History of Oceanography TIMELINE

Events

Egyptian trade on nile

4000 B.C.

First maps showing water (river charts)

3800 B.C.

Phoenicians trade from Mediterranean to Britain and West Africa

1200 B.C.

Polynesians first inhabit Tonga, Samoa

1000 B.C.

Greeks first use the term Oceans, root of our word ocean

900 B.C.

First graphic aids to marine navigation

800 B.C.

Greek Pythagoreans assume a spherical Earth

600 B.C.

Pytheas voyages to Britain, links tides to movement of the moon: Chinese invent the compass

325 B.C.

Library founded at Alexandria

300 B.C.

Eratosthenes calculates circumference of Earth, invents latitude and longitude

230 B.C.

Hipparchus arranges latitude and longitude in regular ride by degrees

127 B.C.

Claudius Ptolemy errs in estimating Earth's circumference

150

Alexandrian Library destroyed

415

Hawaii colonized by Polynesians

500

Viking raids begin

780

Norwegian colonies in North America

1000

Prince Henry the Navigator dies

1460

Columbus's first voyage

1492

Magellan's crew completes first circumnavigation

1522

Hugo Grotius publishes Mare Liberum, the foundation for all modern law of the sea

1609

Isaac Newton's publication of Principia Mathematica, which includes an explanation of the operation of gravity

1687

Anders Celsius invents the centigrade temperature scale

1742

Carolus Linnaeus publishes tenth edition of Systema Naturae, in which biological nomenclature is formalized

1758

John Harrison's Number Four chronometer

1760

James Cook's first voyage of discovery

1768

Benjamin Franklin publishes first chart showing an ocean current

1769

James Cook dies in Hawaii

1779

John ross takes first deep water and sediment samples

1818

Charles Darwin departs on five year voyage aboard HMS Beagle

1831

Gaspard Coriolis publishes first papers on an object's horizontal motion across Earth's surface

1835

William Harvey devises a taxonomy od seaweeds

1836

Departure of the United States exploring expedition

1838

Hans Christian Oersted observes plankton

1847

Matthew Maury publishes Physical Geography of the seas

1855

Darwin's origin of species published

1859

Departure of Challenger Expedition

1872

Alexander Agassiz begins research in Blake

1877

William Dittmar determines major salts in seawater

1880

Marine biological Laboratory founded at Woods Hole, Massachusetts

1888

Alfred thayer Mahan completes The Influence Of Sea Power Upon History

1890

Sir John Murray and Alphonse Renard classify marine sediments

1891

Fridjof Nansen in Arctic in Fram

1893

Richard D. Oldham identifies P and S waves on seismograph

1900

Prince Albert I of Monaco establishes the Musee Oceanographique

1906

Bertram Boltwood Calculates age of Earth by radioactive decay

1907

Ronald Amundsen first at South Pole

1911

Alfred Wegener's Frankfurt lectures on continental drift

1912

Scripps institution allied with the University of California

1912

Vilhelm Bjerknes formulates theory of atmospheric fronts

1918

international Hydrographic Bureau founded

1921

Departure of Meteor Expedition; first echo sounder in operation

1925

Woods hole Oceanographic institution founded

1930

Atlantis launched

1931

E. W. Scripps launched

1937

The Oceans, first modern reference text, published

1942

Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan invent the scuba regulator and tank combination, the "aqualung"

1943

Maurice Ewing forms the Lamont-Doherty geological Observatory

1949

U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus makes first submerged transit of the Arctic ice pack, passes through North pole

1958

Bathyscaphe Trieste carrying Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reaches bottom of deepest trench of 10,915 meters (35,801 feet)

1960

Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring initiates the U.S. environment movement

1962

Glomar Challenger returns first cores, indicating the age of Earth's crust. The cores support theories of plate tectonics

1968

Santa Barbara, California, oil well blowout captures national attention

1969

John Tuzo Wilson writes brief history of the tectonic revolution in geology in Scientific American

1970

National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration (NOAA) establishes