17th Century - Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

List of 17th century inventions

Major changes in philosophy and science take place, often characterized as the Scientific revolution.

• Banknotes reintroduced in Europe
• Ice cream
• Tea and coffee become popular in Europe.
• Central Banking in France and modern Finance by Scottish economist John Law
• Minarets, Jamé Mosque of Isfahan, Isfahan, Persia (Iran), are built.
• 1604: Supernova SN 1604 is observed in the Milky Way
• 1605: Johannes Kepler starts investigating elliptical orbits of planets
• 1605: Johann Carolus of Germany publishes the 'Relation', the first newspaper
• 1608: Hans Lippershey constructs a refracting telescope, the first for which sufficient evidence exists
• 1610: The Orion Nebula is identified by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc of France
• 1610: Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius observe Jupiter's Galilean moons
• 1611: King James Bible or 'Authorized Version' first published
• c. 1612: The first flintlock musket likely created for Louis XIII of France by gunsmith Marin Bourgeois
• 1614: John Napier introduces the logarithm to simplify calculations
• 1616: Niccolò Zucchi describes experiments with a bronze parabolic mirror trying to make a reflecting telescope
• 1620: Cornelius Drebbel, funded by James I of England, builds the first 'submarine' made of wood and greased leather
• 1623: The first English dictionary, 'English Dictionarie' is published by Henry Cockeram, listing difficult words with definitions
• 1628: William Harvey publishes and elucidates his earlier discovery of the circulatory system
• 1637: Dutch Bible published
• 1637: Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera house, opened in Venice
• 1637: Pierre de Fermat formulates his so-called Last Theorem, unsolved until 1995
• 1637: Although Chinese naval mines were earlier described in the 14th century Huolongjing, the Tian Gong Kai Wu book of Ming Dynasty scholar Song Yingxing describes naval mines wrapped in a lacquer bag and ignited by an ambusher pulling a rip cord on the nearby shore that triggers a steel-wheel flint mechanism
• 1642: Blaise Pascal invents the mechanical calculator called Pascal's calculator
• 1642: Mezzotint engraving introduces grey tones to printed images
• 1643: Evangelista Torricelli of Italy invents the mercury barometer
• 1645: Giacomo Torelli of Venice, Italy invents the first rotating stage
• 1651: Giovanni Riccioli renames the Lunar mare
• 1656: Christiaan Huygens describes the true shape of the rings of Saturn
• 1657: Christiaan Huygens develops the first functional pendulum clock based on the learnings of Galileo Galilei
• 1659: Christiaan Huygens first to observe surface details of Mars
• 1662: Christopher Merret presents first paper on the production of sparkling wine
• 1663: James Gregory publishes designs for a reflecting telescope
• 1669: The first known operational reflecting telescope is built by Isaac Newton
• 1676: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers Bacteria
• 1676: First measurement of the speed of light
• 1679: Binary system developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• 1684: Calculus independently developed by both Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton and used to formulate classical mechanics