Science & Discovery
The inventions, voyages, discoveries, and Enlightenment thinkers who advanced human knowledge in 1776.
Every Science & Discovery article in the 1776 knowledge base. Use the topic filters to narrow by sub-topic.
Smallpox Inoculation in the Continental Army
George Washington's mandate requiring inoculation of Continental Army troops, establishing the fi...
Alessandro Volta's Discovery of Methane
In November 1776, the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta identified a flammable gas rising from t...
David Bushnell's Turtle: The First Submarine Used in Combat
On the night of September 6–7, 1776, Sergeant Ezra Lee piloted a hand-powered submersible vessel ...
David Hume's Death and Philosophical Legacy
David Hume, one of the most influential philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, died on Augus...
Captain Cook's Third Voyage
Captain James Cook's third and final Pacific expedition departed Plymouth, England, on July 12, 1...
Astronomy and Navigation in 1776: The Science of Finding ...
In 1776, celestial navigation—using star positions, the lunar distance method, and the new marine...
David Rittenhouse in 1776 — Astronomer of the Revolution
David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) was America's foremost astronomer and instrument-maker of the Revol...
Joseph Priestley and Pneumatic Chemistry in 1776
Priestley's pneumatic chemistry work in 1776, building on his 1774 isolation of 'dephlogisticated...
John Harrison and the Marine Chronometer
John Harrison, the English carpenter and self-taught clockmaker who solved the longitude problem ...
Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society in 1776
Banks, the naturalist returning from Cook's first voyage, ascended to prominence in 1776 as one o...
The Venus Transit Observations of 1761/1769 and Astronomi...
The international scientific campaigns to observe Venus transits across the Sun in 1761 and 1769 ...
Lazzaro Spallanzani's Naturalist Work in 1776
Spallanzani's 1776 experimental work on animal reproduction and behavior advanced the understandi...
Medicine & Physicians in 1776
American physicians in 1776 faced the Revolutionary War's medical crisis while grappling with lim...
Lavoisier's Combustion Experiments of 1776
Lavoisier's quantitative combustion experiments in 1776 disproved phlogiston theory and founded m...
Buffon's Natural History: Revolutionizing Scientific Clas...
In 1776, the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, continued his monumental *...