar and the accident has led him to make experiments.
General and Particular Physics (Physique générale et particulière) by French naturalist (Bernard-Germain-) Etienne de la Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, 27, is published in its second volume (the first appeared 2 years ago). His 1781 "Essay on Natural and Artificial Electricity" ("Essai sur l'électricité naturelle et artificielle") first attracted the attention of naturalist G.-L. Leclerc, comte de Buffon, who next year will arrange Lacépède's appointment as keeper and assistant demonstrator of the Cabinet du Roi at the Paris Botanical Garden.
Chemist and physicist Torbern Bergman dies at Medevi July 8 at age 49, having pioneered an understanding of crystal structure.
Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovers citric acid in certain plants.
The American minister to France Benjamin Franklin invents bifocal spectacles. He will describe them for the first time on May 23 of next year in a letter he writes from Passy.
Louis XVI appoints a commission to investigate the methods of physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who has "mesmerized" such eminent patrons as General Lafayette (see 1778). Mesmer has claimed that "obstacles" to the flow of animal magnetism through the body are what cause diseases and that these obstacles can be dissolved inducing trance states that often culminate in convulsions or delirium (he calls them "crises") and that this treatment will restore the harmonious flow of animal magnetism. But the commission's members include Benjamin Franklin and chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier; they report that Mesmer cannot back up his claims, the medical faculties denounces him, and they hound him out of France.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe discovers the human intermaxillary bone.
John Wesley charters Wesleyan Methodism February 28, signing a declaration that provides for the regulation of Methodist chapels and preachers. Now 81, Wesley ordains his clerical helper September 1 and instructs the new superintendent (bishop) to ordain two colleagues despite the opposition by his brother Charles to ordination of presbyters (see 1768).
Welsh clergyman Thomas Charles, 28, joins the Methodist society at his wife's hometown of Bala in Merionethshire and becomes effectively a free-lance minister, living on the income from his wife's shop while he devotes himself to evangelizing and education. Like John Wesley, he remains nominally within the Anglican Church.
The Universal Friend's Advice to Those of the Same Religious Society is published at Philadelphia by Jemima Wilkinson, now 32, who has extended her preaching south from New England (see 1776). The book consists largely of biblical quotations for use in the meeting houses built by her followers (see 1788).
Missionary Junipero Serra dies at Mission San Carlos in California August 28 at age 70 and is buried there; Shaker leader Mother Ann Lee dies at Watervliet, New York, September 8 at age 48, disappointing zealous followers who had believed her to be immortal (see 1744). Shakerism will continue in America, setting an example with inventive, orderly methods of building, toolmaking, and furniture making, animal husbandry, cooking, and production of woodenware, yarns, textiles, and botanical herbs.
The first school for the blind opens at Paris. Having seen a group of blind men exhibited at a local sideshow, calligraphy professor Valentin Haüy, 39, has determined to help blind people gain a sense of self-worth, paid a blind boy to take instruction, invented a method for embossing characters on paper, and opened the Institution for Blind Children (it will later become a state-supported facility); brother of the mineralogist, Haüy will open a similar school at St. Petersburg, teaching blind children to read (see Barbier, 1819; Braille, 1834).
New York's Columbia College opens after 6 years of wartime suspension of King's College, founded in 1754. The war has obliged King's College students such as Alexander Hamilton to educate themselves.
The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser begins publication at Philadelphia September 21; it is the first U.S. daily.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica published from 1768 to 1771 appears in a new 10-volume second edition with 8,595 pages, having appeared in weekly parts since 1777 (see 1797).
Nonfiction: Notion of a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Sense by Immanuel Kant; "What is Enlightenment?" by Kant; Ideas Toward a Philosophy of History (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit) by philosopher Johann von Herder appears in the first of its four volumes and anticipates theories of evolution; Geography Made Easy by Woodstock, Connecticut-born Congregational minister and geographer Jedediah Morse, 23, is the first American geography textbook and will go through 25 editions in Morse's lifetime.
Doctor Johnson dies at London December 13 at age 75, survived by a dictionary (and aphorisms) that will be quoted for generations.
Fiction: The Corrupted [Female] Peasant (La Paysanne pervertie) by Restif de la Bretonne is a risqué counterpart to his 1776 work, describing the moral ruination of God-fearing country folk who come to the city.
Poetry: "Green Grow the Rashes" by Scottish poet Robert Burns, 24, of Kilmarnock, who writes, "What signifies the life o' man,/ And 'twere na for the lasses?"
Poet Phillis Wheatley dies at Boston December 5 at age 31 (approximate).
Painting: The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David; Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds; Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Scottish painter Henry Raeburn, 28; Don Manuel de Zuniga by Francisco de Goya; The Family of King Ferdinand IV and Queen Maria Carolina by Angelica Kauffmann, who portrays the king of Naples and his consort, now 32, whose mother is Austria's empress Maria Theresa.
English portrait painter-cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson, 28, pioneers political caricature.
Theater: Cabal and Love (Kabale und Liebe) by Friedrich von Schiller 4/13 at Frankfurt-am-Main. Schiller attacks the corruption of the petty German courts and their disregard of basic human values; The Marriage of Figaro, or The Madness of a Day (La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figaro) by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais 4/27 at the Comédie-Française, Paris: "Because you are a great noble," says Figaro to the man who employs him as a valet, "you think you are a great genius! Nobility, a fortune, a rank, appointments to office; all this makes a man so proud! What did you do to earn all this? You took the trouble to get born—nothing more" (Act V). Beaumarchais completed the work in 1778 but has had difficulty in getting it staged because of its anti-aristocratic implications; A Mogul Tale by English actress-playwright Elizabeth Inchbald (née Simpson), 30, in July at London's Little Theatre, Haymarket.
Composer Baldassare Galuppi ("Il Buranello") dies at Venice January 3 at age 77, having pioneered the comic opera form known as the opera buffa.
First performances: Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in E flat major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 2/9 at Vienna; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in B flat major by W. A. Mozart 3/17 at Salzburg; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in D major by W. A. Mozart in March at Salzburg; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in G major by W. A. Mozart 6/10 at a country house outside Vienna; Sonata for Pianoforte in A major by W. A. Mozart.
The American minister to France Benjamin Franklin exhorts the French to set their clocks ahead 1 hour in spring and back 1 hour in fall to take advantage of daylight (his essay "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light" appears in the Journal de Paris in April). Franklin is widely credited with having originated the lines "Early to bed and early to rise," first published in 1639, and is well known for his aphorism "Time is money" (see Willett, 1907).
The first Chinese "tree of heaven" (Ailanthus altissima) to grow in America is planted at Philadelphia. A Flushing nurseryman will bring the fast-growing, pollution-resistant tree to Long island in 1820, and by 1850 it will be common in the streets of New York, admired by some, scorned by others because of the unpleasant odor given off by its male flowers in the spring.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives at Boston acts on a proposal by John Rowe that permission be granted to hang up "a representation of a Cod Fish" in the room where the House sits "as a memorial to the importance of the Cod Fishery to the welfare of this commonwealth." The four-foot-eleven inch model will be called the "Sacred Cod" (see 1795).
English farmers show little interest in an iron plow developed by inventor James Small, continuing to use wooden plows (see Wood, 1819).
French farmers resist Benjamin Franklin's daylight-saving proposal, insisting that cows cannot change their habits.
The death of Shaker leader Ann Lee does not interrupt her followers in their agricultural innovations; they will develop the Poland China hog (by crossing backwoods hogs with white Big China hogs to produce the breed that will be the mainstay of the U.S. pork industry for generations) and innovate the practice of retailing garden seeds in small, labeled paper packets (see Burpee, 1876; round barn, 1824).
Famine continues in Japan; 300,000 die of starvation, and survivors are obliged in some cases to eat corpses in order to stay alive.
Ireland has famine as potato crops fail, mostly in Ulster (see 1756; 1821).
A French patent is granted February 28 to pastry cook Jean-Joseph Clausse for his pâté de foie gras aux truffes. Clausse leaves the marshal's employ but remains in Strasbourg; he will marry Marie-Ann Maring, the pretty young widow of a local pâtissier, and go into business with her in 1789 to supply pâté to the gentry. He will continue until his death in 1827, making Strasbourg the goose-liver capital of the world, rivaled only by Périgord. Strasbourg will grow to have many pâté producers, the largest being Edouard Artzner and Louis Henry.
Acadians transported from Nova Scotia to Louisiana begin to establish Cajun (a corruption of Acadian) cookery, combining their Canadian recipes with those of earlier arrivals (see 1704).
Parliament imposes a new system of taxation on Scotch whisky after various commissions of inquiry (see 1713). The new system distinguishes between Highland and Lowland whiskies, with Highland distillers (located north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock) required to pay taxes based on the capacity of their stills, rather than their output, while Lowland distilleries must pay on the basis of how much wash (fermented barley ale before distillation) they actually produce (see 1798).
Bushmill's distillery begins operations in the north of Ireland.
Abortion and infanticide become common among the poor of Japan as famine discourages large families.
1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
Archaeology
Statesman and scholar Thomas Jefferson [b. Shadwell, Virginia, April 13, 1743, d. Monticello, Virginia, July 4, 1826] investigates mounds built by Native Americans, making careful notes on stratigraphy. This earns him the title the father of American archaeology. While his various investigations of Native American burial sites, plant breeding, and fossils reveal no new scientific concepts of significance, Jefferson remains the closest the United States has come to having a scientist as president.
Astronomy
Edward Pigott [b. Middlesex, England, 1753, d. Bath, England, June 27, 1825] discovers the variable star Eta Aquilae. At this time fewer than a dozen variables are known. See also 1782 Astronomy; 1795 Astronomy.
John Michell suggests that some stars may be so large that light cannot escape from their gravitational pull, essentially the concept of a black hole. See also 1798 Astronomy.
Chemistry
Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovers citric acid. See also 1782 Chemistry.
Henry Cavendish announces his discovery of the composition of water to the Royal Society. See also 1783 Chemistry.
Communication
Valentin Haüy prints his first book using his system of raised letters to enable the blind to read. See also 1783 Communication; 1824 Communication.
The first mail coach used in England leaves Bristol for London and covers the distance in 17 hours; mail is transported by coach until 1846, when the bulk of the mail begins to travel by train. See also 1550 Communication; 1830 Communication.
Energy
Swiss chemist Aimé Argand [b. Geneva, Switzerland, 1755, d. Geneva, October 24, 1803] patents the first really bright lamp (still known as the Argand lamp), which burns oil in a wick between two concentric tubes, producing a circular flame with two sources of oxygen. A glass chimney provides constant air flow as it protects the flame from irregular breezes. See also 1800 Energy.
Jean-Pierre Minckelers is the first to use coal gas for lighting, which is followed in the next year or two by other experiments in coal-gas lighting by the English and Germans. See also 1786 Energy.
James Watt uses steam pipes to heat his office, the first use of "steam heat." See also 80 bce Energy; 1830 Energy.
Food & agriculture
Scottish inventor Andrew Meikle [b. Scotland, 1719, d. Houston Mill, near Dunbar, Scotland, November 27, 1818] invents the threshing machine, designed to separate grain from straw without manual flailing or trampling on the harvested wheat or rye; its basic design is still used today. See also 1834 Food & agriculture.
Materials
Inventor Henry Cort [b. Hampshire, England, 1740, d. 1800] patents the puddling process (also known as the reverberatory furnace) for making wrought iron from melted iron instead of hammering it. The process, which greatly lowers the price of wrought iron by increasing the amount turned out by a single worker by a factor of 20 to 30, is one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution. He also perfects the rolling mill with grooved rollers. See also 1762 Materials; 1843 Materials.
Gaspard Monge liquefies sulfur dioxide, the first chemist to liquefy a substance normally a gas. See also 1895 Materials.
Charles Augustin Coulomb writes on the torsional (twisting) elasticity of metal and silk fibers. See also 1781 Energy; 1822 Materials.
Mathematics
Adrien-Marie Legendre continues his work on Legendre polynomials, the polynomial solutions of a differential equation describing gravitational attraction of spheroids. He determines properties of the polynomial coefficients and a simple form of the equation for the gravitational field. See also 1782 Mathematics; 1785 Astronomy.
Medicine & health
German poet and natural philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe [b. Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany), August 28, 1749, d. Weimar, Germany, March 2, 1832] discovers the human intermaxillary bone, a feature of the human upper jaw that is missing in most other mammals.
Benjamin Franklin invents bifocal eyeglasses, mounting half lenses for near and for distant vision in the same frames. See also 1450 Medicine & health.
Physics
English clergyman George Atwood [b. London, 1745, d. London, July 11, 1807] writes A Treatise on the Rectilinear Motion, in which he describes "Atwood's machine," which accurately demonstrates the acceleration of a free-falling body. See also 1590 Physics.
Tools
English army general Henry Shrapnel [b. England, June 3, 1761, d. March 31, 1842] invents the shrapnel shell.
Joseph Bramah invents an improved type of lock. A prize of 200 guineas is promised for anyone succeeding in picking the lock, which remains unpicked until 1851, when an American visitor spends 51 hours to achieve the task. See also 1818 Tools.
Transportation
Italian Vincent Lunardi [b. January 11, 1759, d. 1806] makes the first balloon ascent in England, using a balloon filled with hydrogen. See also 1783 Transportation; 1785 Transportation.
The Eider Canal, ordered dug by Danish King Christian VII in 1777, uses three locks, the Eider River, and the Eider Lakes, to connect Kiel Bay on the Baltic with the North Sea. This is the prototype ship canal for international traffic, as well as the predecessor to the level Kiel Canal (Nord-Orstee-Kanal) built a century later. See also 1777 Transportation.
James Watt covers the possibility of a steam-powered carriage in one of his patent applications, but does not pursue the idea. Indeed, when the first locomotives are tried out on rails, the by-then-retired Watt speaks privately against them. See also 1769 Transportation.
William Murdock [b. Auchinleck, Scotland, August 21, 1754, d. Birmingham, England, November 15, 1839], an employee of steam-engine manufacturer Boulton & Watt, builds a working model of a steam-powered carriage. See also 1769 Transportation; 1789 Transportation.