1804

In a letter to President Sir Joseph Banks, Matthew Flinders suggests that ‘New Holland’ should be termed ‘Australia’.  The name appears in the 1806 Philosophical Transactions.

1823

The Royal Society approves Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a mechanical means of computing mathematical tables. Babbage goes on to design Analytical Engines capable of storing programs.

1825

Gideon Mantell, a physician from Lewes in Sussex, describes for the Society some ancient bones he has found while on medical rounds in 1822. The creature is Iguanodon, the first land dinosaur.

1839

William Henry Fox Talbot communicates his process of ‘photogenic drawing’ to the Royal Society. His colleague Sir John Herschel promptly renames it ‘photography’ the first new art form in centuries.

1851

The British Government awards the Royal Society its first annual Government Grant of £1,000 to be distributed for ‘private individual scientific research’.

1864

Charles Darwin receives the Copley Medal. On the Origin of Species (1859) is controversially excluded from the citation, but a speech affirms “it is with that work that the public…will naturally recollect the honour”.

1883  

Krakatoa explodes killing an estimated 40,000 people. The Royal Society solicits observations from the public and letters pour in from many nations describing this global phenomenon.

1894   

William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh agree to research atmospheric gases in the aftermath of a Royal Society lecture. Ramsay discovers argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon in a research tour-de-force.