Timeline of Meteorology - 18th Century

18th Century

• 1716 - Edmund Halley suggests that aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines.

• 1724 - Gabriel Fahrenheit creates reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer.
• 1735 - The first ideal explanation of global circulation was the study of the Trade winds by George Hadley.
• 1738 - Daniel Bernoulli publishes Hydrodynamics, initiating the kinetic theory of gases. He gave a poorly detailed equation of state, but also the basic laws for the theory of gases.
• 1742 - Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the Celsius temperature scale which led to the current Celsius scale.
• 1743 - Benjamin Franklin is prevented from seeing a lunar eclipse by a hurricane, he decides that cyclones move in a contrary manner to the winds at their periphery.
• 1761 - Joseph Black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting.
• 1772 - Black's student Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen, which he calls phlogisticated air, and together they explain the results in terms of the phlogiston theory.
• 1774 - Louis Cotte is put in charge of a "medico-meteorological" network of French veterinarians and country doctors to investigate the relationship between plague and weather. The project continued until 1794.

- Royal Society begins twice daily observations compiled by Samuel Horsley testing for the influence of winds and of the moon on the barometer readings.

• 1777 - Antoine Lavoisier discovers oxygen and develops an explanation for combustion.
• 1780 - Charles Theodor charters the first international network of meteorological observers known as "Societas Meteorologica Palatina". The project collapses in 1795.
• 1783 - In Lavoisier's book Reflexions sur le phlogistique, he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory.

- First hair hygrometer demonstrated. The inventor was Horace-Bénédict de Saussure.