What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?
The telescope, microscope, barometer, air pump, pendulum clock, thermoscope, calculating machine, and the first steam devices — the practical products of the new science.
What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?
The Scientific Revolution produced, directly or indirectly, an extraordinary range of practical inventions. Some — the telescope and the microscope — were developed primarily to extend the senses of the natural philosopher. Others — the pendulum clock, the barometer, the air pump — were developed to support the new experimental science. Still others — the calculating machine, the slide rule, the logarithm tables — were developed to support the new mathematical science. And some — the first steam devices, the first chemical apparatus — were developed as part of the long bridge from the new science to the industrial technologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article presents the principal inventions, organized roughly by field. For the broader account of the relationship between science and industry, see Technology, Industry, and the Useful Sciences. For the long-term industrial impact, see How Did Science Drive the Industrial Revolution?. And for the instruments that opened up the new realms of nature, see The Telescope and Microscope and Early Microscopes and Their Revelations.
The Telescope
The telescope was invented in the Netherlands around 1600, most probably by Hans Lipperhey, a spectacle-maker in Middelburg, with contributions from Jacob Metius of Alkmaar and Zacharias Janssen, also of Middelburg. The news of the invention spread rapidly through Europe, and within two years telescopes were being used for astronomical observation in Italy, England, and France. Galileo Galilei, in Padua, built his own telescope in 1609, and in 1610 he published his Sidereus Nuncius — the Starry Messenger — in which he reported observations of the moons of Jupiter, the irregular surface of the moon, and the myriad stars of the Milky Way. The observations, which were quickly confirmed by other astronomers, were the first direct evidence for the Copernican system. The growth of the telescope was one of the principal achievements of the Scientific Revolution. The instrument itself, in its various forms — the refracting telescope, the reflecting telescope (invented by Newton in 1668), the achromatic lens (invented by Chester Moore Hall in 1733 and independently by John Dollond in 1758) — became one of the principal tools of astronomy, and it opened up the solar system, the Milky Way, and eventually the extragalactic universe to direct observation. See The Telescope and Microscope.
The Microscope
The compound microscope was developed in the Netherlands in the 1590s, again most probably by Zacharias Janssen of Middelburg. The early compound microscopes were of poor quality, and the simple single-lens microscope, in which a small glass bead served as the lens, gave better images. The simple microscope was used by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Delft, who in the 1670s and 1680s reported observations of bacteria, spermatozoa, and the cellular structure of plants. Leeuwenhoek’s reports, communicated to the Royal Society and published in the Philosophical Transactions, were the first direct observations of the microscopic world. The compound microscope was improved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the early nineteenth century it had become an important tool of biology and medicine. The achromatic lens, developed in the 1730s and 1750s, dramatically improved the quality of compound microscopes, and the growth of the optical bench and the mechanical stage made it possible to make precise observations of microscopic specimens. The microscope, in its various forms, opened up the cellular and microbial worlds to direct observation, and it was one of the principal instruments of the biological sciences of the nineteenth century. See The Telescope and Microscope and in Early Microscopes and Their Revelations.
The Barometer and the Air Pump
The barometer was invented in 1643 by Evangelista Torricelli, a student and successor of Galileo. Galileo had noted that suction pumps could not lift water higher than about 34 feet, and had suggested (in his Discorsi of 1638) that the limit was set by the weight of the atmosphere rather than by the Aristotelian horror vacui. Torricelli took up the problem, and proposed that the same atmospheric weight would support a column of mercury only about 76 centimetres high — the much denser liquid producing a much shorter column. He tested the proposal by filling a glass tube about a metre long with mercury, sealing the open end, inverting the tube, and observing the column. The mercury fell to about 76 centimetres, leaving a vacuum at the top of the tube. The barometer was born. The instrument was rapidly improved, and by the end of the seventeenth century it was being used in many European cities to measure atmospheric pressure. The air pump was developed in the 1650s, most notably by Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg, who constructed a large pump that could evacuate a glass sphere. The most famous demonstration of the air pump was the Magdeburg hemispheres of 1654, in which two hemispherical copper shells, fitted together and evacuated, could not be pulled apart by two teams of horses. The air pump was improved in the 1660s by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, who used it in their famous experiments on the properties of air and the vacuum. The instrument was one of the principal tools of the new experimental science of the seventeenth century.
The Pendulum Clock
The pendulum clock was invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1656. Huygens, who had been working on the problem of accurate timekeeping for some years, realized that the isochronous property of the pendulum — the property that the period of a pendulum depends only on its length, not on the amplitude of its swing — could be used to regulate a clock. He built the first pendulum clock in 1656, and he published his design in Horologium Oscillatorium in 1673. The pendulum clock was an immediate success, and within a few decades it had displaced the older verge-and-foliot clocks as the standard timekeeper in European observatories and households. The accuracy of the pendulum clock — about one second per day, two orders of magnitude better than the older clocks — transformed astronomy, navigation, and the social organization of urban life. The longitude problem, which had defeated generations of navigators, was in principle solved by the growth of accurate marine chronometers (developed by John Harrison in the 1730s and 1740s), which were descendants of the pendulum clock. The growth of railway time, in the mid-nineteenth century, depended on the accuracy of clocks that were direct descendants of the Huygens design. The cultural consequences of accurate timekeeping — the standardization of time zones, the synchronization of industrial production, the disciplining of the working day — are among the most important social legacies of the Scientific Revolution.
The Thermometer
The thermoscope — a device for indicating temperature changes — was developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with several claimants to priority, including Galileo, Santorio Santorio, and Cornelius Drebbel. The first sealed thermometers, in which the liquid (alcohol, and later mercury) was contained in a glass tube with a sealed bulb at one end, were developed by the Accademia del Cimento in Florence in the 1650s and 1660s. The first thermometers with calibrated scales were developed in the 1660s and 1670s, with the Fahrenheit scale (1724) and the Celsius scale (1742) becoming the most widely used. The thermometer was one of the principal instruments of the new experimental science. The standardization of the thermometer, with the growth of fixed points (the melting and boiling points of water) and the calibration of scales, made possible the systematic study of heat. The thermometry of the eighteenth century, including the work of Black, Lavoisier, and Watt, was the basis for the growth of the steam engine. The thermometry of the nineteenth century, including the work of Carnot, Clausius, and Kelvin, was the basis for the growth of thermodynamics.
The Air Thermometer and the Hygrometer
The air thermometer, in which the expansion of a volume of air was used to indicate temperature, was developed in the seventeenth century. The instrument was used by the Accademia del Cimento in Florence and by the Royal Society in London in the second half of the century. The hygrometer, an instrument for measuring the moisture content of the air, was developed in the late seventeenth century, with several claimants to priority. The most commonly used early hygrometer was the condensation hygrometer, in which a vessel of water was cooled until condensation formed on its surface, and the temperature at which condensation formed was used as a measure of the dew point. The hygrometer and the air thermometer were used in the systematic study of atmospheric phenomena in the eighteenth century, including the work of the meteorological societies established in the second half of the century. The systematic study of atmospheric phenomena was the foundation of the modern science of meteorology, and it was a direct legacy of the new instruments of the seventeenth century.
The Calculating Machine
The calculating machine was independently invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642 and by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1671. Pascal’s machine, the Pascaline, was a mechanical device that could add and subtract numbers of up to six digits. It was produced in a small number of units, and it was used by Pascal’s father, a tax commissioner in Rouen, to assist with his calculations. Leibniz’s machine, the Stepped Reckoner, was a more ambitious device that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It was less successful in practice, but it established the basic design of the mechanical calculator. The growth of the calculating machine was the first step toward the automation of calculation. The mechanical calculators of the nineteenth century, including the Arithmometer of Thomas de Colmar (1820) and the various difference engines of Charles Babbage (1822, 1834), were direct descendants of the Pascal and Leibniz machines. The growth of electronic computers in the twentieth century was the culmination of the long line of mechanical calculation that began with the Pascaline.
The Slide Rule and the Logarithmic Tables
The slide rule was developed in the early seventeenth century, with several claimants to priority, including Edmund Gunter, William Oughtred, and others. The slide rule was a mechanical device for performing calculations by the alignment of logarithmic scales. The logarithmic tables on which the slide rule was based were independently developed by John Napier and Jost Bürgi in the 1610s and 1620s, and they were rapidly adopted by astronomers, navigators, and engineers. The slide rule and the logarithmic tables were the principal calculating tools of the scientific and engineering professions for three and a half centuries, until the growth of the electronic calculator in the 1970s. The slide rule and the logarithmic tables are not, strictly speaking, inventions of the Scientific Revolution — they are more like auxiliary tools that were developed in response to the new demands of the new science. They are included in this catalogue because they were a necessary part of the practical infrastructure of the new science, and because their development was a direct response to the new demands of the new mathematical natural philosophy.
The Vacuum Pump
The vacuum pump, a development of the air pump, was used in the seventeenth century for the study of the properties of the vacuum. The most famous vacuum-pump experiment of the century was the Torricelli vacuum, the empty space at the top of a barometer tube, which was the subject of extensive investigation by Pascal, Boyle, and others. The vacuum pump was also used in the growth of the first incandescent light bulbs, in the growth of vacuum tubes for the electronics industry, and in many other practical applications. The vacuum technology of the twentieth century — including vacuum tubes, vacuum pumps, and vacuum metallurgy — was a direct descendant of the vacuum pump of the seventeenth century.
The First Steam Devices
The first steam devices were developed in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Thomas Savery patented a “fire engine” in 1698, which used steam pressure to pump water. Thomas Newcomen developed the atmospheric steam engine in 1712, which used the pressure of the atmosphere to drive a piston after the steam in the cylinder had been condensed by a jet of cold water. The Newcomen engine was used extensively in the Cornish tin mines and in other applications requiring the pumping of water. The growth of the Watt engine, with its separate condenser, in the 1760s and 1770s, dramatically improved the efficiency of the steam engine and made possible the use of the engine for the driving of factory machinery. The steam engine is examined in more detail in How Did Science Drive the Industrial Revolution?.
The Long Legacy
The inventions of the Scientific Revolution were not simply practical applications of the new science. They were the products of a new relationship between theory and practice, in which the methods of the new natural philosophy — the experimental method, the culture of measurement, the systematic comparison of observation and prediction — were applied to the design and construction of instruments. The instruments, in turn, made possible the further development of the seventeenth-century science, in a virtuous circle that has continued to the present day. The long legacy of the inventions of the Scientific Revolution, in other words, is not just a list of devices. It is a new way of relating knowledge and practice, in which the systematic application of theoretical understanding to practical problems has become the norm. The story is told in Technology, Industry, and the Useful Sciences. The catalogue of the key inventions is given in What Inventions Came From the Scientific Revolution?. And the broader social impact of the revolution is set out in The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Society.