# 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)