Other Considerations

1802
On a bet with some drinking companions, Georg Fridrich Grotefend becomes the first to translate a cuneiform text, a Persian inscription from Persepolis; credit for such translations is usually given to Henry Creswicke Ralinson, whose translation of old Persian cuneiform is published in 1846

1803
Thomas Malthus, in his second edition of "Essay on the principles of population," suggests that "moral restraint" might prevent famine from overpopulation

1804
Napoleon is crowned emperor of France

1807
London streets begin to be illuminated by the coal-gas lighting invented by William Murdock

1815
Napoleon loses the battle of Waterloo to the Duke of Wellington, Jun 16

Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam (b Ayr, Scotland, Sep 21, 1756) originates paving roads with crushed rock; although the name macadam is in his honor, he does not use tar or asphalt as in modern macadamized roads

1821
The Catholic church lifts its ban on teaching the Copernican system

1822
Joseph Nicephore Niepce (b Chalons, France, Mar 7, 1765), using silver chloride, produces the first fixed positive image that could be called a photograph

1831
Robert Brown discovers the nucleus of the cell

1832
Charles Babbage conceives of the first computer, the Analytical Engine; it is a mechanical calculating machine driven by an external set of instructions or program; although strikingly modern in concept, the computer is never built in workable form

1840
Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Amici (b Modena, Mar 23, 1786) invents the oil-immersion microscope, one of his several innovations in microscope building that result in instruments with an enlarging power of 6000 times

1842
Charles Darwin writes a 35-page abstract of his theory of the evolution of species

1844
Samuel F.B. Morse uses his telegraph system to send a famous message from Washington to Baltimore: "What hath God wrought?"

1848
Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels write the "Communist manifesto"

1860
Louis Agassiz attacks Darwin's "The origin of species," rejecting the idea of evolution of the species and arguing that each species was created separately

1867
Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" (Capital) develops the theory of evolution of society as a result of Hegelian synthesis

1879
Pope Leo XIII reinstalls Thomas Aquinas as a ruling authority for Roman Catholic thought

1882
Thomas Alva Edison patents a three-wire system for transporting electrical power that is still in use today

1884
Ottmar Mergenthaler (b May 11, 1854) invents the Linotype typesetting machine

1895
Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (b Lennep, Germany, Mar 27, 1845) discovers X rays on Nov 8

1900
A remarkable coincidence
The monk Gregor Mendel performed his famous experiments with peas that led to his discovery of the laws of heredity at about the same time that Charles Darwin was explaining evolution. Darwin's ideas were soon known around the world. Mendel, however, had trouble getting published. He first sent his work to a prominent biologist, who, as it happened, did not like mathematics. The biologist sent the paper back to Mendel with negative comments. In 1865 and 1969 Mendel's work was published ­ by the local natural history society. After this Mendel was promoted to abbot, which kept him busy at the same time that it allowed him to grow fat. He gave up both gardening and science.

Darwin never got the chance to learn of Mendel's work, which is unfortunate, since Mendel's laws neatly fill a major gap in Darwin's theory. Darwin knew that variation occurred, but he did not know how it was inherited. Mendel's laws described the mechanism by which many traits pass from generation to generation.

In 1900, however, an astonishing coincidence put Mendel's work into the scientific mainstream. Three different biologists working in three different countries ­ Hugo de Vries in the Netherlands, Karl Correns in Germany, and Erich Tachermak von Seysenegg in Austria ­ worked out Mendel's laws for themselves. Each searched the scientific literature for prior discoveries of these laws and each somehow found the obscure papers from over 30 years before. When they published their work, they each unselfishly credited Mendel.