| 1820 |
The founding of the American Antiquarian Society in this year had as a primary interest the study of early humans and their archaeological remains in North America. [0112] |
Organizations—Societies and Associations / Archaeology |
1820 |
In answer to a challenge from Great Britain (asserted by Sidney Smith in the Edinburgh Review) that denigrated the contributions made by Americans to various fields, the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences was established by Nathaniel Chapman (1780-1853). Chapman was especially concerned with the indictment of American medicine and his journal was directed at that field. [0113] |
Periodicals and Publishing / Medicine |
1820 |
The first meeting on American pharmacy, the United States Pharmacopoeial Convention, was held in the capitol in Washington, D.C. [0114] |
Pharmacology and Pharmacy |
1820 |
The descriptive study of fishes in the United States began, in a sense, through Constantine Rafinesque's (1783-1840) work on fish of the Ohio River region. See his Ichthyologia Ohiensis (Lexington, Ky., 1820). [0115] |
Zoology / Ichthyology and Pisciculture |
1820s |
During this time, botany became, and, for much of the remainder of the century, was the most popular science for recreational and general educational purposes. [0116] |
General or Miscellaneous / Botany |
1821 |
Robert Hare (1781-1858) invented the deflagrator for the production of high levels of electric current. [0117] |
Chemistry / Instruments and Instrumentation |
1822 |
John C. Warren (1778-1856) published Comparative View of the Sensorial and Nervous Systems in Men and Animals (Boston). It was based on extensive examinations of animal and human brains and was the earliest American work on comparative anatomy. Appended was an illustrated "Account of the Crania of Some of the Aborigines of the United States." [0118] |
Zoology / Anatomy |
1822-1823 |
The Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Surgical and Natural Science was published at Cincinnati, the first journal devoted to science west of the Alleghenies. [0119] |
Periodicals and Publishing |
1822-1824 |
Amos Eaton (1776-1842) engaged in a survey of the Erie Canal route, which was financed by Stephen Van Rensselaer. In 1824, Eaton published the outcome in A Geological and Agricultural Survey of the District Adjoining the Erie Canal (Albany). [0120] |
Geology |
1823 |
The first state-sponsored geological survey was carried out by Denison Olmsted (1791-1859) in North Carolina. [0121] |
Government—State / Geology |
1824 |
John Torrey (1796-1873) published Flora of the Northern and Middle Sections of the United States Or A Systematic Arrangement and Description of All the Plants Hitherto Discovered in the United States North of Virginia (New York), an attempt to encompass the entire range of botany of North America in one work. An intended second volume never appeared. [0122] |
Botany |
1824 |
The Rensselaer School, the first such institution for study of science and engineering in the United States, was founded at Troy, N.Y. In 1851, it took the name Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The school was founded by Stephen Van Rensselaer, at the suggestion of Amos Eaton (1776-1842) who directed it as senior professor. A one-year course of study was offered. [0123] |
Organizations—Academic |
1824 |
The Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts was founded in Philadelphia. The Institute's Journal began publication in 1826. [0124] |
Organizations—Societies and Associations / Technology and Invention |
1825 |
The so-called "boatload of knowledge," Charles Lesueur (1778-1846), William Maclure (1763-1840), Thomas Say (1787-1834), and Gerard Troost (1776-1850), with Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877), went to New Harmony, Indiana, with plans to establish a model community. [0125] |
General or Miscellaneous |
1825 |
A state weather service was established in New York. (Pennsylvania established such a service in 1837.) [0126] |
Meteorology and Climatology |
1825 |
Robley Dunglison (1798-1869) was appointed to teach medicine at the University of Virginia as the first full-time professor of medicine in the country. [0127] |
Organizations—Academic / Medicine |
1825 |
The Mathematical Diary was begun by Robert Adrain (1775-1843). Publication continued until 1832. [0128] |
Periodicals and Publishing / Mathematics |
1825 |
William Beaumont (1785-1853) began his experimental studies of human digestion, using as his subject a French Canadian trapper, Alexis St. Martin, whom Beaumont had begun treating in 1822 when he suffered an abdominal gunshot wound. The injury did not close (i.e., it resulted in formation of a fistula). Continuing his studies until 1833, Beaumont sent specimens of St. Martin's gastric juice to several American chemists. The result of his studies was published in Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion (Plattsburgh, N.Y., 1833). The work was widely noted, a German translation appeared in 1834, and helped to establish the chemical character of digestive processes. [0129] |
Zoology—Human / Physiology |
1825 (January 8) |
Inventor Eli Whitney (b.1765) died in New Haven, Connecticut. [0130] |
General or Miscellaneous / Technology and Invention |
1825 (December 6) |
President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) prepared the first annual presidential message to Congress. Among his requests were for a national university and the construction of a national astronomical observatory at Washington. [0131] |
Government—Federal / Astronomy |
1825-1826 |
Richard Harlan (1796-1843) published Fauna Americana: Being a Description of the Mammiferous Animals Inhabiting North America (Philadelphia, 1825), a work that never came to completion. A pioneering systematic effort in American zoology, but based substantively on the works of others, it was criticized by his contemporaries. An important feature of the work was its inclusion of fossils. The next year, a similar but less derivative work by John D. Godman (1794-1830), entitled American Natural History (Philadelphia, 1826-1828), began publication. A bitter dispute erupted between the two authors. [0132] |
Zoology / Mammalogy |
1825-1833 |
Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) published American Ornithology or the Natural History of Birds Inhabiting the United States, Not Given by Wilson (Philadelphia), in four volumes. For volume one, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885) prepared all but one of the plates and also collected many of the specimens. In 1826, Bonaparte published Observations on the Nomenclature of Wilson's "Ornithology" (Philadelphia). [0133] |
Zoology / Ornithology |
1826 |
William Darlington (1782-1863) published Florula Cestrica (West Chester, Penn.). An expanded work, Flora Cestrica (West Chester, Penn.), appeared in 1837 with a second edition in 1853. Both works dealt with plants in the vicinity of West Chester, Pennsylvania. [0134] |
Botany |
1826 |
Before this date, science in the schools of New York state included only natural Philosophy, astronomy, and chemistry. By 1830, some schools had begun to introduce geology, mineralogy, mechanics, natural history, and botany. [0135] |
General or Miscellaneous / Education in science |
1826 |
The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture published a geological map of the area by Gerard Troost (1776-1850). [0136] |
Geology |
1826 |
Ebenezer Emmons (1799-1863) published Manual of Mineralogy and Geology (Albany). [0137] |
Geology |
1826 (July 4) |
Thomas Jefferson (b.1743) died at Monticello. [0138] |
General or Miscellaneous |
1826 (October 7) |
The first railroad in the country was completed at Quincy, Massachusetts. The three-mile long metal rail, serving the granite quarry, was designed for horse-drawn vehicles. [0139] |
Technology and Invention |
1827 |
The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was established as the first of its kind in the country. [0140] |
Organizations—Societies and Associations / Botany |
1827 |
Joseph Henry (1797-1878) began his studies of electricity and magnetism. [0141] |
Physics / Electricity and Electronics |
1827-1838 |
John James Audubon's (1785-1851) The Birds of America, a four-volume work consisting of 435 aquatint copper engravings, depicting 1065 birds, was issued (Edinburgh and London). The text relating to the illustrations was published in five volumes as Ornithological Biography (Edinburgh, 1831-1839). An American edition of The Birds of America, produced at New York 1840-1844, included the text but the illustrations were not up to the standard (or size) of the British originals. [0142] |
Zoology / Ornithology |
1828 |
Robert Hare (1781-1858) published Compendium of the Course of Chemical Instruction ... (Philadelphia), a textbook with more than 200 copper plate engravings of apparatus. [0143] |
Chemistry |
1828 |
Lardner Vanuxem (1792-1848), in his work on the Atlantic coastal plain, was the first to correlate America strata with the Cretaceous in Europe. He used fossil evidence in reaching his conclusions. [0144] |
Geology / Paleontology |
1828 |
The influential Yale [University] Report of 1828, among other aspects, promoted the expansion of natural science teaching in the college curriculum. [0145] |
Organizations—Academic |
1828-1830 |
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) published Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (Philadelphia), in two volumes. It included 100 woodcut plates by the author. [0146] |
Botany / Medicine |
1829 |
The first volume of Nathaniel Bowditch's (1773-1838) translation and commentary on Pierre-Simon Laplace's Mecanique Celeste appeared, though his work on the project had been completed in 1818. Subsequent volumes appeared 1832, 1834, and 1839, the last after his death in 1838. (Because of its timing, Bowditch was unable to translate Laplace's fifth volume.) [0147] |
Astronomy |
1829 |
Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884) published the most popular botanical work in the nineteenth century, Familiar Lectures on Botany (Hartford, Conn.). It had 29 editions and sold some 375,000 copies. [0148] |
Botany |
1829 |
When John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) left the presidency, he was the last chief executive to have a broad and working knowledge of science. [0149] |
General or Miscellaneous |
1829 |
William E. Horner (1793-1853) published A Treatise on Pathological Anatomy (Philadelphia), the first such work produced in the United States. [0150] |
Medicine / Pathology |
1829 |
Jacob Bigelow (1786-1879) published Elements of Technology (Boston), based on his lectures as Rumford Professor on the Application of Science to the Useful Arts in Harvard University. This publication introduced the word "technology" in its modern usage. [0151] |
Technology and Invention |
1829 (June 27) |
James Louis Macie Smithson (b.1765) died in Genoa, Italy. The Englishman's first beneficiary died in 1835 and the residue of Smithsonian's estate, by terms of his will, went to the United States to establish a Smithsonian Institution "for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men." The proceeds were in excess of $500,000. [0152] |
Organizations—Research Institutions |
