Science and Technology
- The First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA was completed.
- The Suez Canal in Egypt is opened in 1869.
- The submarine is invented in 1869.
- The first transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully laid in 1866, enabling almost instant communication between America and Europe.
- Alfred Nobel creates dynamite in Germany
- James Clerk Maxwell publishes his equations that quantify the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and shows that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation
- Gregor Mendel formulates Mendel's laws of inheritance, the basis for genetics
- Dimitri Mendeleev develops the modern periodic table
- Helium was first detected during the total solar eclipse of August 18, 1868 in parts of India. It was the first eclipse expedition in which a spectroscope was used.
- J. Norman Lockyer and Pierre Janssen are honored for their discovery of the nature of the Sun's prominences. They were the first to notice bright spectral emission lines when viewing the limb of the Sun without the aid of a total solar eclipse.
Read more about this topic: 1860s
Famous quotes containing the words science and, science and/or technology:
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)