istoryworld
Events relating to technology
The first modern lock gates are installed on a canal in Milan, probably designed by Leonardo da Vinci
The Inca empire has about 25,000 miles of well-serviced roads, designed for caravans of llamas
Europe's new printing presses make possible the first pamphlet war, spreading instant arguments for and against the Reformation
German botanist Otto Brunfels publishes Living images of plants, the first serious work of natural history with printed illustrations
The tinderbox provides a new way of making fire - with just flint, steel and tinder
A book to teach good handwriting is published by Gianfrancesco Cresci, with examples engraved on copper plates
Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator publishes a map of the world, using the projection now known by his name
An English clergyman, William Lee, develops the world's first industrial machinery, to knit stockings
Zacharias Janssen, a spectacle maker in the Dutch town of Middelburg, creates the first microscope
A year after Mercator's death, his son publishes a bound collection of his maps with the title Atlas, or Cosmographic Meditations
A lucky accident reveals the principle of the telescope to a spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey. In the Dutch town of Middelburg
Galileo improves on the Dutch telescope (and doubles his salary by presenting one to his employer)
The first book published in England's American colonies is Bay Psalm Book, a revised translation of the psalms
The Briare canal, joining the Seine to the Loire, has a staircase of six consecutive locks
Evangelista Torricelli, observing variations in a column of mercury, discovers the principle of the barometer
A German burgomaster, Otto von Guericke, devises an air pump capable of creating a vacuum
The English admiral Robert Blake introduces a system of signalling at sea by means of flags
Otto von Guericke uses sixteen horses to demonstrate in Regensburg the power of a vacuum
Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens constructs the first pendulum clock, on Christmas Day in the Hague
Prince Rupert of the Rhine pioneers mezzotint, the first half-tone technique in printing
The berlin, developed in Berlin, becomes the most successful carriage of the seventeenth century
Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, now develops the hairspring - of great future importance in watches
The Canal du Midi is completed in France, including at one point a 160-metre tunnel through high ground
Denis Papin, a French scientist working in England, demonstrates a pressure cooker fitted with a safety valve
