 a timeline of events related to thermodynamics. == before 1800 == * 1650&nbsp;â otto von guericke builds the first vacuum pump * 1660&nbsp;â robert boyle experimentally discovers boyle's law, relating the pressure and volume of a gas (published 1662) * 1665&nbsp;â robert hooke stated: "heat being nothing else but a very brisk and vehement agitation of the parts of a body." * 1669&nbsp;â j.j. becher puts forward a theory of combustion involving combustible earth (latin terra pinguis). * 1676â1689&nbsp;â gottfried leibniz develops the concept of vis viva, a limited version of the conservation of energy * 1679&nbsp;â denis papin designed a steam digester which inspired the development of the piston-and-cylinder steam engine. * 1694â1734&nbsp;â georg ernst stahl names becher's combustible earth as phlogiston and develops the theory * 1698&nbsp;â thomas savery patents an early steam engine * 1702&nbsp;â guillaume amontons introduces the concept of absolute zero, based on observations of gases * 1738&nbsp;â daniel bernoulli publishes hydrodynamica, initiating the kinetic theory * 1749&nbsp;â Ãmilie du chÃ¢telet, in her french translation and commentary on newton's philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, derives the conservation of energy from the first principles of newtonian mechanics. * 1761&nbsp;â joseph black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting * 1772&nbsp;â black's student daniel rutherford discovers nitrogen, which he calls phlogisticated air, and together they explain the results in terms of the phlogiston theory * 1776&nbsp;â john smeaton publishes a paper on experiments related to power, work, momentum, and kinetic energy, supporting the conservation of energy * 1777&nbsp;â carl wilhelm scheele distinguishes heat transfer by thermal radiation from that by convection and conduction * 1783&nbsp;â antoine lavoisier discovers oxygen and develops an explanation for combustion; in his paper "rÃ©flexions sur le phlogistique", he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory * 1784&nbsp;â jan ingenhousz describes brownian motion of charcoal particles on water * 1791&nbsp;â pierre prÃ©vost shows that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are * 1798&nbsp;â count rumford (benjamin thompson) performs measurements of the frictional heat generated in boring cannons and develops the idea that heat is a form of kinetic energy; his measurements are 
History_of_ideas History_of_thermodynamics Physics_timelines