1878 in science

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The year 1878 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• English astronomer Richard A. Proctor describes the Zone of Avoidance, the area of the night sky that is obscured by our own galaxy, for the first time.

Biology

• Death of last confirmed Cape Lion. ^[1]

Chemistry

• The rare earth element holmium is identified in erbium by Marc Delafontaine and Jacques-Louis Soret in Geneva ^[2] and by Per Teodor Cleve in Sweden. ^[3]

Conservation

• An Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom places Epping Forest in the care of the City of London Corporation to remain unenclosed.

Exploration

• June 22 – Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld sets out on the year-long first navigation of the Northern Sea Route, the shipping lane from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean along the Siberian coast.

August – Cleopatra's Needle (horizontal) being raised in London.

Geology

• Clarence King publishes Systematic Geology.
• Charles Lapworth publishes his analysis of the change in graptolite fossils through sequences of exposed shales in southern Scotland, establishing the importance of using graptolites to understand stratigraphic sequences. ^[4]

Mathematics

• Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt describes the D'Hondt method of voting.
• English mathematician Rev. William Allen Whitworth is the first to publish Bertrand's ballot theorem. ^[5]

Medicine

• Cesare Lombroso publishes L'uomo delinquente, setting out his theory of criminal atavism.
• Ádám Politzer publishes Lehrbuch der Ohrenheilkunde, a major otology textbook. ^[6]
• Dentists Act in the United Kingdom limits the title of "dentist" and "dental surgeon" to qualified and registered practitioners. ^[7]

Meteorology

• February 11 – The first weekly weather report is published in the United Kingdom.

Paleontology

• 31 Iguanodon skeletons are discovered in a coal mine at Bernissart, Belgium.
• The sauropod genus Diplodocus is first named by Othniel Charles Marsh as well as the Theropod genus Allosaurus. These are both from the Jurassic aged Morrison formation.

Physics

• January 18 – Romanian mathematician Spiru Haret defends his doctoral thesis, ^[8] which proves a result fundamental to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics.

Technology

• February 19 – The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison. The oldest known audio recording is recovered from this device in 2012. ^[9]
• March – The 'basic' process, enabling the use of phosphoric iron ore in steelmaking, developed at Blaenavon Ironworks by Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, is first made public. ^[10]
• May 22 – John Philip Holland's experimental powered submarine Holland I is launched in Paterson, New Jersey.
• June 15 – Eadweard Muybridge produces the sequence of stop-motion still photographs Sallie Gardner at a Gallop in California, a predecessor of silent film (capable of being viewed as an animation on a zoopraxiscope) demonstrating that all four feet of a galloping horse are off the ground at the same time.
• August – Cleopatra's Needle is raised onto its base in London.
• October 14 – The world's first recorded floodlit football fixture is played at Bramall Lane in Sheffield.
• December 18 – Joseph Swan of Newcastle upon Tyne in England announces his invention of an incandescent light bulb. ^[11]
• December 31 – Karl Benz produces a two-stroke gas engine.
• William Crookes invents the Crookes tube which produces cathode rays. ^[12]
• Osbourn Dorsey obtains a patent in the United States for a "door-holding device". ^[13]
• Gustav Kessel obtains a patent in Germany for an espresso machine. ^[14]
• Czech painter Karel Klíč perfects the photogravure process.
• Lester Allan Pelton produces the first operational Pelton wheel. ^[15]
• Remington, in the United States, introduce their No. 2 typewriter, the first with a shift key enabling production of lower as well as upper case characters.

Institutions

• October 1 – Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University opens as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College in the United States.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Jean Baptiste Boussingault ^[16]
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Thomas Wright

Births

• January 1 – A. K. Erlang, Danish mathematician (died 1929)
• January 7 – Samuel James Cameron, Scottish obstetrician (died 1959)
• January 25 – Ernst Alexanderson, Swedish-born television pioneer (died 1975)
• February 5 – André Citroën, French automobile manufacturer (died 1935)
• February 8 – Martin Buber, Austrian philosopher (died 1965)
• February 10 – Jennie Smillie, Canadian gynecological surgeon (died 1981)
• February 28 – Pierre Fatou, French mathematician (died 1929)
• March 4 – Peter D. Ouspensky, Russian philosopher (died 1947)
• April 11 – Percy Lane Oliver, British pioneer of voluntary blood donation (died 1944)
• April 16 – Owen Thomas Jones, Welsh geologist (died 1967)
• June 3 – Barney Oldfield, American automobile racer and pioneer (died 1946)
• June 12 – James Oliver Curwood, American novelist and conservationist (died 1927)
• July 12 – Peeter Põld, Estonian politician and pedagogical scientist (died 1930)
• August 28 – George Whipple, American winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1976)
• September 5 – Robert von Lieben, Austrian physicist (died 1913)
• September 13 – Matilde Moisant, American pilot (died 1964)
• October 1 – Helen Mayo, Australian pediatrician (died 1967)
• November 7 – Lise Meitner, Austrian-Swedish physicist (died 1968) ^[17]
• November 8 – Dorothea Bate, Welsh-born paleozoologist (died 1951)
• December 25 – Louis Chevrolet, Swiss-born race driver and automobile builder (died 1941)
• December 25 – Joseph Schenck, Russian-born film executive (died 1962)

Deaths

• January 18 – William Stokes, Irish physician (born 1804)
• January 18 – Antoine César Becquerel, French scientist (born 1788)
• January 19 – Henri Victor Regnault, French physical chemist (born 1810)
• February 8 – Elias Magnus Fries, Swedish botanist (born 1794)
• February 10 – Claude Bernard, French physiologist (born 1813)
• February 26 – Angelo Secchi, Italian astronomer (born 1818)
• March 16 – William Banting, English undertaker and dietician (b. c.1796)
• May 13 – Joseph Henry, American physicist (born 1797)
• June 6 – Robert Stirling, Scottish clergyman and inventor (born 1790)
• July 23 – Baron Carl von Rokitansky, Bohemian pathologist (born 1804)
• September 25 – August Heinrich Petermann, German cartographer (born 1822)
• Friedrich Freese, German botanist (born 1794)

References

1. "V muzeu Emila Holuba se ukrýval kapský lev". Novinky.cz (in Czech). 2009-05-22. Retrieved 2011-08-26.
2. Soret, Jacques-Louis (1878). "Sur les spectres d'absorption ultra-violets des terres de la gadolinite". Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences . 87: 1062.
3. Cleve, Per Teodor (1879). "Sur deux nouveaux éléments dans l'erbine". Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. 89: 478.
4. "Dob's Linn". Scottish Geology. Archived from the original on 2011-05-18. Retrieved 2011-04-07.
5. Feller, William (1968), An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications, vol. 1 (3rd ed.), Wiley, p. 69
6. Mudry, A. (2000). "The Role of Adam Politzer in the History of Otology". American Journal of Otology. 21: 753–763.
7. Gelbier, Stanley (2005). "125 Years of Developments in Dentistry". British Dental Journal. 199 (7): 470. doi: 10.1038/sj.bdj.4812875 . PMID   16215593.
8. Sur l’invariabilité des grandes axes des orbites planétaires ("On the invariability of the major axis of planetary orbits"), University of Paris.
9. Rosen, Rebecca J. (2012-10-26). "Scientists Recover the Sounds of 19th-Century Music and Laughter From the Oldest Playable American Recording". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
10. Davies, William Llewelyn (2009). "Thomas, Sidney Gilchrist". Welsh Biography Online. Retrieved 2012-11-09.
11. van Dulken, Stephen (2001). Inventing the 19th Century: the great age of Victorian inventions. London: British Library. p. 80. ISBN   978-0-7123-0881-6.
12. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN   978-1-85986-000-7.
13. 210,762.
14. "Invention of the Espresso Machine". Barista's Roasting Co. Archived from the original on 2012-04-28. Retrieved 2012-06-20.
15. "Miners Foundry – Allans Machine Shop Founded 1856". Historical Marker Database. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
16. "Copley Medal | British scientific award". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
17. Bailey Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z. London: Routledge. p. 877. ISBN   978-0-41592-040-7.