1816 in science

Botany

• Botanic Gardens, Sydney, established in Australia.

Chemistry

• Veuve Clicquot invents the riddling table process to clarify champagne.

Mathematics

• John Farey notes the Farey sequence.

Medicine

• René Laennec invents the stethoscope.
• Caleb Parry publishes An Experimental Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Varieties of the Arterial Pulse, describing the mechanisms for the pulse.

Mineralogy

• Johann Fischer von Waldheim publishes Essai sur la Turquoise et sur la Calaite in Moscow, the first scientific treatise on the mineral turquoise.

Physics

• Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) discovers stress birefringence.

Technology

• January 9 – Sir Humphry Davy's Davy lamp is first tested underground as a coal mining safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery in north east England.
• The Spider Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill, a temporary iron-wire footbridge erected across the Schuylkill River, north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the first wire-cable suspension bridge in history.
• Johann Nepomuk Maelzel begins production of the metronome with a scale.
• Rev. Robert Stirling obtains a patent in the United Kingdom for the Stirling hot air engine.
• English inventor Francis Ronalds demonstrates the practicability of the electric telegraph but it is rejected as "wholly unnecessary" at this time.
• approx. date – Simeon North in New England produces a practicable milling machine for working metal.

Awards

• Copley Medal: Not awarded

Births

• January 2 – Anastasie Fătu, Moldavian and Romanian physician and naturalist (died 1886)
• July 7 – Rudolf Wolf, Swiss astronomer (died 1893)
• July 20 – Sir William Bowman, 1st Baronet, English ophthalmologist, histologist and anatomist (died 1892)
• December 13 – Werner Siemens, German electrical engineer (died 1892)

Deaths

• January 2 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, French chemist (born 1737)
• April 7 – Christian Konrad Sprengel, German botanist (born 1750)
• September 18 – Bernard McMahon, Irish American horticulturalist (born c. 1775)
• September 28 – Edward Howard, English chemist (born 1774)
• December 15 – Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, English engineer (born 1753)

References

References

1. ''Philosophical Magazine'' '''47''': 385–86. 1816.
2. Laennec, R. T. H.. (1819). "De l’Auscultation Médiate ou Traité du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur". Brosson & Chaudé.
3. "Parry, Caleb Hillier". Whonamedit?.
4. Thompson, Roy. (2004). "Thunder underground: Northumberland mining disasters, 1815-1865". Landmark.
5. Peterson, Charles E.. (22 March 1986). "The Spider Bridge: a curious work at the Falls of Schuylkill, 1816". Canal History and Technology Proceedings.
6. Willems, J. de Vos. (1830). "The Metronome". [[The Harmonicon]].
7. Ronalds, Francis. (1823). "Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus". Hunter.
8. Ronalds, B. F.. (2016). "Sir Francis Ronalds and the Electric Telegraph". International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology.
9. "August 5, 1816: Sir Francis Ronalds' telegraph design rejected". American Physical Society.
10. Muir, Diana. "[[Reflections in Bullough's Pond]]: Economy and Ecosystem in New England". University Press of New England.
11. "Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award".