1783 in science

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The year 1783 in science and technology involved some significant events.

[edit] Astronomy

August 18 - Great Meteor passes over Great Britain, exciting scientific interest.^[1]^[2]
Jérôme Lalande publishes a revised edition of John Flamsteed’s star catalogue in an ephemeris, Éphémérides des mouvemens célestes, numbering the stars consecutively by constellation, the system which becomes known as "Flamsteed designations".^[3]

June 5 - The Montgolfier brothers send up at Annonay, near Lyon, a 900 m linen hot air balloon as a public demonstration. Its flight covers 2 km and lasts 10 minutes, to an estimated altitude of 1600–2000 metres.^[4]
August 27 - Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launch the first hydrogen balloon in Paris.
November 21 - The first free flight by humans in a balloon is made by Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes who fly aloft for 25 minutes about 100 metres above Paris for a distance of 9 km.^[4]

Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard publishes his Dictionnaire Elémentaire de Botanique, contributing to the spread of Linnaean terminology, particularly in mycology.
Erasmus Darwin begins publication of A System of Vegetables, a translation of Linnaeus in which he coins many common English language names of plants.

Antoine Lavoisier publishes Réflexions sur le phlogistique, showing the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent, proposing chemical reaction as an alternative theory in a paper read to the French Academy of Sciences in June, and names hydrogen.^[5]
Discovery of tungsten - José and Fausto Elhuyar find an acid in wolframite which they reduce with charcoal to isolate tungsten.

February 5–March 28 - Calabrian earthquakes in Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
June 8 - The volcano Laki in Iceland begins a major eruption with extensive climatic consequences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.^[6]

^ Beech, Martin (1989). "The Great Meteor of 18th August 1783". Journal of the British Astronomical Association 99 (3): 130-33. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1989JBAA...99..130B. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
^ Cavallo, Tiberius (1 January 1784). "Description of a Meteor, Observed Aug. 18, 1783". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London) 74: 108-111. doi:10.1098/rstl.1784.0010. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/74/108.full.pdf+html. Retrieved 2012-01-05. It is also the subject of study by Charles Blagden.
^ Ridpath, Ian. "Flamsteed numbers – where they really came from". Star Tales. Archived from the original on 2012-02-19. http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/flamsteed.htm. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
^ ^a ^b Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1983). The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783-1784. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691083215.
^ Emsley, John (2001). Nature's Building Blocks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 183–191. ISBN 0-19-850341-5.
^ Brayshay, M.; Grattan, J. (1999). "Environmental and social responses in Europe to the 1783 eruption of the Laki fissure volcano in Iceland: a consideration of contemporary documentary evidence". In Firth, C. R.; McGuire, W. J. (eds). Volcanoes in the Quaternary. Special Publication, 161. London: Geological Society. pp. 173-187. ISBN 1862390495.
^ Gales, W.K.V. (1981). Ironworking. Princes Risborough. pp. 17–19. ISBN 0-85263-546-X.