TIMELINE 17th CENTURY

TIMELINE 17th CENTURY

Copyright 1996,1997,1998 by Magic Dragon Multimedia.

All rights reserved.  May not be reproduced without permission.  

May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered, in its
entirety, and without charge.

Why was the 17th Century the Dawn of Science Fiction?  My basic thesis is 
that the rise of Science Fiction is inseparable from the Rise of modern 
Science, whose publications influenced all sufficiently well-read 
intellectuals.  That's why I list both science fiction and science nonfiction here.

There are 2 hotlinks here to authors, magazines, films, 
or television items elsewhere in the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide or 
beyond.

Most recently updated: 2 June 1998 (major expansion with nonfiction to 
provide context, reasonably complete through 1685, the final 15 years of the 
century to be filled in later...)

Over 84 Kilobytes of text.

1600-1610

1600: The odd couple of Johannes Kepler (theorist) and Tycho Brahe 
(experimentalist) begin a stormy but spectacular collaboration in Prague

1600: "De Magnete" [Concerning Magnetism] by William Gilbert is the first 
book on Physics to be entirely based on experiment.  It includes chapters 
on static electricity and the revolutionary idea that the planet Earth is a 
magnet.

1600: The 4th Apollonian problem (about constructing a circle to touch any 
three given circles) is solved by Franciscus Vieta

1600: Pi is calculated as 3.1415929 by Adriaen Anthoniszoon and son... we 
now correct that slightly to 3.141592653589793238462644...

17 Feb 1600: Giordano Bruno (1648-1600) was burnt at the stake for his writings, 
which were influenced by Platonic mysticism, Aristotelianism, pantheism, 
naturalism, the new natural sciences, and skepticism.  He taught that God 
was as one with the universe, a diversity exhibiting unity, with life and 
intelligence in everything.  He taught that there was an infinity of 
worlds, and thus there must be worlds identical to our own but with a 
single minor difference.

1600: "Hamlet" by Shakespeare, the greatest ghost story ever told, is 
first performed on stage.

1601: Tycho Brahe dies, Johannes Kepler named to succeed him at Prague 
observatory

1601: "De Vocis Auditusque Organis Historia Anatomica" [On the Anatomy of 
the Voice and Hearing] by Julius Casserius, with illustrations of ear and larynx

1602: Posthumous publication of "Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata" 
[Introduction to the New Astronomy] by Tycho Brahe
inckuding exact positions of 777 stars and more about the supernova of 1572

1602:  Barium Sulfide discovered by Vincenzio Casarido

1603: The death of Queen of England, Elizabeth I

1603:  "Uranometria" by Johann Bayer (1572-?) is the most comprehinsive 
star atlas yet, and establishes the system still used today of naming 
stars after their constellations plus  Greek letters

1603: "De Venarum Ostiolis" [On Vein-Valves] by Hieronymus Fabricius is
published 13 years before this anatomy is understood in terms of the 
function of these valves in the circulation.  This advances the notion that 
the body is a machine.

1603: Sanctorius Sanctorius of Yugoslavia (29 Mar 1561) writes about a 
pendulum for counting and timing the heartbeat

1603: Federigo Cesi founds the Accademia dei Lincei, a scientific society 
in Rome still active today

1603: By heating coal without burning it, Coke is discovered by Hugh Platt

1603: Pietro A. Cataldi discovers the 6th and 7th Perfect Numbers which, 
like the 1st and 2nd (6 and 28) are equal to the sum of their factors:
8,859,869,056 and 137,438,691,328

1604: Galileo writes to Paolo Sarpi that the distance a falling body 
covers is proportional to the square of its time of fall

1604: Johannes Kepler sees and writes about a supernova in the 
constellation Ophiuchus, as do astronomers in China and Korea

1604: "Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena Quibus Astronomiae pars Optica Traditor"
[The Optical Part of Astronomy] by Johannes Kepler correctly analyzes how 
light is focussed in the human eye, and how the brightness of light 
decreases with the inverse square of distance

1604: Hieronymus Fabricius publishes "De Formata Foetu" [On the Formation 
of the Fetus], a major work of Embryology, including blood circulation in 
the umbilical cord

1604: "Triumphwagen des Antimonii" [Antimony's Triumphal Chariot] by 
Johan Tholde discusses the metal Antimony and some of its chemical compounds, 
although he says the discoveries were the work of an otherwise unknown 1th 
century monk (Basil Valentine)

1605: Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote of La Mancha" was published in two 
volumes, 1605 and 1615.  Your humble webmaster's mother learned to read 
Spanish primarily to read this great masterpiece of world literature.  An 
elderly country gentleman of La Mancha reads so many chivalric romances 
that he becomes insane, believes them to be tru, and goes forth into the 
world as a knight-errant to right wrongs and defend the oppressed.  Today 
one might read this as a warning to obsessed science fiction fans to, in 
the words of a famous William Shatner skit on Saturday Night Live "Get a 
Life!"
     Since knight errants cannot do their thing without a lady-love, he 
chooses a local peasant girl he knew and dubs her Dulcinea.  After his 
first sortie, wherein he's knighted, he convinces a good-natured but 
ignorant middle-aged local to be his sidekick, or esquire.  Off they go, 
through one adventure after another, which Don Quixote sees in delsional 
forms: a windmill as a giant, inns as castles, galley slaves as oppressed 
gentlemen.  His buddy Sancho Panza sees things as they are, but both suffer 
terribly, returning home depressed and damaged.
     A pseudo-Quixote novel was published in the next decade, and this 
goaded Miguel de Cervantes to write his own genuine sequel, which is even 
better than the first volume.  Wonderful chapters cover his dream in the 
cave of Montesinos, the puppet shows of Maese Pedro, adventures at the 
Duke's castle, scenes with Robin Hood Guianrt, and the final defeat.  When 
Quixote dies, Sancho Panza has become a beloved figure himself, so that 
the reader can hardly stand to leave the world of Quixote, which may have 
started as a satire on the fantasy genre of the day, but grew into a 
panoramic masterpiece of 17th century Spanish life.  The mere 
entertainment became what many consider the first modern novel, which set a 
standard for self-aware fantasy (at one point Quixote encounters a 
character pretending to be Quixote) which endures in the best work of 
today.

1605: "Advancement of Learning" by Francis Bacon (22 Jan 1561-?)
advances the power of the Scientific Method, and discourages the old 
beliefs in Magic

1606: Johannes Kepler publishes "De Stella Nova" [On the 
New Star] about the 1604 supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus, 
covering both Astronomy and Astrology

1607: founding of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia

1608: Hans Lippershey, a German-born Dutch scientist, invents the telescope

1608: Cornelius Drebbel (1572-?) publishes "Ein Kurser Tractat von der 
Natur der Elementum" [Aclchemical Tract on the Transmutation of Elements] 
which is wrong about turning one element into another but correct in 
predicting that heated saltpeter would give off oxygen

1609: Galileo build his first telescope (see 1608: Hans Lippershey) and 
improves it until it magnifies by a factor of 30

1609: Thomas Harriot draws nicely detailed pictures of the Moon based on 
observation through a telescope

1609: "Astronomia Nova" [New Astronomy] by Johannes Kepler lays out his 
correct laws of planetary motion (including that orbits are ellipses, and 
that equal areas are swept out in equal times), although these empirically 
derived laws were not mathematically deduced from basic principals until 
Isaac Newton

1609:  the first use of Tidal Power is demonstrated as small mills are 
powered by the the tides of the Bay of Fundy

1609: Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen both make Compound Microscopes, but 
Janssen may have done so as early as 1590

William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (1611, revised in First Folio 1623) is 
a superbly wrought, graceful play, with some of the Bard's best lines.  
It was also so science-fictional as to have been rewritten into the modern 
film "Forbidden Planet."  Here's the key:
* Prospero, Duke of Milan, Magician = Dr. Morbius (Mad Scientist)
* He studies magic = He studies the alien technology
* Magic Island = Altair-4 (Alien Planet)
* Shipwreck = Forced landing of Spaceship
* Beautiful daughter Miranda = Beautiful daughter Altaira
* Brutish servant Caliban = Robbie the Robot
* Ariel, Spirit of the Air = invisible "Monster of the Id"

1610-1620

1610: "Tyrocinium Chymicum" by Jean Beguin (1550?-?) is the first textbook 
to be unambiguously about Chemistry as opposed to Alchemy.  See Ben 
Johnson, below.

1610: Ben Johnson's "The Alchemist" (acted 1610, printed 1612) deals with 
     various  swindles and duplicitous cons exploiting people's gullible 
     desire to obtain the Philospher's Stone, key to turning base metals 
     into gold.  This robust comedy is science fictional in its arch 
     self-awareness of valid versus invalid technologies, and the effect of 
     imperfect knowledge of technology on human affairs.

1610:  Galileo, using his telescope, on 7 Jan 1610 discovers the 4 largest
Moons of Jupiter; and subsequently the rings of Saturn (although he doesn't 
figure out that they are rings), the phases of Venus, and that the Milky 
Way is composed of a vast number of faint stars.  He publishes a 
best-selling series of newsletters "Siderus Nuncius" [Starry Messenger]
unequalled in impact by any science fiction serial.

1610:  Quebec founded as French colony in what is now Canada

1611:  The King James Bible is published: the greatest-ever translation of 
this monumental work of Historical Fantasy.

1611: Sunspots are discovered more-or-less simultaneously by Galileo, 
Thomas Harriot, Father Scheiner, and Johannes Fabricius.  If the sun is not 
perfect, what did God have in mind when creating the universe?

1611: The Orion Nebula is discovered by Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc

1611:  Rainbows are first explained scientifically by Marco de Dominis
and ever since artists and scientists argue about whether this increases or 
decreases the subjective beauty of rainbows.

1611:  "A New Year's Gift, or On the Six-Cornered Snowflake" by Johannes Kepler

1611:  "Dioptrice" by Johannes Kepler describes the Inverting Refractor,
a.k.a. The Astronomical Telescope

1611:  Completion of the first Revolving Beacon Lighthouse (Tour de Condonan)

1612:  The Andromeda Galaxy is first described in print by Simon Marius 
(20 Jan 1573-?).  It would be over 300 years before we understood what a 
galaxy was.

1612:  "Discurso Intorno alle cose che Stanno in su l'Acqua" [Discourse on 
Water-Floating-Things] by Galileo is the breakthrough book on Hydrostatics, 
albeit anticipated in some respects by Archimedes

1613: Galileo publishes "The Sunspot Letters" and for the first time takes 
a public position in favor of Copernicus; he also for the first time 
describes Inertia

1613:  "Commentaria in Artem Medicinalem Galeni" by Sanctorius Sanctorius is the 
first book to mention the previous invention of the Thermoscope by Galileo

1613:  "Hortus Eychstettensis" by Basilius Besler beautifully illustrates 
plants and flowers

1613:  Pietro A. Cataldi finds cool new ways to manipulate continued fractions

1614:  "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descrpto" [Description of the 
Wonderful Canon of the Logarithm] by John Napier

1614:  "De Statica Medicina" by Sanctorius Sanctorius quantifies changes 
in the author's temperature, pulse, and weight, and provides the first 
study of the Metabolism

1614:  Franciscus Sylvius openly condemns the theory that disease is 
caused by an imbalance of the four Humors; he suggests that it is due to 
an imbalance between acid and alkali

1615:  William Baffin (1584?-?) comes within 800 miles of the North Pole, 
a record not broken until the 19th Century.

1615: Johannes Kepler makes the single biggest step towards the invention 
of Integral Calculus in "Nova Stereometria Doliorum Vinariorum" [New 
Measurements of the Volume of Wine Casks] with infinitesimal analysis of 
solids of revolution.  Think of that the next time you drink a glass of 
wine...

1615:  Marin Mersenne spreads word of the curve called the Cycloid, soon 
nick-named 'The Helen of geometers" beacuse of the disagreements it 
provokes.  Cycloids later are the key to the pendulum clocks of Huygens.

1616:  The single worst day in literary history: 23 April 1616, when 
Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon and Cervantes died in Madrid

1616: The London arrival of Pocahontas, though not as depicted by Disney

1616:  Cardinal Robert Ballarmine tells Galileo to renounce Copernicus or 
suffer the consequences...  "De Revolutionibus" by Copernicus is put on 
the church's "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" where it continues to be 
censored until 1835.

1616:  Hoping to win Philip III's huge prize for a way to find the 
longitude of ships at sea, Galileo details the use of observing the Moons of 
Jupiter.  He is right, but wins no cash.

1616: In England's Royal College of Physicians, William Harvey (1 Apr 1578-?)
delivers a revolutionary lecture on the circulation of blood

1617:  John Napier writes about his device for semi-automated 
multiplication, later called "Napier's Rods" or "Napier's Bones."

1617:  "Logarithmorum Chilias Prima" by Henry Briggs (1561-?) adapts John 
Napier's invention to Base 10 (the Common Logarithms).

1617:  "Eratosthenes Batavus" by Willebrord van Roijen Snell explains how 
to find distances by triangulation and trigonometry

1618:  The diffraction and interference of light are discovered by 
Francesco Maria Grimaldi (2 Apr 1618) but this evidence that light is 
a wave phenomenon is ignored until rediscovered in 1803 by Thomas Young.

1618-1648:  Conflict between Protestant and Catholic ignites and sustains 
the bloody Thirty Years' War in Europe

1618-1621: Johann Kepler publishes "Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae"
and helps establish the new view of the cosmos, which heralds the origins 
of Science Fiction be reestablishing the place of humanity noncentrally in 
the universe.  The Roman Catholic Church immediately puts it on the list 
of banned books (the Index Librorum Prohibitorum).

1619: Johann Valentin Andraea published "Christianopolis" in 1619, clearly 
extrapolating from Thomas More's 1515 English translation of "Utopia" 
(originally in Latin).

1619:  Rene Descartes has the most influential dream in philisophical 
history on 10 Nov 1619, and follows the dream-advice to rationally unify 
all sciences.

1619:  "Harmonice Mundi" [The Music of the Spheres] by Johannes Kepler
discourses on musical and mathematical harmony in nature, and describes his 
Third Law of planetary motion:  that the square of the time of revolution 
in an orbit is proportional to the cube of the average distance from the Sun.

1620s

1620:  at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, the Pilgrims land in America

1620:  Cornelius Drebbel builds a working man-powered submarine and tests 
it underneath the Thames, probably using his secret method for obtaining 
Oxygen from Saltepeter.

1620:  Johannes van Helmont mispells the Flemish word for "Chaos" and 
establishes the word "Gas" for air-like materials

1620:  "Novum Organum" [New Organon, as opposed to the Old Organon of 
Aristotle] by Francis Bacon, argues forcefully for experiment and induction 
as the basis of Science

1620:  "Arithmetische und Geometrische Progrss-Tabulen" by Joost Burgi of 
Switzerland is an independent discovery of Logarithms, but was beaten to 
the punch by both Napier and Briggs.

1621: Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" is a rambling 
     scientific-philosphical treatise dissecting the body, mind, and soul 
     with unsurpassed wit and learning, which one can never be sure is 
     serious or a grand joke.  It does seem to conclude that the entire 
     world is mad, which would seem to be the apotheosis of the alienated 
     protagonist in a way aped by Robert Heinlein in the fiction "They."

1621:  The posthumous publication of "De Formatione Ovi et Pulli" by 
Hieronymus Fabricius establishes the science of Embryology, and 
permanently put into the public arena the question "Which came first, the 
Chicken or the Egg?"

1621:  A well-kown edition of "Arithmetica" by Diophantus is published in 
Greek and Latin, reinvigorating Number Theory and popularizing Diophantine 
Equations.  This edition is most famous for having margins too narroww to 
contain the putative proof of Fermat's Last Theorem (not actually solved 
until three and a half centuries later).

1621:  The refraction angle of light goes as the sine of the angle of 
incidence, as discovered by Willebrord Snell (so we call it Snell's Law)

1621:  William Oughtred claims 11 years later to have invented the slide 
rule in 1621

1622:  the Societas Ereunitica, Germany's first academy of science, founded

1622:  Magnetic declination varies over time, as discovered by Edmund Gunter 
(1581-?) and we still don't understand exactly how the earth's magnetic 
field changes

1623: Tommaso Campanella published "The City of the Sun"
an important UTOPIAN book

1623:  "Pinax Theatri Botanici" by Gaspard Bauhin (17 Jan 1560-?) initiates 
the use of binomial (genus/species) for plants

1623:  A wooden computer, based on Napier's Bones, is built by Wilhelm Schickardt,
and with some assiatnce by a human, it can multiply and divide (it adds 
and subtracts automatically)

1624:  "Arithmetica Logarithmica" by Henry Briggs expands his tables of 
common logs to the ranges 1-20,000 and 90,000-100,000; and it also 
introduces the terms "characteristic" and "mantissa"

1624:  "The English Hippocrates" Thomas Sydenham is born (10 Sep 1624), 
becomes the first physician to describe measles and scarlet fever; and 
promotes opium to curb pain, Chinchona bark (which contains quinine) to 
treat malaria, and iron to overcome anemia.

1625:  Johann Rudolf Glauber discovers Glauber's Salt

1626:  Godfried Wendilin (6 Jun 1580-?) verfies that the Moons of Jupiter 
have orbits that match the predictions of Kepler's Laws

1626:  Johann Baptista van Helmont suggests that diseases are caused by 
invading aliens which he calls "archaea."  His theory that diseases are 
extraterrestrial in origin was rediscovered over 300 years later by Hoyle 
and Wickramasinghe.  The word "Archaea" bcame known in the late 20th 
Century for a kingdom os life, neither planet nor animal nor protozoan, 
which may account for a third of all life on earth.

1626:  The advocate of experiment in science, Francis Bacon, performs his 
first experiment -- the preservation of a chicken by stuffing it with 
snow -- gets chilled, catches cold, becomes sicker, and dies a month later 
(9 Apr 1626)

1627: Francis Bacon posthumous publication "The New Atlantis", a fable inspired by 
     Sir Thomas More's "Utopia."  The hero visits the island of Bensalem, 
     where the government is paternalistic and Bacon's hopes for the future 
     of science (the very core of science fiction) are fulfilled in the 
     research college "Solomon's House."  Here various inventions are 
     forecast: electric motors, tape recorder, robots, refrigeration, 
     oxygen tanks, vivisection, cross-breeding of plants, telephones, 
     artificial flavors, airplanes, submarines, and optical illusions.  
     To spread the word, and to bring data from other lands, there are the 
     ambassadors called "Merchants of Light."  But otherwise, the island exists 
     in splendid isolation, like a planet of super-civilization connected to the 
     barabaric galaxy only by visiting astronauts.

1627:  The "Rudolphine Tables" by Johannes Kepler (presented to the Holy 
Roman Emperor Rudolph) positions 1,005 stars (777 from Tycho Brahe's 
previous listing) and gives mathematical calculations of the positions 
of planets

1627:  The last Aurochs seen in Europe; this ancestor of cattle is 
hereafter presumed extinct

1628:  "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus" 
[Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals]
by William Harvey, describes what he has earlier lectured upon, namely his 
discovery of the circulation of blood.

1630s

1630:  Cabaeus discovers that bodies of opposite electric charge attract 
each other and then, after coming in contact, repel each other.

1631:  Calculation by Kepler leads Pierre Gassendi (22 Jan 1592-?) to the 
first observations of a Transit of Mercury (seeing the planet's orbit 
cross the disk of the Sun).  See 1639 Transit of Venus.

1631:  Richard Lower disproves Galen's cliam that phlegm is created in the 
brain, and also notices that dark venous blood becomes bright when exposed 
to air (as we now know, because hemoglobin molecules bind to oxygen).

1631:  The posthumous publication of "Arithmetic" by Edward Cocker affects 
a century of mathematics education in England.

1631:  "Artis Analyticae Praxis" [Practice of the Analytic Art] by 
Thomas Harriot represents the cube of A as AAA, and similarly represents higher 
powers with repetition instead of the later-used exponentiation.  He shows 
multiplication with a centered dot (as mathematicians and engineers do 
today) and also was the first to use the left caret symbol for "is less than" 
and the right caret symbol ">" for "is greater than."

1631:  "Clavis Mathematicae" [Key to Mathematics] by William Oughtred
introduces many symbols, of which only the X for multiplication is still used.

1631:  What we now call the vernier scale for precise measuring is 
described by Pierre Vernier (19 Aug 1580-14 Sep 1638)

1632: Galileo Galilei's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the 
     World, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican"  Technically nonfiction 
     which helped to change the world, it is presented in dialogues between 
     two Copernicans (Salviati and Sagredo) and the Ptolemaist Simplicio, 
     whom the Pope felt was a caricatire of himself, and thus is nominally 
     fiction.  Being completely about astronomy, it is not only one of the 
     three greatest works of that field (along with Copernicus' "De 
     Revolutionibus" and Newton's "Principia") but is also arguably 
     science fiction.  It also is the first to make several other points, 
     such as "Galilean Relativity" -- that in a windowless locked ship's 
     cabin no experiment can tell whether or not the ship is moving 
     (anticipating Einstein), and that the infinite number of perfect squares 
     is equal in magnitude to the infinite number of roots of perfect squares 
     (anticipating Cantor).

1633:  The Inquisition pressures Galileo to recant Copernicanism, and 
places him under house arrest for the rest of his life.  Although he was 
forced to say out loud that the Earth does not move around the Sun, legend 
has it that he muttered quietly "E pur se muove" [Nonetheless, it does move].

1634: Johannes Kepler "Somnium" (Dream) a voyage to an 
inhabited Moon.  This is unquestionably a work of Science Fiction.

1634:  Investigating the much-contested Cycloid curve, Giles Personne de Roberval 
(1 Aug 1602-?) proves that the area within a curve, defined by a 
moving point on a circle rolling without slipping along a straight line,
equals three times the circle's area.

1634:  "Geometria Indivisibilibus Continuorum" by Bonaventura Cavalieri
(1598-30 Nov 1647) anticipates Integral Calculus by determining volumes by stacking 
together infinitesimally thin slices.

1634:  Rene Descartes discovers that if V = the number of vertices 
(corners) of a simple convex polyhedron, E = the number of edges 
of that simple convex polyhedron, and F = the number of faces 
of that simple convex polyhedron, then V - E + F = 2.
Unfortunately, Euler rediscovered this 108 years before Descarte's work 
was published in 1860, V - E + F = 2 is called "Euler's Theorem."

1636:  Harvard College is founded.  Over three centuries later, Your Humble 
Webmaster's father graduates from that school.

1636:  "Harmonie Universelle" by Marin Mersenne is the first Occidental 
publication of musical Equal Temperment.  Mersenne was in frequent 
correspondence witrh Pierre de Fermat.  This year, Fermat writes to 
Mersenne that he has discovered another pair of Amicable Numbers.  The 
first pair was known to ancient Greeks (220 and 284), each of which is 
equal to the sum of the other's divisors.  Fermat's pair is 17,296 and 
18,416.  In another such letter, Fermat suggests that every positive 
integer is the sum of no more than three triangular numbers.  Pascal 
rediscovers and first publishes this conjecture in 1665, and the great 
Gauss proves it at last in 1801.

1637: Rene Descartes, in "Discourse on the Method of 
Seeking Truth in the Sciences" sets forth the philosphical basis of scientific 
     inquiry, which can also be read as the key to the hard SF style:
     (1) Accept only what is clear and distinct as true,
     (2) Divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible,
     (3) Start with the simplest element and move by an orderly procedure 
          to the most complex,
     (4) Make complete enumerations and reviews to make certain that 
          nothing was omitted.
One appendix to this amazing book, "La Dioptrique" provides his theory of 
Refraction.  A second appendix. "Les Meteores" describes the formation of 
clouds and the nature of the rainbow.
The third appendix to this book, "La Geometrie" was the birth of Analytic 
Geometry, the application of algebra to figures and constructions, and to 
the roots of algebraic equations.  This is why we often refer to 
"Cartesian geometry" whenever we graph a function -- or discuss the 4th 
Dimension in terms of X, Y, Z, and T-coordinates, as does H. G. Wells in 
"The Time Machine."  It is now known that Pierre de Fermat also invented 
Analytic Geometry no later than 1636, but failed to publish it until 1670.

1638: Bishop Francis Godwin's "The Man in the Moone" has birds pull a raft 
     to the Moon, which is of course absurd, and yet correctly predicts that 
     Lunar gravity is weaker than Earth's.  A definite work of Science 
     Fiction, and Hard Science Fiction to the extent that it made a correct 
     scientific prediction.

1638:  Phocyclides Holwarda observes the star Mira Ceta, previously seen to 
disappear by David Fabricius in 1596, and figures out that it periodically 
grows brighter and dimmer, thus identifying it as what we now call a 
Variable Star.

1638:  "Discoursi e Demonstrastrazione Matematiche Intorno a due Nuove Scienze" 
[Mathematical Discourse and Demonstrations on Two New Sciences] by Galileo
gives the quantitative laws of motion including friction, replacing the 
incomplete and erroneous laws of motion of Aristotle.

1639:  Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-?) predicts and then oberves the 24 Nov 1639
Transit of Venus.  See 1631 Transit of Mercury.

1639:  Florimond de Beaune (7 Oct 1601-?) writes to challenge Descrates to 
answer what curve has a constant subtangent, and Descartes fails to solve 
the riddle, and then Leibniz finds out, solves the puzzle, and 
demonstrates in 1684 that the answer is "a logarithmic curve."

1639:  "Brouillon Projet d'une Atteinte aux Evenements des Recontres d'un 
Cone avec un Plan" [First Cut at a Try to Handle How a Cone Meets a Plane]
by Gerard Desargues (2 Mar 1591-) launches the branch of mathematics today 
called Projective Geometry.

1639:  William Gascoigne (1612?-2 July 1644) invents the Micrometer in order to 
measure the distance between the images of stars in a telescope's focus.
     
1640-1650

1640:  "Essai pour les Coniques" [Essay on Conics] by Blaise Pascal 
(19 June 1623) provides proof of the "mystic hexagram" theorem, a.k.a.
"Pascal's Theorem."

1640:  Pierre de Fermat, in a 19 Oct 1640 epistle to Bernard Frenicle de Bessy
publishes the elegant "Little Theorem of Number Theory" -- that for any 
positive integer N and any prime number P, it is always the case that there 
is no remainder when P is divided into [(N to the power of P) - N]
(see 1676 de Bessy)

1640:  "De Motu Gravium" by Evangelista Torricelli (15 Oct 1608-25 Oct 1647)
is the founding work of Hydrodynamics, correctly applying Galileo's laws of 
motion to liquids.

1641:  For the first time, a live Chimpanzee is transported to Europe, and 
Nicolaas Tulp writes about it to astonished readers.  It is a kind of First Contact 
between humans and our closest genetic relative.

1642:  Beginning of the English Civil War.

1642:  The Loire and Seine rivers of France are connected by the Briare Canal.

1642:  Blaise Pascal invents a calculating machine that can add and 
subtract.  After innumerable prototypes and tinkering, a working consumer 
product goes for sale in 1645.  The Computer Age is now inevitable.

1642:  Death of the great Galileo, still under house arrest.

1643:  The new King of France is Louis XIV.  You know how THAT turned out...

1643:  Evangelista Torricelli invents the Barometer, by 
inverting a sealed-at-one-end glass tube filled with mercury and submerging 
the open end in a bowl of mercury.  The mercury in the tube drops to the 
76 centimeter level (30 inches), which measures the pressure of the 
atmosphere on the surface of the mercury in the bowl.  Incidentally, the 
gap between the top of the mercury in the tube and the sealed top of the 
tube itself is the first vacuum known to have been created by science.

1644:  The Manchu Dynasty takes over when Li Zi-Cheng overthrows the Ming Dynasty
of China.

1644:   "Principia Philosphiae" by Rene Descartes outlines a theory of the 
origin of the Solar System as a whirling vortex of gas and dust, 
essentially what scientist believe today.

1645:  At Oxford's Gresham College, meetings of "The Invisible College" 
start, later to evolve into The Royal Society.  Science Fiction is not too 
far off the mark in portraying a cabal of geniuses who change the world.

1645: "Astronomia Philolaoica" by Ismael Boulliau proposes that the 
central force attracting planets to the Sun must be proportional to the 
inverse square of their distances from the Sun, which Isaac Newton 
eventually proved.

1646:  The "Magic Lantern" is invented by Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1601-?),
the next major step after the Camera Obscura and the glass lens towards the 
slide projector and the movie projector.

1647:  "Selenographia" by Johannes Hevelius is the first comprehensive map 
of the face of the Moon.  The science fiction perspective is, when you see a 
map of a place, you start writing detailed stories of voyages to the 
places on that map...

1647:  the Thoracic Duct is discovered by Jean Pecquet (9 May 1622-?)

1647:  Slaves transported in chains from Africa inadvertantly attack their 
captors with Yellow Fever, the first American cases being this year in 
Barbados

1647:  "Exercitationes Geometricae Sex" by Bonaventura Torricelli, a few 
months before his death, made a big step in Integral Calculus by 
calculating the Integral of X to the Nth power for N = 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9

1647:  "Experiences Nouvelles Touchant le Vide" [New Experiments with a Vacuum]
by Blaise Pascal describes variants of Torricelli's creation of a vacuum, 
but substituting cheaper water and wine for expensive mercury.

1648:  End of the Thirty Years' War.

1648:  America and Asia were thought to be part of the same continent until 
Semjon Deshnjov sails through gap between Kamchatka and Alaska

1648:  "Ortus Medicinae " [On Medicine's Development], posthumously 
published by Jan Baptista van Helmont, describes weighing a willow tree 
and the soil it grows in, and that the gain in weight does not come from 
the soil (as everyone believed).  This was a big step towards realizing 
that most of the mass of a growing plants comes from the air and water.

1648:  Blaise Pascal subcontracts his brother-in-law to carry a mercury 
barometer up the Puy de Dome mountain, and as predicted, the height of the 
mercury column nearly matches the air pressure, which decreases with 
greater altitude.  It became clear that as one ascends higher than any 
mountain, the air becomes thinner and thinner, and eventually approaches a 
vacuum in what we call Outer Space.  Science Fiction writers pondered this 
conjecture...

1648:  Basic properties of machines were quantified in "Mathematical Magick" 
by John Wilkins (1614-?)

1648:  "Desargues' Theorem" was published by Desargues' pal Abraham Bosse --
if two triangles are positioned so that lines which join pairs of 
corresponding vertices themselves pass through a single point, then the 
intersection points of pairs of corresponding sides fall on a single line, 
and vice versa.  You know, this is easier to see with a diagram, but I'm 
committed to plain text in this web page...

1649:  "Geometria a Renato Des Cartes" [Geometry by Rene Descartes] is 
translated into Latin by by Franz van Schooten (1615-?).  A 2-volume 
expansion of 1659-1661 promulgates Analytic Geometry throughout Europe.

1649:  King Charles I of England's head is separated forcefully from his body.

1649:  "Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri" by Pierre Gassendi restores to 
popularity the idea of Democritus and Epicurus that all matter is composed 
of Atoms.  It was not until the 20th century that this 
was universally believed as other than a nice abstract idea; today a high 
school student can build a Scanning Tunneling Microscope for under $1,000 
that will take photographs that show the arrangement of individual atoms, 
and Nanotechnology proposes to change the world by building any possible 
stable arrangement of atoms automatically.

1650-1660

1650:  The Archbishop of Ireland, James Ussher, makes computations from 
stories in the Bible and publishes his analysis that Noah's Flood was in 
2349 B.C. and that God created the universe in 4004 B.C.

1650:  "De Rachitide" by Francis Glisson clinically describes the disease Rickets.

1650:  The air pump is perfected by Otto von Guericke (28 Nov 1602-?) who
in a famous and oft-repeated deomstration pumped the air out of a pair of 
hemispheres which teams of horses could not pull apart (against air 
pressure).  This is the famous "Hemispheres of Magdeburg" demonstration

Cyrano de Bergerac: in a remarkable pair of Science Fiction 
publications advances seven ways for interplanetary travel, six of which 
don't work, but the seventh does: rockets (1657), and he also correctly 
describes the use of parachutes during return:
          "Histoire comique des etats et empires de la Lune" (1648-1650)
          "Histoire comique des etats et empires du Soleil" (1662)

1651:  "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes said, in a well-known phrase, that 
human life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  He claimed that 
primitive people lived in Anarchy, and surrendered their rights to the 
State.  He advocated authoritarian government.  He dabbled in mathematics, 
but this work of proto-POLITICAL science fiction 
is his lasting contribution.

1651:  "Almagestum Novum" by Giovanni Battista Riccioloi (17 Apr 1598-?)
favors Tycho Brahe's model of the Solar System (with the Earth standing 
still, but the other planets circling the Sun) over the Copernican model 
(all planets, including Earth, in orbit).

1651:  "Exercitationes de Gneratione Anaimalium" [Exercises on the 
Gneration of Animals] by William Harvey analyzies the differentiation of 
organs in embryotic development.

1652:  "De Lacteis Thoracicis" by Thomas Bartholin (20 Oct 1616-?) details 
the Lymphatic system, including in people.

1654:  "Anatomia Hepatis" by Francis Glisson surveys the liver's anatomy

1654:  Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, invents the sealed thermometer

1654:  Correspondence between Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal advances 
the theory of Probability, including a solution to Fra Luca Pacioli (1494) 
and cardana (1539) and Tartaglia (1556)  on properly dividing the stakes in 
a game of chance which is interrupted in mid-stream

1654:  "Traite' du Triangle Arthmetique" by Blaise Pascal is written 
(although not published until 1665) about binomial coefficients and what we 
today call Pascal's Triangle (which was known at least as far back as Omar 
Khayyam)

1655:  "Arithmetica Infinitorum" [Infinitesimal Arithmetic] by John Wallis 
(3 Dec 1616-?) describes infinite series, and advances towards Integral Calculus

1655:  "Armamentarium Chirgicum" [Surgeon's Hardware] by Johann Shultes 
first describes a mastectomy

1656: James Harrington published the science fiction novel
"The Commonwealth of Oceana"

1656:  The weird "handles" which Galileo saw on the sides of saturn are first
understood to be rings around the planet, according to Christiaan Huygens 
(14 Apr 1629-?) who also discovers Saturn's giant planet Titan (which we 
now know has a thicker atmosphere than Earth, and to which we sent the 
Huygens probe from the cassini spacecraft at the end of the 20th Century)

1656:  In working on his invention of the pendulum clock, Christiaan Huygens 
discovers that a cycloid is its own involute, hence that a cycloid 
the the curve that the pendulum bob should follow for its period to be 
absolutely independent of amplitude

1656:  John Wallis helps to establish mathematical Induction, which he 
calls argument "per modum inductionis"

1656:  "Adenographia, or a Description of the Glands of the Whole of the 
Body" by Thomas Wharton (31 Aug 1614-?) gives the first description of some 
glands including the Submaxillary

The most world-famous Danish fantasy or science fiction author is almost 
certainly Hans Christian Andersen -- but before him, the author of note 
was surely L. Holberg (1684-1754) who achieved prominence with "Journey of 
Niels Klim to the World Underground."

1657:  The Accademia del Cimento is founded in Florence by Leopoldo de Medici
as the first institute for scientific research since the Museum of 
Alexandria was wrecked (641 A.D.)

1657:  "De Ratiociniis in Ludo Alaea" [On Reasoning in Games of Chanvce] by 
Christiaan Huygens is the first book on Probability, and the first to 
described mathematical Expectation

1657:  The length of the semicubical parabola A (Y squared) = (X cubed)
is determined by William Neil (7 Dec 1637-?)

1658:  The length of the cycloid is determined by Christopher Wren

1658:  To distract himself from a toothache, Blaise Pascal (who had quit 
being a scientist and mathematician and devoted himself to theology and 
writing) briefly wrestles with the cycloid (discovering several 
properties) and while playing around with the sine function comes within a 
hairsbreadth of discovering Differential Calculus

1658:  The watch balance spring is invented by Robert Hooke (18 July 1635-?)

1658:  Red blood cells are first seen and written about by Jan Swammerdam 
(12 Feb 1637-?)

1658:  "Opera Omnia Chymica" [All the Workings of Chemistry] by 
Johann Rudolph Glauber is published, and runs through many reprintings

1658: Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydriotaphia" is a stylish history of burial, 
which influenced morbid fantasies in others.

1659:  Christiaan Huygens is the first to see and describe Martian 
geological features.  So that's where invading aliens should come from...

1659:  The shipboard chronometer is invented by Christiaan Huygens, but
his version does not adequately compensate for the ship's motion

1659:  "De Febribus" by Thomas Willis (27 Jan 1621-?) gives a clinical 
description of Typhoid Fever

1659:  "Elementa Curvarum" by Jan De Witt uses the new Algebraic Geometry to 
describe the parabola, hyperbola, and ellipse

1659:  "Teutsche Algebra" by Johann Heinrich Rahn is posthumously 
published, and uses the modern symbol for division (the - with a dot above 
and below the line)

1660-1670

1660:  Start of the Restoration of the Kingdom of England

1660:  The Royal Society is founded, having evolved in England from the 
Invisible College for the promoting of Mathematical Experimental Learning 
(and then is renamed The Royal Society for the Improvment of natural 
Knowledge when Charles II in 1663 puts his great seal on its charter)

1660: The Blind Spot of the ye is discovered by Edme' Mariotte (1620-?)

1660:  Harvey's discovery of Blood Circulation is completed by the 
understanding of Capillaries by Marcello Malpighi (10 Mar 1628-?) who also 
discovers the structure of the lungs and lung/blood vessel systems

1660:  The barometer is first used to predict weather by Otto von Guericke

1660:  "New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of Air" by 
Robert Boyle describes how flames go out in a vacuum, and small animals 
die, for the first time linking the processes of respiration and combustion
(later understood to both require oxygen).  Astronauts dying in the vacuum 
of space in all future Science Fiction depends upon this discovery.

1661:  "The Skeptical Chymist" by Robert Boyle overthrows theories of 
Aristotle and Paracelsus, and is the first book to describe the modern 
concepts of Element, acid, and alkali

1661:  Architects start building Versailles for Louis XIV

1662: Benedict de Spinoza's "Ethics."  Since Nature is 
governed by immutable and eternal laws, said Spinoza, human beings (who are 
part of Nature) must be studied scientifically, that is, according to 
geometry.  Matter, energy, time, and space are all aspects of the Mind of 
God.  Albert Einstein later stated that he believed in the God of 
Spinoza.  From our perspective, this philosophy is the bedrock of science 
fiction, i.e. applying the same laws to the cosmos and to humanity.

1662:  Robert Boyle describes what we now call Boyle's Law of Ideal Gases,
that under constant temperature, the product of pressure and volume is constant
(see Mariotte 1676)

1662:  "Oriatrike or Physic Refined" by Johann Baptista van Helmont is 
translated into English, and is an immediate hit

1662:  "Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of 
Mortality" by the draper John Graunt (24 Apr 1620-?) and William Petty 
(13 May 1623-?) is not only the first book of Statistics, but also has the 
first "Life Table" showing the chances of people (in this case, of London) 
of a given age are likely to die, and the first to note that more males are born 
than females, that women statistically outlive men, and lays the ground for the 
Life Insurance industry.

1663:  The writings of Rene Descartes are put on the prohibited Index of 
the Roman Catholic Church

1663:  The first Lucasian Professor of Mathematics is appointed: Isaac Barrow,
who later brings Isaac Newton into the academic world, and later this 
famous Chair, currently occupied by Stephen Hawking

1663:  Steam power is used to raise water from wells and to burst cannon, 
according to The Marquis of Worcester

1663:  "Optica Promota" by James Gregory (Oct 1638-?) of Scotland
is the first book to describe a Reflecting Telescope

1663:  "Traite' de l'Equilibre des Liqueurs" [On Liquids' Equilibrium] by 
Blaise Pascal is posthumously published, describing his circa 1648 
discovery of Pascal's Law (pressure in a liquid is transmitted in all 
directions equally)

1663:  John Walls shows the equivalence of Euclid's Fifth (Parallel) 
Postulate and the assumption that every triangle has similar triangles of 
any size

1663:  "Liber de Ludo Aleae" by Girolamo Cardano is posthumously 
published, the first book of Probability Theory

1664:  "Feeling a Dog's Pulse" by Robert Boyle.  
Influenced science fictional worldview in its mechanist model of living 
organisms.  If the heart is a pump, then machines may be similar to 
creatures...

1664:  "Cerebri Anatome" [Brain Anatomy] by Thomas Willis is the best book 
yet on the brain and nerves

1664:  Christiaan Huygens proposes that the standard unit of length be 
that of a pendulum with an exactly one-second period.

1664:  "Le Monde" [The World] by Rene Descartes is posthumously published, 
and announces his support for the Copernican worldview.  He dared not 
publish this in his lifetime, given what the Church did to Galileo and Bruno

1664:  "Traite' de l'Homme et de la Formation de Foetus" [Treatise on Man 
and the Formation of the Foetus] by Rene Descartes is posthumously published, 
and explicitly denies any "vital force" that distinguishes humans and animals 
from inanimate matter: animals and humans are merely sophisticated machines.
This anticipates Robotics...

1664:  That Jupiter rotates, and that Jupiter has a Great Red Spot, are 
discovered by Robert Hooke

1664:  A comet's orbit is calculated, suprisingly, to be a parabola by
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (see Borelli 1680)

1665:  75,000+ dead as Great Plague sweeps London.  Isaac Newton moves to 
his family's country estate in Lincolnshire, and within two years make 
three of the greatest breakthoughs in history: his theory of light and 
color (white light as a mixture of all colors of the spectrum), the 
Universal Law of Gravitation, and the Differential Calculus.  Any one of 
these would have made him an immortal of science.  This triple-play is 
unique in all history.

1665: Publication begins of The Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions

1665:  France starts the Journal des Savants

1665:  Measurement of the rotational velocity of Jupiter by 
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (8 June 1625-?)

1665:  "Micrographia" by Robert Hooke is the first publication of Cells, 
the basic structure of all living matter, seen first in thin slices of 
cork under a microscope.  It is the first detailed book on microscopic 
examinations, and also the first to compare light waves to water waves

1665:  "De Cerebro" [The Brain] by Marcello Malpighi tells for the first 
time that the nervous system is constructed of fiber bundles connecting the 
spinal cord and brain

1665:  The General Binomial Theorem discovered by Isaac Newton

1665:  "Traite' du Triangle Arithmetique" by Blaise Pascal, written 1654, 
is posthumously published, and popularizes Mathematical Induction (first 
used in 1575 but not until now widely applied)

1665:  "Physico-Mathesis de Luminae Coloribus et Iride" by 
Francesco Maria Grimaldi is posthumously published, detailing experiments 
with light diffraction and why he believed light to be a wave phenomenon; 
it also mentions that expanding and contracting muscles make noise

1666:  "The Origine of Formes and Qualities" by Robert Boyle masterfully 
presents a mechanistic view of the natural world as entirely composed of atoms

1666:  Publication of Tycho Brahe's "History of the Sky."
Proves that the distance of a comet from the Earth was far greater than 
the Moon, and was an object hurtling through interstellar space.  This was 
a revolutionary concept, smashing the old paradigm of Ptolemy's Crystal 
Spheres.  Had Brahe not lived, Kepler would not have been the "Legislator 
of the Heavens" and Newton would not have deduced the Universal Law of 
Gravitation from Kepler's Laws.  Sets the stage for interstellar Science 
Fiction.

1666:  "Ars Combinatoria" by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1 July 1646-?)
proposes a mathematical language for reasoning, two centuries ahead of 
Boolean Logic by George Boole and other advances of Predicate Calculus and 
computer programming languages.  An amazing leap of imagination...

1666:  The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean are connected by the Canal 
du Midi of Pierre-Paul Riquet

1666:  Blood from one dog is directly transfused into the circulation 
of a second dog by Richard Lower

1666:  "Hydrostatical Paradoxes" by Robert Boyle on a comprehensive set of 
experiments with fluids

1666:  In Paris, Christiaan Huygens is one of 20 founding members of The 
Academie Royale des Sciences, renamed after the French Revolution as
The Academie des Sciences and later evolving to the Institut de France

1666:  "The Misanthrope" by Moliere first performed, with a sarcastic 
almost science fictionally skeptical view of humankind

1666:  The polar ice caps of Mars observed for the first time by Cassini

1666:  The Great Fire of London

1667:  The very notion of super-intelligence challenging God himself, 
and failing tragically, was never better expressed than in John Milton's 
"Paradise Lost."  The great poem opens with Satan (the ultimate Mad 
Scientist) and his army of rebellious angels already cast from Heaven into the 
Abyss of Hell, when Satan rises from the Burning Lake and promises his 
followers that they'll have a kingdom rivalling Heaven.  They build the 
Palace of Pandemonium.  How science fictional, to construct a super-city 
in the interests of messing with the Creator and His plans.  In Book II, 
they abandon continuing an open war, and decide on covert operations.  The 
target of opportunity: Man.  Again, how science fictional to place 
humanity at the fulcrum of a war between super-powerful alien species.  In 
Book III, Satan flies to the Sun (interplanetary travel) and Uriel, not 
recognizing him, shows him the pathway (spacewarp/stargate) to Earth.  In 
Book IV, Satan tempts Eve in the Garden with dreams (telepathy), but is 
kicked out of Paradise by angels (Milton actually invents the computer 
phrase "Access Denied" -- I kid you not).  This is just the first third of 
the poem, but I think I've made my point: many of the themes of science 
fiction are set forth by Milton, in sonorous, noble, moral, and symbolic 
form.

1667:  Founding in Paris of the Observatory of the French Academy

1667:  "Traite' du Micrometre ou Maniere Exacte pour prendre le Diamtre 
des Planetes et la Distance entre les Petites Etoiles" [Treatise on the 
Micrometer, or, the Exact Method to Measure Planets' Diameters and the 
Distances between Little Stars] by Adrien Auzout

1667:  Stars are observed slightly out of position by Jean Picard, as 
finally explained by James Bradley in 1728 as due to the aberration of 
light.  This is the secret origin of the name of one of the captains of the 
Starship Enterprise...

1667:  Plants are systematically divided into Monocots and Dicots (from a 
count of seed leaves) by John Ray (29 Nov 1627-?)
(see Ray 1682)

1667:  a dozen ounces of blood from a lamb are transfused into an ill boy, 
who survives the experiment by Jean-Baptise Denis.  Two other patients later die
and Denis is put on trial for murder.  He is acquitted, transfusions are 
legislated into nonexistence in France, and the stereotype of the Mad Scientist
is imprinted on the popular imagination.  Frankenstein and Jr. Jekyll are 
not far behind...

1667:  Robert Boyle demonstrates before the Royal Society that artificial 
respiration can keep an animal alive 

1667:  "Pathologiae Cerebri" [Brain Pathology] by Thomas Willis first 
clinically shows the effects of tertiary syphilis on the brain, although 
he did not know what caused these symptoms

1668:  "Essays Toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language" by 
John Wilkins, presented before the Royal Society

1668:  Isaac Newton's invention of the Reflecting Telescope

1668:  "Ephemerides Bononienses Mediceorum Siderum" by Cassini predicts 
future positions of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter

1668:  The Law of the Conservation of Momentum is first proposed by John Wallis

1668:  "Logarithmotechnia" by Nicolaus Mercator (a.k.a. Niklaus Kauffman, 
1619-?) gives several infinite series for calculating logarithms

1668:  "Geometriae pars Universalis" [The Universal Part of Geometry] and 
"Exercitationes Geometricae" [Geometrical Exercises] by James Gregory

1668:  Poet/Physician Francesco Redi (18 Feb 1626-?) performs one of the 
earliest and most important controlled experiments, in showing that 
maggots do not spontaneously generate from rotting meat

1669: "Lectiones Opticae" by Isaac Barrow published, with the help of his 
protege Isaac Newton

1669: Isaac Newton first appointed a Professor at Cambridge.

1669: "De Analysi per Aequationes Numero Terminorum Infinitas" [On the 
Analysis by Equations of Unlimited Numbers of Terms] by Isaac Newton
(not openly published, but circulated by private fanzine) details his 
Binomial Theorem and gives methods for calculating the area under curves, 
as a huge step towards Integral Calculus.

1669:  In secret experiments with urine, Hennig Brand [1630-?) discovers 
Phosphorus by accident, and fails to publish  (see Boyle 1680)

1669:  In a great leap backwards, "Physica Subterranea" [Underground Physics]
by Johann Joachim Becher (6 May 1635-?) proposes various ideas of alchemy 
and minerology, and his dreadfully wrong idea that a "terra pingus" [oily 
earth] is the basis of fire, evolves into the misconception of "Phlogiston"

1669:  "Experimentia Crystalli Islandici Disdiaclastici" [A Study of 
Iceland Spar] by Erasmus Bartholin (13 Aug 1625-?) details his discovery 
of birefringence, or double refraction, in this special calcite crystal

1669:  Jan Swammerdam publishes a comprehensive book on insects, showing 
that metamorphosis is a series of noninstantaneous stages, and analyzing 
the reproductive organs of insects, as science fiction novelist Vladimir Nabokov 
was to extend three centuries later for scientifically classifying butterflies

1669:  "Silkworms" by Malpighi is arguably the first Invertebrate Anatomy

1669:  "Tractatus de Corde" by Richard Lower analyzes the anatomy of the 
heart, its operation as a mucle, and that blood changes color in the lungs 
similarly to the way it does in open air (later known to be by oxygenation 
of hemoglobin in red blood cells)

1669:  Algol (Beta Persei) is discovered by Geminiano Montanari to be a variable 
star, although he doesn't publish until 1672.  "Algol" is Arabic for "The Ghoul"

1669:  "De Solido Intra Solidum Naturaliter Contento Dissertationis 
Prodromus" [Forerunner of a Dissertation about a Naturally Ocurring Solid 
Body within another Solid Body] by Nicolaus Steno (11 Jan 1638-) of 
Denmark is the first valid explanation in print about geological strata and 
fossils

1670-1680

1670:  "Pensees" by Blaise Pascal posthumously published

1670:  G. Mouton anticipates the definition of the Meter by proposing that 
1/60 of a Meridian of Earth be a unit for decimal measurement

1670:  Hydrogen is discovered by Robert Boyle, which bubbles up from 
various metals submerged in various acids.  He observes that the gas is 
flammable, and Cavendish in 1766 calls it "inflammable air" -- now we know 
that it is the first element.  By the way, Neutronium is the zeroth element.

1670:  "Lectiones Geometricae" by Isaac Barrow contains many theorems 
about tangents to curves, lengths of curves, and areas within curves... 
another step towards perfecting Newton's and Leibniz' Calculus

1670:  The connection between Diabetes and sugar in urine is rediscovered 
by Thomas Willis (having also been observed in Greece, China, and India)

1670:  An airship is designed by Francesco de Lana which could, in principle, 
have worked: the lift is provided by four copper spheres containing a soft vacuum.
The idea anticipates the hydrogen, helium, and hot air balloon

1671:  "Waerdye van Lyf-renten naer Proporte van Los-renten" [A Treatise on 
Life Annuities] by Jan De Witt further clarifies the use of Expectations 
in statistics.  Because he is a politician as well as a methematician, Jan 
De Witt is unfortunately killed by an enraged mob at The Hague on 20 
August 1672, an ironic ending for an expert on life expectancy.

1671:  James Gregory discovers what we call the Leibniz Series (an 
infinite series that sums to pi/4)

1671:  Leibniz makes detailed designs for a mechanical calculator able to 
multiply and divide; through 1675 more and more sophisticated prototypes 
are built

1671:  The Torpedo Fish is dissected by Francisco Redi; it has an organ 
like that of the Electric Eel, but he doesn't figure out that the shock are 
in fact electric shocks

1671:  "Mesure de la Terre" [Measure of the Earth] by Jean Picard gives a 
very accurate estimate of the length of a meridian of Latitude.

1671:  Cassini makes a remarkably accurate measurement of the distance from 
Earth to Mars, which allows distances to all the planets to now be 
properly scaled.  The Flash Gordon movie serials had a 1,000 mile per hour 
spaceship go to Mars.  Cassini would have laughed.

1671:  Cassini discovers Iapetus, a moon of Saturn

1672:  Cassini discovers Rhea, a moon of Saturn

1672:  The Cassegrain Reflecting Telescope is invented by Guillaume Cassegrain (1625-?)

1672:  "Experimenta Nova Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio" [New Magdeburg 
Experiments With Empty Space] by Otto von Guericke gives further insight 
into vacuum physics and engineering.  He also learns how to frictionally 
charge a sphere of sulfur with a potent static electric charge.

1672:  A pendulum in Cayenne takes longer to swing than the same pendulum 
in France, as discovered by Jean Richer (1630-?); 15 years later this is 
explained by Isaac Newton as due to the Earth being an oblate spheroid 
rather than a perfect sphere, and the equatorial regions of the earth 
bulging outwards (see Richer 1679)

1672:  "Tractatus de Natura Substantiae Energetic" by Francis Glisson 
defines the property of living tissue called "irritability" -- part of a 
definition of life

1672:  "De Anima Brutorum" by Thomas Willis is published

1672:  "Il Problema della Quadratura del Circolo" [The Problem of 
Circle-Squaring] by Pietro Mengoli (1625-?) has an assortment of infinite 
series, infinite products, the sum of the reciprocals of traingular 
numbers, and the divergence of the harmonic series (i.e. that the sum 
increases without limit of 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6 + ...)

1672:  "Euclides Danicus" [The Danish Euclid] by Georg Mohr (1 Apr 1640-?)
first proves that all the geometric shapes that can be constructed by 
compass and straightedge (Euclidean Construction) can also be constructed 
by elaborate series of manipulations with only a compass.  Unfairly, this 
is today called Mascheroni's Theorem, although Mascheroni didn't publish 
until 127 years later.

1672:  The Ovarian follicle now named after him is found and written about 
by Regnier de Graaf (who dies the next year)

1673:  Christiaan Huygens demonstrates a motor turned by gunpowder 
explosions.  This is a distant precursor of the gasoline-burning 
reciprocating engine.

1673:  "Horologium Oscillatorium sive de Motu Pendulorum" [Timekeeping and 
the Oscillatory Motion of Penulums] by Christiaan Huygens defines 
Centripetal Force

1673:  Leibniz rediscovers what we call the Leibniz Series (an 
infinite series that sums to pi/4) -- see James Gregory 1671

1673:  Anton van Leeuwenhoek bombards The Royal Society with letters about 
what he has discovered through microscopic examinations of various 
organisms and materials

1673:  "De Formationes Pulli" [On the Formation of the Chick-in-Egg]
by Palpighi details the steps through which an ovum develops

1674:  "Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth" by Robert Hooke correctly 
states that each planet is balanced between the gravitational force 
towards the Sun (Centripetal Force) and the inertia attempting to send it 
off on a tangent from its orbit (Centrifugal Force)

1674:  "Tractatus Quineue Medicophysici" [Five Medical/Physical Treatises]
by John Mayow (Dec 1641-?) reports on measurements of the volume of air in 
a bell jar used by a burning candle on the one hand or a living mouse on 
the other hand.  He correctly concludes that respiration removes something 
from the air (we now know it to be oxygen) and that a different gas is 
left (we now know it to be nitrogen)

1675:  "Discourse on Light and Colour" presented to The Royal Society by 
Isaac Newton, on white light being split by a prism into a spectrum (Red, 
Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) and another prism being able 
to recombine them into white light, and his suggestion that light is a 
stream of particles (which we call photons)

1675:  Cassini discovers what we call The Cassini Division, a break in the 
rings of Saturn

1675:  Danish astronomer Ole Romer (25 Sep 1644-?) times eclipses of the 
moons of Jupiter and determines the Speed of Light

1675:  John Flamsteed is appointed as the first Astronomer Royal by England's 
King Charles II, who also founds Greenwich Observatory (later the bombing 
site in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent")

1675:  "Cours de Chymie" [Chemistry Course] by Nicolas Lemery (17 Nov 1645-?) 
goes into the first of 31 editions (1675-1756)

1675:  "Anatome Plantarum" by Malpighi continues his work on chicken 
development, but is mostly the best book to date on plant anatomy

1675:  Nicolaus Steno somehow correctly concludes that since dogfish eggs 
form inside the fish before live baby fish are born, then mammals also 
have internal eggs; a rediscovery on flimsy evidence, as Regnier de Graaf 
done before his 1673 death

1675:  Leibniz for the first time (21 Nov 1675) uses the modern symbology
of an Integral Sign followed by f(x) dx
he also correctly gives the product rule for derivatives

1676:  There is a mostly polite but very intense controversy between Newton 
and Leibniz as to who invented what parts of Calculus first.  Newton sends 
Leibniz a letter on 13 Jun 1676 about infinite series, and a letter of 24 
Oct 1676 with an anagram about Newton's mewthod of "Fluxions" (so that on 
later decrypting the anagram, Newton will have been able to demonstrate 
his priority, without yet giving away any trade secrets).  Meanwhile, 
Leibniz figures out the derivative of whole and fractional powers of X.

1676:  Jacopo Francesco Riccati is born 28 May 1676.  He will later make 
key contributions to the study of Differential Equations, especially what 
we call the Riccati Equation:
dy/dx = A(x) + B(x)y + C(x)(y squared)

1676:  "Traite' des Triangles Rectangles en Nombres" [Treatise on Third 
and Fourth Powers of Numbers] by Bernard Frenicle de Bessy is posthumously 
published.  It proves a special case of "Fermat's Last Theorem", 
specifically that there are no whole numbers X, Y, and Z for which
(X to the 4th Power) + (Y to the 4th Power) = (Z to the 4th Power)
using a subtle "proof by infinite descent" (see 1640 Fermat)

1676:  The start of the British Museum by Sir Hans Sloane

1676:  The universal joint is invented by Robert Hooke; 
within a few months of this, he discovers what we call "Hooke's Law" (that 
the length a spring stretches is prportional to the force which holds it 
in tension), and announces his discovery in encrypted form (an anagram)

1676:  "Essai sur la nature de l'Air" [Essay on the Nature of Air]
by Edme' Mariotte describes what the French call "Mariotte's Law" and the 
English call "Boyle's Law" (see Boyle 1662)

1676:  The phrase "Comparative Anatomy" is created by Nehemiah Grew (Sep 1641-?)
(see Grew 1682)

1677:  Leibniz figures out the quotient rule for derivatives

1677: An aqueous solution of ammonia is first described by Johann Kunckel 
(1630-?).  Today, most people say "ammonia" when they really mean the gas ammonia 
(NH3) dissolved in water

1677:  Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers "animalicules"  --
microscopic lifeforms, what we now call protozoa or "protists"
(see van Leeuwenhoek 1673)

1677:  Louis Dominicus Hamm discovers spermatozoa, but thinks they represent 
some sort of disease.  Anton van Leeuwenhoek also sees sperm under a 
microscope, but correctly deduces that they have something to do with 
reproduction (although they are not larvae, as he suggests).

1678:  "Traite' de la Lumiere" [Treatise on Light" by Christiaan Huygens 
is written, brilliantly explaining his Wave Theory of Light; he does not 
publish this until 1690

1678:  The first appearance in flower-mad Holland of Chrysanthemums (from Japan)

1678:  What we call "Ceva's Theorem" about traingles is proved by Giovanni Ceva (1647-?)

1679:  England instiutes the Writ of Habeas Corpus

1679:  Leibniz, in a letter to Joachim Bouvet, is the first to describe 
Binary Arithmetic, and shows how every whole number can be expressed as a 
string of 0s and 1s -- a big step towards the binary digital computer

1679:  The first "artificial ruby" is manufactured by Johannes Kunckel

1679:  The "steam digester" is demonstrated by Denis Papin (22 Aug 1647-?),
it is a fairly modern safety-valved pressure cooker

1679:  Hooke writes to Newton, pointing out that gravitational force 
decreases with the square of distance, and aks if this is why planets have 
elliptical orbits (as Kepler had first said).  Newton is annoyed that 
someone seems to be ahead of him in deducing Kepler's laws from fundemental 
principles, and gets back to work... (see Newton 1680, 1684)

1679:  "Observations Astronomique et Physiques faites en l'Isle de Cayenne"
[Astronomical and Physical Observations made in the Cayenne Islands]
by Jean Richer (see Richer 1672)

1679:  "Carte de la Lune" [Moon Map] by Cassini, with 60 illustrations

1679:  "Catalogus Stellarum Australium" by Edmund Halley (29 Oct 1656)
is the first star catalog of stars visible from the southern hemisphere 
(341 of them).  I'll never forget the first time I saw the starry night from 
Australia -- it seemed so unlike any I'd ever seen, that it was like being 
transported to another world...  And there was Alpha Centauri, the first 
star beyond our sun that we've visited in Science Fiction and will someday 
actually visit

1680-1690

1680:  Newton, trying to cut Hooke off at the pass, proves that 
inverse-square gravity does indeed result in elliptical orbits
(see Newton 1679, 1684)

1680:  The first clocks with minute hands

1680:  Anton van Leeuwenhoek is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

1680:  "Old Moore's Almanack" first published by Francis Moore, later 
retirled "Vox Stellarum" [The Voice of the Stars]

1680:  "The Aerial Noctiluca" by Robert Boyle announces the (re)discovery 
of phosphorus (see Brand 1669)

1680:  "De Motu Animalum" [On the Motions of Animals] by Giovanni Alfosno Borelli
is published posthumously and deals with expansion and contractions of 
muscles, as well as the electric Torpedo Fish (more about which was in a 
psothumous sequel the next year) (see Borelli 1664)

1681:  I know there must have been some interesting works of Science and 
Science Fiction in 1681, but I can't put my finger on any of them right 
now...

1682:  The Latin scientific journal "Acta Eruditorum" is founded, lasts 
until 1776, and Leibniz frequently appears therein.  If I could read Latin, 
I'd search it for science fiction...

1682:  "The Anatomy of Plants" by Nehemiah Grew points out male and female 
parts of flowers and the differing structures of roots and stems
(see Grew 1676)

1682:  "Methodus Plantarum Nova" [New Plant Method] by John Ray classifies 
the vegetable kingdom (see Ray 1667)

1682:  The Great Comet is sighted by Edmund Halley.  When he plots its 
orbit and predicts in writing in 1705 that it will return in 1758, and it 
does, everybody calls it "Halley's Comet"

1683:  The Turkish Army beseiges Vienna.  In the long run, this is a good 
thing, as it introduces coffee permanently to the city without which there 
would not be so many superb cafes.  They also introduce the Lilac.

1683:  The words "insulator" and "conductor" first used by John Theophile 
Desaguliers (12 Mar 16??-?) who has been confirming and extending 
the work of Stephen Gray

1683:  Bacteria are observed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, fully a century 
ahead of other biologists

1683:  in "Acta Eruditorum" (see 1682) Count Ehrenfried von Tschirnhous 
(1651-?) shows ways to simplify polynomials, and gives new approaches to 
solving third- and fourth-degree equations

1684:  "A New Method for Maxima and Minima as well as Tangents, which is 
Impeded by Neither Fractional nor Irrational Quantities, and a Remarkable 
Type of Calculus for This" by Leibniz crams the basics of Differential 
Calculus into 6 pages which practically nobody can comprehend

1684:  Two more moons of Saturn, Dione and Thetis, are discovered by Cassini

1684:  Robert Hooke effusively tells others (including Edmund Halley and 
Christopher Wren) that he has discovered the secret laws behind the laws of 
Kepler.  Wren is dubious, and offers a prize for a correct solution.  
Halley visits Newton, who casually remarks that he solved that problem long 
ago.  Halley tells Newton that he really ought to publish something about 
this, and provoked Newton to eventually publish the most important book of 
the century, the "Principia." (see Newton 1679, 1680)

1685:  Louis XIV giveth, and Louis XIV taketh away.  By renouncing the 
Edict of Nantes, French Protestants lose their religious civil rights

1685:  "De Algebra Tractatus" [Treatise on Algebra] by John Wallis
first publishes Newton's Binomial Theorem, and also is the first to show 
how (in Analytic geometry) to represent Complex Numbers as points on a 
plane with a Real and an Imaginary Axis.  Metaphorically speaking, Science 
Fiction is that branch of literature which concentrates on both the 
Real and Imaginary Axis.

{to be done}

1690-1700

{to be done}

|Introduction: Overview and Summary
|Prehistory: Ancient Precursors
|16th Century: Ariosto and Cyrano on the Moon
|17th Century: Literary Dawn [you are HERE]
|18th Century: Literary Expansion
|19th Century: Victorian Explosion
|1890-1910: Into Our Century
|1910-1920: The Silver Age
|1920-1930: The Golden Age
|1930-1940: The Aluminum Age
|1940-1950: The Plutonium Age
|1950-1960: The Threshold of Space
|1960-1970: The New Wave
|1970-1980: The Seventies
|1980-1990: The Eighties
|1990-2000: End of Millennium
|2000-2010: Future Prizewinners

Where to Go for More
 51 Useful Reference Books

Beyond the World Wide Web... there is the library of old-fashioned books 
printed on paper.  I strongly recommend that you start or follow-up your 
explorations of this web site by consulting any or all of these outstanding 
sources:
     
ALDISS: "Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction", Brian W. 
     Aldiss (New York: Doubleday, 1973; Schocken Paperback, 1974)

ALLEN: "Science Fiction Reader's Guide", L. David Allen 
     (Centennial Press, 1974)

AMIS: "New Maps of Hell", Kingsley Amis (London: Gollancz, 1960; 
     New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960)

ASH1: "Who's Who in Science Fiction", by Brian Ash (Taplinger, 1976)

ASH2: "The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", edited by Brian Ash 
     (Harmony Books, 1977)
   
ASHLEY: "The History of the Science Fiction Magazine" [3 volumes]
     (London: New English Library, 1974)

ASIMOV "Asimov on Science Fiction" (New York: Avon, 1981)

ATHELING: "The Issue at Hand", "William Atheling, Jr." [James Blish]
     (Chicago: Advent, 1964)

BARRON: "Anatomy of Wonder", edited by Neil Barron (Bowker, 1976)

BAXTER: "Science Fiction in the Cinema", John Baxter 
     (London: A. Zwemmer, 1970; New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970)
     
BERGONZI: "The Early H.G. Wells", Bernard Bergonzi 
     (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961)

BLEILER: "The Checklist of Fantastic Literature" Everett F. Bleiler
     (Chicago: Shasta, 1948)

BRETNOR1: "Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Future", edited by 
     Reginald Bretnor (New York: Coward-McCann, 1953)

BRETNOR2: "The Craft of Science Fiction", Reginald Bretnor 
     (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)

BRINEY: "SF Bibliographies", Robert E. Briney & Edward Wood
     (Chicago: Advent, 1972)

CLARESON1: "SF: The Other Side of Realism", edited by Thomas D. Clareson
     (Gregg Press, 1978)

CLARESON2: "Extrapolation, 1959-1969", edited by Thomas D. Clareson
     (Bowling Green, Ohio: University Popular Press, 1971)

CLARKE: "The Tale of the Future", I. F. Clarke 
     (London: The Library Association, 1961, 1972)

CONTENTO: "Index to the Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections", 
     William Contento G.K. Hall, 1978)

DAY: "Index to the Science Fiction Magazine: 1926-50", Donald B. Day
     (Portland, Oregon: Perri Press, 1952)

DeCAMP: "Science Fiction Handbook", L. Sprague DeCamp
     (New York: Hermitage House, 1953)

ELLIK: "The Universes of E. E. Smith", Ron Ellik & Bill Evans
     (Chicago: Advent, 1966)

EVANS: "The Index of Science Fiction Magazines", Bill Evans with Jack Speer
     (Denver: Robert Peterson, 1946?)

FRANKLIN: "Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century",
     H. Bruce Franklin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966)

FREWIN: "One Hundred Years of Science Fiction Illustration", Anthony Frewin
     (London: Jupiter Books, 1974)

GOODSTONE: "The Pulps", Tony Goodstone (New York: Chelsea House, 1970)

GUNN: "Alternate Worlds", James Gunn (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975)

HARRISON: "John W. Campbell: Collected Editorials from Analog", Harry Harrison
     (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1966)

HELLEMANS:  "The Timetables of Science" by Alexander Hellemans and Bryan Bunch 
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988) -- for this page and the one on the 16th 
Century
     
HOLMBERG: "Science Fiction History", John-Henri Holmberg
     (Vanersborg, Sweden: Askild & Karnekull, 1974)

KNIGHT: "In Search of Wonder", Damon Knight (Chicago: Advent, 1956; enlarged 1967)

KYLE: "A Pictorial History of Science Fiction", David Kyle
     (London: Hamlyn House, 1976)

LOCKE: "Worlds Apart", edited by George Locke (London: Cornmarket Reprints, 1972)

LUNDWALL: "Science Fiction: What It's All About", Sam J. Lundwall 
     (New York: Ace Books, 1971)

METCALF: "The Index of Science Fiction Magazines, 1951-1965", Norm Metcalf 
     (J. Ben Stark, 1968)

MILLIES: "Science Fiction Primer for Teachers", Suzanne Millies
     (Dayton OH: Pflaum, 1975)

MOSKOWITZ#1: "The Immortal Storm", Sam Moskowitz 
     (AFSO Press, 1954; Hyperion Press, 19??)

MOSKOWITZ#2: "Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction", 
     Sam Moskowitz (Cleveland & New York: World, 1963)

MOSKOWITZ#3: "Seekers of Tomorrow", Sam Moskowitz (Cleveland & New York: World, 1963)

NESFA: "Index to the Science Fiction Magazines", New England Science 
     Fiction Association (Cambridge MA: NESFA, 1971)

PERRY: "The Penguin Book of Comics", George Perry & Alan Aldridge
     (London: Penguin, 1971)
     
ROGERS: "A Requiem for Astounding", Alva Rogers (Chicago: Advent, 1964)

ROTTSTEINER: "The Science Fiction Book", Franz Rottsteiner 
     (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975)

SADOUL: "Hier, L'An 2000 [Illustrations from the Golden Age of Science Fiction]",
     Jaxques Sadoul (Paris: Editions Denoel, 1973)
     
STRAUSS: "The MIT Science Fiction Society's Index to the SF Magazines: 1951-64"
     Erwin S. Strauss (Cambridge MA: MIT Science Fiction Society, 1966)
     
TUCK: "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2nd Edition", 
     Donald H. Tuck (Hobart, Tasmania: Donald H. Tuck, 1959)

VERSINS: "Encyclopedie des l'utopie, des voyages extraordinaires et de la 
     science fiction", (Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 1972)

WAGGONER: "The Hills of Faraway", Diana Waggoner (Athenaeum, 1978)

WARNER: "All Our Yesterdays", Harry Warner, Jr. (Chicago: Advent, 1969)

WELLS: "Fictional Accounts of Trips to the Moon", Lester G. Wells
     (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Library, 1962)

WILLIAMSON: "H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress", Jack Williamson
     (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973)

WOLLHEIM: "The Universe Makers", Donald A. Wollheim
     (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)




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