A chronology of the people, ideas and events in this book. The Ch. column links to the chapter where each entry is discussed. An interactive version of this timeline is planned. To see who was alive at the same time, use the lifespan chart in Chapter 8 .
Antiquity to the Renaissance ¶ Year Event Ch. c. 500 BCE Heraclitus: the river that is never the same; later summarized as panta rhei 1 c. 4th c. BCE Rainfall measured with standard bowls in India (Arthashastra ) 7 4th c. BCE Aristotle rejects the vacuum; antiperistasis 1 c. 256 BCE Dujiangyan irrigation system built in Sichuan 1 c. 250 BCE Archimedes, On Floating Bodies 1 3rd c. BCE Ctesibius: force pump and water clock 1 1st c. CE Hero of Alexandria: Pneumatica , aeolipile; discharge depends on velocity 1 97 Frontinus becomes water commissioner of Rome 1 861 Roda Island nilometer rebuilt in Cairo 7 1086 Domesday Book lists over 5,000 water mills in England 1 c. 1090 Su Song’s water-driven astronomical clock tower 1 1206 Al-Jazari, Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices 1 1441 Korea: cheugugi rain gauge and supyo river gauge 7 c. 1506–1510 Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester : continuity and vortices 1 1543 Copernicus, De revolutionibus 1 1580 Palissy: springs are fed by rain 7
The Scientific Revolution ¶ Year Event Ch. 1586 Stevin: the hydrostatic paradox 2 1612 Galileo, Discourse on Bodies in Water 2 1628 Castelli, On the Measurement of Running Waters : continuity 2 1638 Galileo, Two New Sciences : the suction-pump limit 2 1643–1644 Torricelli: the barometer and the law of efflux 2 1644 Descartes, Principles of Philosophy : the vortex cosmos 2 1648 Puy de Dôme experiment for Pascal 2 1650s Guericke’s air pump and Magdeburg hemispheres 2 1662 Boyle’s law 2 1674 Perrault, On the Origin of Springs : first water balance 7 1686 Mariotte, Treatise on the Motion of Waters ; Leibniz on vis viva 2 1687 Newton, Principia : Book II on fluids; Halley on evaporation 2 1712 Royal Society rules for Newton in the calculus dispute 2
The Enlightenment ¶ Year Event Ch. 1732 Pitot tube 3 1738 Daniel Bernoulli, Hydrodynamica 3 1740 Du Châtelet, Institutions de physique 3 1742 Johann Bernoulli, Hydraulica ; Robins, New Principles of Gunnery 3 1751 First volume of the Encyclopédie 3 1752 D’Alembert’s theory of fluid resistance: the paradox 3 1755 Euler’s equations of fluid motion 3 1759 Smeaton’s water-wheel experiments 3 1769 Watt patents the separate condenser 3 1775 Bossut, d’Alembert and Condorcet tow model ships 3 1776 First Boulton & Watt engines; Wealth of Nations ; American independence 3 1777 Continuous daily rainfall record begins in Seoul 7 1779 Du Buat, Principes d’hydraulique 3 1788 Lagrange, Mécanique analytique 3
The industrial age ¶ Year Event Ch. 1794 École Polytechnique founded 4 1802 Dalton’s law of evaporation 7 1822 Navier’s equations for viscous fluids; Babbage’s Difference Engine 4 1824 Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire 4 1827 Fourneyron’s water turbine 4 1835 Coriolis: forces in rotating frames 4 1839–1840 Hagen and Poiseuille: laminar flow in tubes 4 1845 Stokes’s derivation of the viscous equations; Weisbach’s pipe-friction formula 4 1847 Helmholtz, On the Conservation of Force 4 1849 Francis turbine 4 1851 Mulvaney’s time of concentration (rational method) 7 1851 Stokes’s law for the drag on a small sphere 4 1856 Darcy’s law 4 1858 Helmholtz’s vortex theorems; first Atlantic telegraph cable 4 1859 Darwin, On the Origin of Species 4 1861–1862 Maxwell’s molecular-vortex model of the ether 4 1865 Clausius names entropy 4 1867 Kelvin’s vortex atoms 4 1871 Saint-Venant equations for open channels 4 1872 Froude’s ship model tank at Torquay 4 1877 Boussinesq’s eddy viscosity 5 1880 Pelton wheel patented 4 1883 Reynolds’s pipe-flow experiment 5 1884 Parsons’s steam turbine 6 1887 Mach photographs shock waves; Michelson–Morley experiment 5 1889 Manning’s formula for open channels 4 1889 Lilienthal, Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation 6
Turbulence, boundary layers and flight ¶ Year Event Ch. 1890 Poincaré: chaos in the three-body problem 5 1895 Reynolds stresses and the averaged equations 5 1897 Turbinia at Spithead6 1902 Kutta: lift and circulation 6 1903 Wright brothers’ first powered flights; Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation 6 1904 Prandtl’s boundary layer 5 1905 Einstein: relativity and Brownian motion 5 1906 Zhukovsky’s lift theorem 6 1908 Blasius solves the flat-plate boundary layer 5 1911 Kármán vortex street 5 1911 Green–Ampt infiltration model 7 1914 Buckingham’s Pi theorem 4 1914 Fuller and Hazen on flood frequency 7 1915 NACA founded 6 1918 Prandtl’s lifting-line theory; TsAGI founded 6 1922 Richardson, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process 5 1925 Prandtl’s mixing length 5 1926 Goddard’s liquid-fueled rocket 6 1930 Kármán moves to Caltech; log law of the wall 5 1931 Richards equation for unsaturated flow 7 1932 Sherman’s unit hydrograph 7 1933 Nikuradse’s rough-pipe experiments 5 1933 Horton’s infiltration theory 7 1935 Taylor’s statistical theory of turbulence 5 1935 Theis equation for well hydraulics 7 1935 Busemann proposes the swept wing 6 1936 Keynes, General Theory ; Caltech rocket tests begin 6 1939 First jet flight (He 178) 6 1939 Colebrook’s friction formula 5 1941 Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence 5 1941 Gumbel on flood return periods 7 1944 Moody chart 5 1944 Jet Propulsion Laboratory named; first V-2 attacks 6
After 1945 ¶ Year Event Ch. 1945 ENIAC completed 6 1947 Bell X-1 flies faster than sound 6 1948 Penman’s evaporation equation; Thornthwaite’s potential evapotranspiration 7 1949 Phillips’s hydraulic economy computer (MONIAC) 6 1950 First numerical weather forecast on ENIAC 6 1951 Hurst’s long-term persistence 7 1955 Qian Xuesen deported to China 6 1956 Budyko, The Heat Balance of the Earth’s Surface 7 1957 Sputnik 6 1963 Lorenz, Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow 6 1963 Bouchet’s complementary relationship 7 1965 Penman–Monteith equation; International Hydrological Decade begins 7 1966 Stanford Watershed Model 7 1969 Freeze and Harlan’s blueprint for physically based models 7 1972 First direct numerical simulation of turbulence 6 1972 Priestley–Taylor equation; Landsat 1 launched 7 1979 TOPMODEL 7 2002 GRACE satellites launched 7 2003–2012 IAHS decade: Predictions in Ungauged Basins 7 2008 “Stationarity is dead” 7 2013–2022 IAHS decade: Panta Rhei — Everything Flows 7 2022 Korea’s Nuri rocket reaches orbit 6 2022 SWOT satellite launched 7