title: 1783 in science
text: # 1783 in science
  
  The year 1783 in science and technology involved some significant events:
  
  ## Astronomy
  
  * February 26 – Caroline Herschel discovers NGC 2360.
  * May – John Goodricke presents his conclusions that the variable star Algol is what comes to be known as an eclipsing binary to the Royal Society of London.
  * August 18 – Great Meteor passes over Great Britain, exciting scientific interest.
  * November 27 – John Michell proposes the existence of black holes ("dark stars").
  * 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".
  
  ## Aviation
  
  * 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.
  * 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.
  * December 26 – Louis-Sébastien Lenormand makes the first ever recorded public demonstration of a parachute descent by jumping from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France using his rigid-framed model which he intends as a form of fire escape.
  
  ## Botany
  
  * 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.
  
  ## Chemistry
  
  * 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, names hydrogen and demonstrates that water is a compound and not an element.
  * Discovery of tungsten – José and Fausto Elhuyar find an acid in wolframite which they reduce with charcoal to isolate tungsten.
  
  ## Earth sciences
  
  * 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.
  * August 4 (Edo period, Tenmei 3) – Mount Asama, the most active volcano in Japan, begins climactic eruption, exacerbating a famine, following a plinian eruption beginning on May 9 (Tenmei eruption).
  
  ## History of science and technology
  
  * German physician Melchior Adam Weikard publishes a biography of microscopist Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, Biographie des Herrn Wilhelm Friedrich v. Gleichen genannt Rußwurm.
  
  ## Physics
  
  * Jean-Paul Marat publishes Mémoire sur l'électricité médicale ("Memorandum on Medical Electricity").
  
  ## Technology
  
  * Henry Cort of Funtley, England, invents the grooved rolling mill for producing bar iron.
  * Thomas Bell patents a method of printing on fabric from engraved cylinders.
  * Horace-Bénédict de Saussure publishes Essai sur l'hygrométrie, recording his experiments with the hair hygrometer.
  
  ## Awards
  
  * Copley Medal: John Goodricke; Thomas Hutchins
  
  ## Births
  
  * May 22 – William Sturgeon, English inventor (died 1850)
  * June 9 – Benjamin Collins Brodie, English physiologist (died 1862)
  * October 6 – François Magendie, French physiologist (died 1855)
  * October 22 – Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, Ottoman-born French American polymath (died 1840)
  * October 31 – Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, German chemist (died 1857)
  * December 18 – Mary Anne Whitby, English scientist (died 1850)
  
  ## Deaths
  
  * March 30 – William Hunter, Scottish anatomist (born 1718)
  * April 16 – Christian Mayer, Moravian astronomer (born 1719)
  * September 18 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (born 1707)
  * October 29 – Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician and physicist (born 1717)
  * November – Carl Linnaeus the Younger, Swedish naturalist (born 1741 )
  * December 13 – Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer (born 1717)
  * December 16 – Arima Yoriyuki, Japanese mathematician (born 1714)
  * Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen, German microscopist (born 1717)
  