title: 1676 in science
text: # 1676 in science
  
  The year 1676 in science and technology involved some significant events.
  
  ## Astronomy
  
  * Summer – The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Christopher Wren, is completed near London.
  * December 7 – Danish astronomer Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, obtaining a speed of 140,000 miles per second (approximately 25% too slow).
  * Edmond Halley arrives on the island of Saint Helena, having left the University of Oxford, and sets up an astronomical observatory to catalogue stars from the Southern Hemisphere.
  
  ## Biology
  
  * Antony Van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria, observed with the microscope.
  * Francis Willughby's Ornithologiae is published by John Ray, the foundation of scientific ornithology.
  
  ## Medicine
  
  * William Briggs publishes an anatomy of the eye (the first in England), Ophthalmographia, at Cambridge.
  * Thomas Sydenham publishes the textbook Observationes mediciae, the enlarged 3rd edition of his Methodus curandi febres.
  
  ## Paleontology
  
  * The first fossilised bone of what is now known to be a dinosaur is discovered in England by Robert Plot, the femur of a Megalosaurus from a limestone quarry at Cornwell near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
  
  ## Technology
  
  * July 7 – The first clocks using a form of deadbeat escapement, constructed by Thomas Tompion to a design by Richard Towneley, are installed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
  
  ## Births
  
  * May 28 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (died 1754)
  * Caleb Threlkeld, Irish botanist (died 1728)
  * Maria Clara Eimmart, German astronomer, engraver and designer (died 1707)
  
  ## Deaths
  
  * May 25 – Johann Rahn, Swiss mathematician (born 1622)
  * September 4 – John Ogilby, English cartographer (born 1600)
  