History of Physics and Astronomy

1600 AD to 1699 AD

This section shows the important events in Physics and Astronomy from 1600 AD until 1699 AD. The names of people are highlighted in blue, important people are in bold blue.


1600 Dip circle
1600 Magnets – William Gilbert
1602-1686 Guericke – air pump
1604 Supernova
1608 Telescope – Lippershey
1608-1647 Toricelli
1609 Compound microscope
1609 Galilean telescope – first use for astronomy
1609 Kepler's laws
1610 Jupiter's satellites discovered – Galileo
1610 Stars in the Milky Way - Galileo
1610 Sunspots discovered – Galileo
1614 Naperian logarithms
1617 Napier's bones
1618 Kepler's third law
1618- 1663 Grimaldi
1621 Slide rule – William Oughtred
1621 Snell's law
1623-1662 Pascal
1624 Theory of tides - Galileo
1627-1691 Boyle, Robert
1629 Parabolic mirrors – free from spherical aberration
1629-1695 Huyghens
1631 Transit of Mercury observed by Gassendi. Predicted by Kepler.
1632 Constant acceleration of gravity – Galileo
1632 'Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del Mondi' published – Galileo
1632 Water thermometer – John Ray
1632-1723 Leeuwenhoek - microscopes
1633 Galileo – "Confession"
1634 Somnium – Kepler's science fiction story of mans voyage to the Moon
1635 Alcohol thermometer - Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany
1635-1703 Hooke
1636 Speed of sound - Mersenne
1638 Snell's law published – Descartes
1638 Variable star – Mira Ceti was the first to be observed
1638-1675 Gregory
1639 Micrometer used to measure the diameter of Sun and planets - Gasgoine
1639 Transit of Venus first observed – Horrox and Crabtree
1642 Mechanical calculator – Blaise Pascal
1642- 1727 Newton
1643 Mercury thermometer
1644-1710 Rφmer
1645 First accurate lunar map – Hevelius
1646- 1716 Leibnitz
1651 Magdeburg hemispheres (?1660)
1655 Rings of Saturn – Huygens
1656 Pendulum clock – Huygens
1656-1742 Halley
1657 Fermat's principle
1660 Alcohol thermoscope
1660 Boyle's law (?1662)
1660 Magdeburg hemispheres – Otto von Guericke
1661 Corpuscular theory of matter – Robert Boyle
1662 Royal Society founded by Charles II
1663-1729 Newcomen
1665 Chromatic aberration – Newton
1665 Diffraction – Grimaldi
1665 Huygens' principle
1665 Micrographia – microscope - Hooke
1665 Newton's rings
1665 Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society first appeared
1665-1666 Plague and fire of London
1668 Conservation of momentum – Wallace
1669 Polarisation in Iceland spar – double refraction - Bartholinus
1671 Newtonian reflector
1672 g - variation – Richer - pendulums
1672 Spectrum experiments - Newton
1673 Centripetal acceleration - proof of formula for– Huygens (v²/r)
1675 Greenwich observatory established
1676 Hooke's law published
1678 Inverse square law of gravity – Robert Hooke
1678 Polarisation of light Huygens
1678 Secondary wavelets - Huygens
1679 Rφmer – speed of light – 192 000 miles per second (?1676)
1683-1757 Reamur
1686-1736 Fahrenheit
1687 Principia published
1688 Plate glass invented in Normandy
1690 First steam piston engine - Newcomen
1690 Traitι de la lumiere published – Huygens wave theory
1693 National debt founded
1693-1762 Bradley (aberration of light)
1693- 1776 Harrison (grid iron pendulum)
1699 Simple laws of friction - Amontons