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From Gutenberg to the Internet Timeline An Annotated Chronology of the History of Information from about 30,000 B.C.E. to the present, by Jeremy M. Norman. |
| 1920194019501960 |
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Circa 1650 |
The sliding-stick form of the slide rule is developed. |
| 1650 | John Durie, Keeper of the Royal Library from the death of Charles I until the Restoration, publishes The Reformed Librarie Keeper, the first English book on "library economy." |
| 1653 | Chetham's Library in Manchester, England, founded on this date claims to be "the earliest public library in the English speaking world." |
| 1660 | David Teniers the Younger issues the Theatrum Pictorium, a catalogue of 243 Italian paintings belonging to his patron, Hapsburg Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. Containing the engraved reproductions of 243 paintings, this is the first published illustrated catalogue of an art collection. |
1662 |
John Graunt, a draper in London, founds the sciences of demography and vital statistics, and publishes the first tables of life expectancy in his Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality. |
| 1666 | Michel de Marolles publishes Catalogue de livres d’estampes et de figures en taille douce. It is the first book on print-collecting. He arranges his collection of 123,400 engravings into schools, and in his preliminary and concluding essays he illuminates market conditions and the methods and tastes of fellow collectors. He also documents the relative weighting, in acquisition decisions, of physical condition, rarity, provenance, artist, engraver and the beauty of the image. As a result of this book Colbert will purchase Marolles' print collection. It will become the basis of the Cabinet des Estampes at the Bibliotheque Nationale |
| 1667 | Samuel Green, using a press in Cambridge, Massachusetts owned by the president of Harvard, Henry Dunster, prints the first medical or biological publication in North America--an edition of a London plague tract. This is known from a copy preserved at Harvard University. It is also probably the first North American publication on any scientific subject: The pamphlet is reissued in 1668 by another Cambridge, Masschusetts printer, Marmaduke Johnson: Thomas Vincent's Gods Terrible Voice in the City of London wherein you have the Narration of the Two Late Dreadful Judgements of Plague and Fire, Inflicted by the Lord upon that City; the former in the year 1665. The latter in the year 1666. By T.V. To which is Added, the Generall Bill of Mortality, shewing the Number of Persons which Died in Every Parish of all Diseases, and of the Plague, in the Year Abovesaid. This 31 page pamphlet is known from a copy preserved in the American Antiquarian Society. |
1668 |
Gaspard Schott's posthumous Organum Mathematicum is published, in which he describes his “mathematical organ,” and his calculating machine based on Napier’s rods. |
1671 |
Pierre Petit describes an arithmetic cylinder, which he says is more affordable and easier to use than Pascal’s Pascaline. |
1672 |
Samuel Morland publishes The Description and Use of Two Arithmetic Instruments, the first monograph on a calculating machine published in English. The book describes modifications to the Pascaline. |
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz demonstrates a poorly working wooden model of his calculating machine to the Royal Society of London. |
1673-74 |
Leibnitz makes a drawing of his calculating machine mechanism. Using a stepped drum, this calculator mechanizes multiplication as well as addition by performing repetitive additions. In 1674 Leibnitz hires a Parisian clockmaker to build one copy of his machine. This copy is eventually lost until 1879, when it is found in an attic at Göttingen University. However, because of descriptions published from 1710 onward, the machine is well-enough known to have great influence. The stepped-drum gear is the only workable solution to certain calculating machine problems until about 1875. |
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| 1920194019501960 |
(This page was last revised on
November 21, 2006
. Please report errors
and broken links to jnorman@jnorman.com.) |
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