1843 in science

The year 1843 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• February 5–April 19 - "Great March Comet" observed.
• Heinrich Schwabe reports a periodic change in the number of sunspots: they wax and wane in number according to a ten-year cycle.

Chemistry

• Carl Mosander discovers Terbium and Erbium.
• John J. Waterston produces an account of the kinetic theory of gases.^[1]

Mathematics

• October 16 - William Rowan Hamilton discovers the calculus of quaternions and deduces that they are non-commutative.^[2]
• Arthur Cayley and James Joseph Sylvester found the algebraic invariant theory.
• John T. Graves discovers the octonions.
• Pierre-Alphonse Laurent discovers and presents the Laurent expansion theorem.
• Ada Lovelace translates and expands Menabrea’s notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine, including an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, regarded as the world's first computer program.^[3][4][5]

Physics

• James Prescott Joule experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat.^[6]

Technology

• March 25 - Completion of the Thames Tunnel, the first bored underwater tunnel in the world (engineer: Marc Isambard Brunel).^[7]
• July 19 - Launch of SS Great Britain, the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean (designer: Isambard Kingdom Brunel).^[8]
• November 21 - Thomas Hancock patents the vulcanisation of rubber using sulphur in the United Kingdom
• The steam powered rotary printing press is invented by Richard March Hoe in the United States.^[9]
• Robert Stirling and his brother James convert a steam engine at a Dundee factory to operate as a Stirling engine.
• The first public telegraph line in the United Kingdom is laid between Paddington and Slough.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Jean-Baptiste Dumas
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: Jean-Baptiste Elie de Beaumont; Pierre Armand Dufrenoy

Births

• January 13 - David Ferrier (died 1928), Scottish neurologist.
• June 12 - David Gill (died 1914), Scottish astronomer.
• July 24 - William de Wiveleslie Abney (died 1920), English astronomer.
• August 17 - Alexandre Lacassagne (died 1924), French forensic scientist.
• December 11 - Robert Koch (died 1910), German physician, famous for the discovery of the tubercle bacillus (1882) and the cholera bacillus (1883) and for his development of Koch's postulates; awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905

Deaths

• July 25 - Charles Macintosh (born 1766), Scottish inventor of a waterproof fabric.
• August 10 - Robert Adrain (born 1775), Irish American mathematician.
• September 19 - Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis (born 1792), French mathematician and discoverer of the Coriolis effect.
• September 30 - Richard Harlan (born 1796), American zoologist.
• November 16 - Abraham Colles (born 1773), Anglo-Irish surgeon.

References

1. ^ Thoughts on the Mental Functions; being an attempt to treat metaphysics as a branch of the physiology of the nervous system. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. 1843. 
2. ^ "William Rowan Hamilton Plaque". Geograph. 2007. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/347941. Retrieved 2011-03-08. 
3. ^ Fuegi, John; Francis, Jo (October–December 2003). "Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes'". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25 (4): 16–26. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2003.1253887. 
4. ^ "Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace". Archived from the original on 21 July 2010. http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-bio.html. Retrieved 2010-07-11. 
5. ^ Menabrea, L. F. (1843). "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage". Scientific Memoirs 3. Archived from the original on 13 September 2010. http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html. Retrieved 2010-10-01. 
6. ^ Joule, J. P. (1843). "On the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat". Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal Society of London 5: 839. doi:10.1098/rspl.1843.0196. http://rspl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/839. Retrieved 2012-01-27. 
7. ^ Smith, Denis (2001). London and the Thames Valley. London: Thomas Telford. p. 17. ISBN 0-7277-2876-8. 
8. ^ "Royal Visit". The Bristol Mirror: pp. 1–2. 20 July 1843. 
9. ^ Meggs, Philip B. (1998). A History of Graphic Design (3rd ed.). Wiley. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-471-29198-5.  It receives U.S. Patent 5,199 in 1847 and is placed in commercial use the same year.