Edmund Halley, an astronomer and polymath aged 35, already famed for quite a few achievements in astronomy and meteorology, presents two inventions at the Royal Society : (1) a diving bell ; (2) a damped compass. Diving Bell Halley's Diving Bell & Diving Suit Halley has been thinking about a diving bell meant to working underwater for a while. Two years ago, he produced a paper describing a bell moving on its four wheels on sea bottom, fitted with an air intake so as to main

John Hadley John Hadley, a mathematician aged 49, presents a new instrument of navigation, the octant, also known as the reflecting...

Edmund Halley Edmund Halley, the famous astronomer whom we already acknowledged in previous chronicles, now aged 45, publishes the...

On the 22nd of October, three ships of the line, the 90-gun Association , the 70-gun Eagle , and the 50-gun Romney run aground on the...

Edmund Halley Edmund Halley, an astronomer and polymath aged 30, presents at the Royal Society a map of the Trade Winds also known as Easterlies. As for the Atlantic ocean, they have been known by the Portuguese since the beginning of the exploration, that is in the first half of the 15th century. As for the Pacific ocean, this is Andrés de Urdaneta (†1568) who brought them to light in 1565 and plotted a map for the Manila galleon route between the Philippines and Acapulco.