1844: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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British authorities arrest Irish independence agitator Daniel O'Connell early in the year along with his son and five supporters on charges of conspiracy to raise sedition (see 1843). He is fined and imprisoned, the House of Lords sets aside the verdict September 4, but O'Connell has suffered 14 weeks' imprisonment and will not recover his health.
Former British prime minister Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, dies at Richmond, Surrey, February 15 at age 86.
Sweden's Karl XIV John (J. P. J. Bernadotte) dies at Stockholm March 8 at age 81 after a 26-year reign. He is succeeded by his 44-year-old son, who will rule Sweden and Norway until 1859 as Oskar I.
Austrian naval officer Attilio Bandiera, 34, and his brother Emilio, 25, learn that Neapolitans are prepared to rise up against their Austrian rulers and join Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy (Giovine Italia) movement if only they can find effective leaders (see 1834). Sons of an admiral in the Austrian Navy, the Bandiera brothers founded a secret society 3 years ago while serving under their father in the war with Syria. They have tried to get fellow officers and sailors to join with them in the Malta-based revolutionary group Legione Italiana in a scheme to steal a warship and bombard Messina, but they were forced to take refuge on Corfu off the coast of Greece after being betrayed by a member of their own secret society. Having gathered a group of about 20 young men, they set sail for Calabria June 12 and land at Cotrone June 16 with the intention of seizing nearby Cosenza, liberating political prisoners, and proclaiming independence. The reinforcements that they had expected do not show up, a Corsican member of their band betrays them, a detachment of gendarmes arrests the whole group, and they are marched to Cosenza, where a military tribunal puts them on trial; convicted and sentenced to death along with nine of their comrades, the Bandiera brothers are executed July 23, shouting "Viva l'Italia!" as they fall. They become instant martyrs to the cause of independence, and Mazzini demonstrates that his correspondence with the Bandieras has been systematically opened on orders from the British home secretary Sir James Graham (see 1848).
The Battle of Isly in eastern Morocco August 14 ends in victory for an army of 6,000 French infantry, 1,500 cavalry, and some artillery over a 45,000-man Moroccan and Algerian force that consists mainly of cavalry (see 1841). General Thomas Bugeaud, now 59, defeats Abdul-Qadar (Abdulkader), emir of Mascara, whose casualties include 800 dead and many wounded. French dead and wounded total 250, the emir continues to resist, but the Treaty of Tangier ends France's war in Morocco (see 1846).
Santo Domingo gains her independence from Haiti and establishes the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola (see 1822). European-educated politician Buenaventura Báez, 34, has helped to lead a 1-year revolt against the Haitians but believes that his country can maintain its independence only by becoming a French protectorate. He will be sent to Europe in 1846, find that the French are not interested, serve his first term as president of the republic from 1849 to 1853, and serve four later terms, ruling as a corrupt tyrant as he makes efforts beginning in 1850 to have the United States annex the republic (see 1858).
Paraguayan consul Carlos Antonio López dismisses his co-consul and suspends the constitution (see 1841). He will rule corruptly and despotically until his death in 1862, acquiring ownership of more than half the country's land (see 1852).
President Tyler and other top government officials cruise the Potomac River February 28 aboard the new U.S.S. Princeton that was commissioned last year, but one of the ship's two 12-inch guns explodes when fired, decapitating Tyler's Virginia-born secretary of state Abel P. (Parker) Upshur at age 53.
U.S. Democrats deadlock in convention but finally nominate the first "dark horse" presidential candidate. Congress has delayed action on the question of annexing Oregon and Texas; the humorless, priggish, but hard-working Speaker of the House James K. (Knox) Polk, 48, of Tennessee has endured insults from fellow congressmen in an evenly divided House of Representatives but refused to accept challenges to duel; a protégé of Andrew Jackson, he campaigns with the slogan "Reoccupation of Oregon, reannexation of Texas," the Whig candidate Henry Clay straddles the issue, an antislavery candidate splits the Whig vote in New York, where many oppose the annexation of Texas (diplomat and former secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin, now 83, tells a hostile New York crowd that annexation would lead to a war of imperialist aggression), and Polk wins election with 170 electoral votes to Clay's 105, having promised to serve only one term.
Massachusetts-born Texas physician-turned-politician Anson Jones, 46, wins election to succeed Sam Houston as president and takes office December 9. Having served as the republic's minister to Washington and as Houston's secretary of state, Jones will serve as president until February 1846, pushing his and Houston's twin objectives of gaining acknowledgement by Mexico of the republic's independence and its annexation by the United States (see 1845).
A band of 15 Texas Rangers led by Colonel John Coffee Hays, 27, attacks a party of some 300 Comanche (see 1837). The Rangers kill half the native warriors and intimidate the rest, using Colt revolvers that can fire six shots without reloading (see technology [Colt], 1836; 1846). Tennessee-born Cherokee scout Jesse Chisholm, 38, has traded with the Comanche and persuades tribal leaders to attend a meeting October 7 at Tehuacana, where Sam Houston gives a speech. One of three sons of a Cherokee woman who married a man of Scottish descent, Chisholm moved west to the Cherokee Nation in the 1820s (see 1846).
Congress votes in December to end the gag rule that has suppressed any discussion of the slavery issue on the floor of the House since May 1836.
Silesian weavers revolt against the low wages paid to hand-loom workers by employers who have switched to machine production. Authorities take harsh measures to suppress the uprising.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people," writes Prussian-born socialist Karl (Heinrich) Marx, 26, in his Introduction to a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of the Right. Cologne authorities suppressed Marx's newspaper Rheinische Zeitung last year and he has exiled himself to Paris, where he visits with German sociologist Friedrich Engels, 24, whom he has met earlier at Cologne (see 1845; 1847).
A prize-winning essay on Britain's "National Distress" by English author Samuel Laing, 31, reveals the effects of machinery on the country's working class: "About one-third plunged in extreme misery, and hovering on the verge of actual starvation; another third, or more, earning an income something better than that of the common agricultural labourer, but under circumstances very prejudicial to health, morality, and domestic comfort—viz. by the labour of young children, girls, and mothers of families in crowded factories; and finally, a third earning high wages, amply sufficient to support them in respectability and comfort."
Parliament enacts legislation that will be remembered as Lord Cawdor's Act to amend the turnpike trust laws in Wales, easing the burden of the tollgate system that provoked the Rebecca Riots of 1839 that resumed 2 years ago.
A new British Bank Charter Act effectively yields control of the nation's currency to the private bankers of London's Lombard Street and permits the "City" to share in the sovereignty of the empire if not actually to control it. All bank notes are to be issued against securities and bullion in the bank vaults. The Bank of England may increase or decrease banknote issues at will within limits set by the act, but "the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street" may not increase the total amount of bank notes thus issued "on the Credit of such Securities, Coin and Bullion." Shipments of gold abroad—largely to the United States—have depleted British gold reserves, joint-stock companies have issued great quantities of paper money, the Bank Charter Act separates the Bank of England's banking department from its note-issuing department, and its effect will be to eliminate by gradual degrees all notes except those of the Bank of England.
Mariner-merchant and onetime privateer Joseph Peabody dies at Salem, Massachusetts, January 5 at age 86, having made a fortune from the China trade in indigo, opium, pepper, tea, and other commodities.
The 583-ton clipper ship Houqua launched May 3 by Brooklyn merchant A. A. Low bears the nickname of the late Chinese merchant with whom Low profited in a joint enterprise 7 years ago (see 1840). Low has had her constructed as a warship with a view to selling her to the Chinese; built by William H. Brown and Jacob Bell, measuring 143 feet in length, 32 in width, and 17 in depth, she sets sail for Guangzhou (Canton) May 31 and arrives at Hong Kong after a 95-day voyage, but the Chinese consider her too small and the sale does not go through. The Houqua returns with a full cargo of tea and will soon be followed by the Samuel Russell, the Oriental, and the Surprise—a fleet that will enable A. A. Low & Brothers to buy fresh tea at Guangzhou (Canton), acquiring it at low prices after competitors have filled their requirements, and sell it at U.S. ports earlier than the competition, receiving high prices for his cargoes (see 1849; Rainbow, 1845).
The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers is the first modern cooperative society (see commerce [Holyoake], 1843). Founded by 28 poor weavers at Rochdale, Lancashire, the society opens a store in Toad Lane, sells strictly for cash at local retail prices, and at year's end divides its profits among its members. Flour, oatmeal, butter, and sugar are its only initial wares, but the store soon adds tea and groceries and will later sell coal, clothing, and furniture.
Wells, Fargo & Company has its beginnings in an express service between Buffalo and Detroit started by Vermont-born entrepreneur Henry Wells, 38, who worked briefly as a messenger for Harnden Express, quickly became a partner in another firm, and now starts Wells & Company with upstate New Yorker William G. Fargo, 26, and another partner. Wells & Co. will extend service next year to Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis (see American Express, 1850; stagecoaches, 1866).
Massachusetts-born New York merchant and inventor Asa Whitney, 52, proposes construction of a transcontinental railroad, but territories west of the Rockies remain in British and Spanish hands (see Whitney, 1848; Pacific Railroad Survey, 1853).
Charles Goodyear obtains the basic rubber vulcanization process patent that will dominate the rubber industry (see 1839). Granted his patent June 15, he licenses the New Haven, Connecticut, firm L. Candee Company to make vulcanized rubber overshoes but is so short of funds that he will sell his patent rights.
An English company at Bristol introduces paper bags for shoppers (see Wolle, 1852).
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Scottish author-publisher Robert Chambers, 42, anticipates some conclusions that Charles Darwin will publish in 1858 and 1859. Chambers and his brother William founded the Edinburgh publishing house W. & R. Chambers 12 years ago.
Nomenklatur Zoologizus by naturalist Louis Agassiz proposes a better system of zoological classification.
French mathematician Joseph Liouville, 35, proves the existence of transcendental numbers, becoming the first to do so. He will construct an infinite class of such numbers and publish most of the late Evariste Galois's papers in 1846.
Prussian mathematician Hermann (Günther) Grassmann, 35, at Stettin presents a general calculus of vectors in his paper "The Theory of Linear Extension, a New Branch of Mathematics" ("Die lineale Ausdehmungslehre, ein neuer Zweig der Mathematik"). Basing his work on an idea of algebra by the 18th century mathematician Gottfried von Leibniz, Grassmann has developed a calculus that in certain circumstances will prove far more powerful than previous methods of coordinate geometry; his work will ultimately inspire a school of vector analysis, but partly because his writing is so obscure it will be some years before his methods are adopted.
Chemist John Dalton dies at Manchester, England, July 27 at age 77, never having found time to marry.
Boston dentist Horace Wells, 39, pioneers anesthesiology in surgery. He has learned how to administer nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") from Gardner Q. Colton and uses it to deaden pain while extracting his own tooth (see Humphry Davy, 1799). He will attempt a demonstration of the gas before a Harvard Medical School class next year, but his patient will not be completely anesthetized when Wells makes the extraction and the class will not be impressed (see Morton's ether, 1846).
Crawford Long at Jefferson, Georgia, makes the first use of ether in childbirth (see 1842). He administers it to his wife during the delivery of their second child (see Simpson, 1847).
A paper on urine secretion by German physiologist Carl F. W. (Friedrich Wilhelm) Ludwig, 27, postulates that the epithelium (surface layer) of the kidney tubes serves as a passive filter in urine production, whose rate is controlled by blood pressure (see kymograph, 1847). Ludwig's observation pioneers modern nephrology.
The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) is founded at London by English dry goods clerk George Williams, 23, who has been holding meetings for prayer and Bible-reading with fellow workers. Combining interests in social welfare with those in religious welfare, the YMCA will soon have branches in France and the Netherlands, and it will spread around the world (see Boston, 1851; YMHA, 1854).
Carthage, Illinois, police arrest Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum for wrecking the offices and press of a rival Mormon newspaper in town (see 1839). A mob of 200 men drags the Smiths from their jail cell the night of June 27 and lynches them. Brigham Young, 43, is chosen August 8 to succeed Smith (see westward trek, 1846).
Samuel F. B. Morse transmits the first electromagnetic telegraph message May 24 from the U.S. Supreme Court room in the Capitol at Washington, D.C., to his associate Alfred L. Vail at the Mount Clare Station of the B&O Railroad at Baltimore (see 1843); "What hath God wrought!" (from Numbers 23:33) is the message and Vail replies, "Yes," transmitting back at a rate that later will be computed as five "bits" per second, which for all intents and purposes represents instant communication. The first real "news" transmitted is that the Whig Party convention has nominated Theodore Frelinghuysen, now 57, for vice-president, Whig presidential nominee Henry Clay and many other political leaders favor government ownership of telegraphy, but Morse next year will hire former postmaster general Amos Kendall as business manager, and with financial help from Ezra Cornell and Hiram Sibley they will establish telegraph lines. In the next 15 years they will make fortunes as the lines come into use for sending stock quotations from New York to Philadelphia and other nearby cities that have depended up to now on signals relayed by men using flags on tops of buildings and hills (see 1848).
Manchester Guardian cofounder John Edward Taylor dies of a throat "affection" in January at age 52 (see 1821); his sons Russell Scott, 18, and John Edward, 13, inherit the paper and will make it a daily beginning in 1855 (see Scott, 1872).
The Toronto Globe begins publication March 4 under the direction of Edinburgh-born journalist George Brown, 25, whose weekly Reform political journal will become a daily in 1853 (seeMail, 1872; Globe and Mail, 1936).
Nova Scotia lumberman Charles Fenerty, 23, writes to the Acadian Recorder at Halifax October 26 enclosing a sample of the first paper made from wood pulp. He has experimented with spruce pulp, subjecting it to the same treatment as rags used for papermaking, but fails to patent his discovery and is unaware of a wood-pulp papermaking process invented by German engineer Gottlob Keller, 38, that will reduce the price of newsprint and permit the growth of cheap mass media (see Keen, Burgess, 1854).
Ned Buntline's Magazine begins publication at Cincinnati but soon fails. Philadelphia-born publisher Edward Zane Carroll Judson, 21, earned a U.S. Navy midshipman's commission at age 15, his action stories have appeared in Knickerbocker Magazine under the pen name Ned Buntline. He will track down and capture two fugitive murderers in Kentucky next year, publish the sensational Ned Buntline's Own at Nashville, be arrested the following year for shooting and killing the husband of his alleged mistress, somehow survive an actual lynching, and thereafter reestablish Ned Buntline's Own at New York (see Astor Place Theater riot, 1849; religion [Know-Nothing Party], 1854).
Brownson's Quarterly Review begins publication under the direction of Vermont-born theologian-philosopher Orestes (Augustus) Brownson, 40, who gave up his Presbyterian faith to become a Universalist minister in 1826, became a Unitarian minister in 1832, started his own Society for Christian Union and Progress in 1836, and has now embraced Roman Catholicism, a faith he will continue to observe until his death in 1876. His journal of personal opinion will continue until 1875 (except for the years 1865 to 1872), giving vent to Brownson's views on Calvinism, democracy, emancipation, labor, nativism, Roman Catholicism, social reform, and Transcendentalism.
Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature is published by Robert Chambers, who has compiled the work with help from Inverness Courier editor Robert Carruthers, 45; a 10-volume edition will appear in 1868.
Nonfiction: Summer on the Lake by Massachusetts Transcendentalist and feminist Margaret Fuller, 34, who has been giving public "conversations" at Boston since 1839 to further the education of women and become editor of the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial. Horace Greeley invites her to become literary critic of his New York Tribune.
Fiction: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens with illustrations by "Phiz"; The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) by French novelist-playwright Alexandre Dumas, 42, whose Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan cry, "All for one, one for all" (IX); Mystères de Paris by French novelist Eugène Sue, 39, who has changed his name from Marie Joseph to Eugène in honor of his patron Prince Eugène de Beauharnais; Coningsby: or, The New Generation by Benjamin Disraeli, now 39, who has been a member of Parliament since 1837 and models his hero on the young Tory leader George Smythe, contrasting his romantic, aristocratic, nostalgic attitude with the stodgy, middle-class Conservatism reprsented by Sir Robert Peel ("Almost everything that is great has been done by youth," III).
Poetry: Deutschland, Ein Wintermärchen, and Neue Gedichte by Heinrich Heine; "Abou ben Adhem" by Leigh Hunt, whose Abou wakes "from a deep dream of peace" and finds that to "love his fellow man" is even worthier than to love the Lord; Odes to Rosa by the late English poet Thomas Haynes Bayly. His "Isle of Beauty" contains the line, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"; "The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ends with the lines, "And the night shall be filled with music,/ And the cares that infest the day/ Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,/ And silently steal away"; "The New-England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day" by Boston abolitionist author Lydia Child appears in her three-volume work Flowers for Children: "Over the river, and through the wood/ To grandfather's house we go;/ The horse knows the way,/ To carry the sleigh,/ Through the white and drifted snow."
Poet Thomas Campbell dies at Boulogne June 15 at age 66 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Painting: The Milkmaid (oil) and The Riding Lesson (pastel) by French painter Jean-François Millet, 29, who will settle at Barbizon in 1849; Shoeing the Mare by Edwin Landseer; Rain, Steam, and Speed by J. M. W. Turner.
Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum opens in a neo-Gothic building that will come to house major works of art.
Theater: The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved by U.S. playwright William H. Smith (né Sedley), 37, and an anonymous "Gentleman" 2/12 at the Boston Museum. P. T. Barnum picks up the morality play about the evils of drink and presents it at Philadelphia, New York, and other cities (it will have frequent revivals; see 1854); Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorilla 3/28 at Madrid's Teatro de la Cruz (no other play will be so popular in Spain in this century and it will be revived many times in the next); Puss in Boots (Der gestiefelte Kater) by Ludwig Tieck 4/20 at Berlin.
Playwright Guilbert de Pixérécourt dies at his native Nancy July 27 at age 71, having written more than 100 plays. Known as "the father of melodrama," he went to a spa at Contrexeville in 1835 for treatment of his gout and kidney stones, suffered sunstroke and severe burns from an overheated bath, and has been in acute pain from aphasia ever since.
Opera: Ernani 3/9 at Venice's Teatro la Fenice, with music by Giuseppe Verdi; Alessandro Stradella 12/30 at Hamburg, with music by German composer Friedrich von Flotow, 33.
First performances: Roman Carnival Overture (Ouverture Le Carnaval Romain) by Hector Berlioz 2/3 at the Salle Herz, Paris.
The saxophone patented by Belgian-born Paris clarinet player and instrument maker (Antoine Joseph) Adolphe Sax, 29, plays in octaves rather than twelfths and is more flexible than any instrument other than the human voice. Son of an instrument maker who has made several changes to the French horn, Sax has studied at Brussels in the Royal School of Singing and at age 20 patented an improved bass clarinet design.
Popular songs: "Buffalo Girls (Won't You Come Out Tonight?)" by U.S. songwriter Cool White (John Hodges); "The Blue Juniata" by U.S. songwriter Marion Dix Sullivan is about a river in Pennsylvania.
Fruitlands is founded by Concord social reformer Amos Bronson Alcott, 44, whose utopian commune in northern Massachusetts does not succeed. Alcott has recently returned from a trip to England, funded by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, to observe the methods of the Alcott House School, an experimental school named in his honor. He and his fellow communards at Fruitlands neglect practical necessities in their passion for talk and social reform activities. The failure of their crops reduces them to near-starvation, and they abandon the community within a few months. (Alcott will move about New England for the next 9 years, will become superintendent of schools at Concord, Massachusetts, in 1859, but will gain financial security only after 1869 through the literary efforts of his daughter Louisa May.)
Spain creates a Guardia Civil to police rural areas. "The Guardia Civil must not be fearsome, except to evildoers. Nor must it be feared, except by enemies of order," the organization's moral code will proclaim next year, but the Guardia Civil in its patent leather hats and green capes will become a symbol of governmental repression especially to Basques, gypsies, and anarchists.
The Cologne Cathedral is consecrated after 2 years of work that resumed construction begun in 1560. Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV attends the celebrations, becoming the first Prussian king to enter a Roman Catholic building (see 1888).
Architect Charles Bulfinch dies at Boston April 4 at age 80; Ithiel Town at New Haven, Connecticut, June 13 at age 59.
William Cullen Bryant proposes a public park for Manhattan. The poet-journalist of 1817 "Thanatopsis" fame, who is co-editor and co-owner of the New York Post, writes, "Commerce is devouring inch by inch the coast of the island, and if we rescue any part of it for health and recreation, it must be done now . . . All large cities have their extensive public grounds and gardens, Madrid and Mexico their Alamedas, London its Regent's Park, Paris its Champs Elysées, and Vienna its Prater" (see 1853; Olmsted, 1857).
The great auk Pinguinus impennis becomes extinct as collectors kill the last one on Eldey Island, 10 miles west of Iceland. A flightless bird resembling the penguin, the auk once numbered in the millions, swimming 3,000 miles each year for centuries from its wintering grounds on North Carolina's outer banks to nesting sites on rocky islands off Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, but while it was originally eaten by cod fishermen and used for bait, the bird has been wantonly shot and clubbed to death for its flesh, and for feathers to be sold in Europe.
Milk reaches Manchester by rail for the first time and shipments soon begin to London (see 1863; New York, 1842). Rail transport will lower English food prices and make fresh eggs, green vegetables, fresh fish, and country-killed meat available more quickly.
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Astronomy
Irish astronomer William Parsons, third earl of Rosse [b. York, England, June 17, 1800, d. Monkstown, Cork, Ireland, October 31, 1867], after observing the nebula formed by the supernova explosion in 1054, names it the Crab Nebula because of its tentaclelike structure. See also 1758 Astronomy; 1928 Astronomy.
Friedrich Bessel, after observing the irregular motion of Sirius and Procyon, concludes that these stars are orbited by invisible companions. See also 1841 Astronomy; 1851 Astronomy.
Biology
The anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, but widely known to have been written by Robert Chambers [b. Peebles, Scotland, 1802, d. 1871], influences the thinking on evolution of both Alfred Wallace and Darwin. Although it contains many errors and does not suggest a mechanism for evolution, Vestiges clearly promotes the evolution concept. See also 1858 Biology. (See biography.)
Darwin outlines in detail for the first time his theory of natural selection in an unpublished essay that runs 231 pages in a fair copy. It is the precursor of his theory of evolution. See also 1842 Biology; 1858 Biology.
John William Draper shows that plants when growing in a solution of sodium bicarbonate liberate oxygen when illuminated. See also 1865 Biology.
Rudolf von Kölliker shows that the egg is a cell and that all cells in an organism originate by divisions from the egg cell. See also 1882 Biology.
Gabriel Gustav Valentin discovers that pancreatic juice breaks down food in digestion. See also 1838 Biology.
Chemistry
Physicists Léon Foucault and Armand Hippolyte Fizeau [b. Paris, September 23, 1819, d. Venteuil, France, September 18, 1896] formulate the theory of allotropy, explaining how crystals can exist in two or more forms. See also 1841 Chemistry. (See biography.)
Russian chemist Carl Ernst Claus [b. Tartu (Estonia), January 23, 1796, d. Tartu, March 24, 1864] discovers the chemical element ruthenium (Ru).
Communication
Werner von Siemens develops a mechanical copying method based on reproducing printed matter with zinc plates in which the part to be reproduced is raised into relief. See also 1842 Materials.
Samuel F. B. Morse uses his telegraph system to send a famous message from Washington to Baltimore: "What hath God wrought?" The message is received by Alfred Vail, who is credited by some with inventing the Morse code. See also 1837 Communication. (See essay.)
Earth science
Darwin's Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, being the second part of the geology of the Beagle, confirms that Lyell's theories apply to places that Lyell has never visited. See also 1842 Earth science.
The American explorer Charles Wilkes [b. New York City, April 3, 1798, d. Washington, DC, February 8, 1877] publishes a report of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-42) to Antarctica and the Pacific Northwest. See also 1820 Earth science; 1912 Earth science.
Ecology & the environment
The Commission for Enquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts is told by several physicians that there is a direct connection between dirty air and epidemic disease in England. See also 1800 Medicine & health; 1854 Medicine & health.
Energy
An experimental electric light is installed on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. See also 1841 Energy; 1845 Energy.
William Fairbairn [b. Kelso, Scotland, February 19, 1789, d. Moor Park, England, August 18, 1874] and John Hetherington patent what comes to be called the Lancashire boiler. It consists of a cylindrical vessel through which passes a cylindrical flue; this type of boiler remains in use until the 20th century.
Mathematics
Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre, ein neuer Zweig der Mathematik ("linear extension theory, a new branch of mathematics") by German mathematician Hermann Günther Grassman [b. Stettin (Szczecin, Poland), April 15, 1809, d. Stettin, September 26, 1877] introduces vectors in more than three dimensions, but this concept is poorly understood by his contemporaries. Grassman also develops an algebra in which symbols representing geometric entities (points, lines, and planes) are manipulated according to specific rules. See also 1843 Mathematics; 1881 Mathematics.
Joseph Liouville establishes that transcendental numbers exist. Transcendental numbers are numbers such as π and e that are not solutions of algebraic equations with rational coefficients. Liouville's transcendental numbers are typified by the number 0.101001000100001000001000000 ..., in which the number of zeros between ones increases regularly. See also 1873 Mathematics.
Augustin Cauchy proves a fundamental theorem in group theory that had been asserted by Galois (every finite group whose order is divisible by a prime p contains a subgroup of order p), while investigating permutation groups. See also 1833 Mathematics.
Medicine & health
Dentist Horace Wells [b. Hartford, Connecticut, 1815, d. January 28, 1848] is the first to use nitrous oxide as an anesthetic in dentistry. See also 1846 Medicine & health.
Charles Thomas Jackson suggests using ether to deaden pain to dentist William Thomas Morton. See also 1841 Medicine & health; 1846 Medicine & health.
Tools
Belgian mechanic Egide Walschaerts [b. Malines, Belgium, January 21, 1820, d. 1901] invents a reversing gear for steam railway locomotives using only one eccentric. It becomes universally adopted on steam locomotives later in the century. See also 1842 Tools.
Transportation
John Ericsson builds a propeller-driven, metal-hulled warship, the Princeton, which has its engines below the water line for better protection. See also 1839 Transportation; 1851 Transportation.