This timeline describes the major developments, both experimental and theoretical understanding of fluid mechanics and continuum mechanics. This timeline includes developments in:
Before 3000 BC – Civilization starts by settling around rivers, coast and lakes.
3000 BC – Irrigation techniques develop in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.[1] Indus Valley Civilisation develops city-wide drainage systems and toilet systems.[1] Egyptians develop reed boats.
14th century BC – Water clock are developed in Egypt under the reign of Amenhotep III. Clepsydra water clock design is developed in ancient Greece.[1]
6th century BC – Theodorus of Samos invents the water level. Ancient Rome's drainage system is designed during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus. Rome's Cloaca Maxima is constructed by lining a river bed with stone. Tunnel of Eupalinos is constructed in Samos.[1]
4th century BC – Mencius describes how to measure an elephant using displacement of water. Development of rain gauges in India.[1] Aqua Appia first Roman aqueduct is built in Rome.[1]
2nd century BC – The aqueduct Aqua Tepula and Aqua Marcia aqueducts are completed in Rome.[1]Zhang Heng of Han dynasty designs the first known seismoscope.[2][3][4]
1st century BC – Frontinus publishes his treatise De aquaeductu on Roman water engineering. Hero of Alexandria makes a series of experiments and devices with fluids, including the aeolipile steam device and wind harnessing devices.
Middle ages
8th–13th century – Arab Agricultural Revolution
725 – Northumbrian monk Bede publishes The Reckoning of Time, which includes a quantitative description of the influence of the moon and the sun over the tides.
c. 850– Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (Albumasar) publishes his Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir recording the Moon position and tides, he recognizes that there are two tides in day.[5]
850 – The Book of Ingenious Devices is published by the Banū Mūsā brothers, describing a number of early automatic controls using fluid mechanics.[6][7]
1206 – Ismail al-Jazari invented water-powered programmable automata/robots and water music devices.[8]
Renaissance
1432 – Portuguese develop caravels for long-distance ocean travel.[1]
1450 –Nicholas of Cusa publishes his experiments with fluids in Idiota de staticis experimentis, including the first proposal to measure air moisture using wool.
1586 – Simon Stevin publishes De Beghinselen des Waterwichts ("Principles on the weight of water") on hydrostatics. He first details the hydrostatic paradox.[9]
1619 – Benedetto Castelli published Della Misura dell'Acque Correnti ("On the Measurement of Running Waters"), one of the foundations of modern hydrodynamics.[10]
1643 – Evangelista Torricelli provides a relation between the speed of fluid flowing from an orifice to the height of fluid above the opening, given by Torricelli's law. He also builds a mercury barometer and does a series of experiments on vacuum.[1]
1662-1678 – Robert Boyle and Edme Mariotte independently discover a gas law that describes the relationship between pressure and volume given by Boyle's law (or Boyle-Mariotte's law).
1678 – Robert Hooke publishes Hooke's law describing linear deformation of a spring.
1752 – D'Alembert show an inconsistency of treating fluids as inviscid incompressible fluids, known as d'Alembert's paradox.
1757 – Euler introduces the Euler equations of fluid dynamics for incompressible and non-viscous flow. He also introduces the mathematical model for buckling.[12]
1764 – James Watt develops his steam water condenser leading to efficient steam engines.[1]
1765 – Jean-Charles de Borda experiments with whirling arm experiments. He corrects the available theories of air friction.[15]
1766 – de Borda publishes "Mémoire sur l'Écoulement des Fluides par les Orifices des Vases" on hydraulics and resistance of fluid through orifices. He comes up with Borda–Carnot equation.
1768 – Antoine de Chézy provides a semi-empirical formula for resistance of open channel flow, described by Chézy formula.[1]
1776 – Charles Bossut, supervised by the Marquis de Condorcet and d'Alembert, publishes Nouvelles expériences sur la resistance de fluides, a report on a series experiments to test currents theories of hydraulics.
1779 – Pierre-Louis-Georges du Buat publishes Principes de l'hydraulique ("Principles of hydraulics"), with semiempirical equations for the flow of water through pipes and open channels.[17][18]
1780 – Jacques Charles discover a gas law that describes the relationship between temperature and volume, given by Charles's law.
1787 – Ernst Chladni, publishes his experiments on vibrational modes of thin solid surfaces, describing the Chladni patterns created using a violin bow, based on previous experiments by Hooke.
1842-1850 – Stokes completes the equations of motions of fluids, now referred as Navier–Stokes equations. He also extends Airy wave theory to non-linear Stokes wave theory.[29]
1903 – The Wright brothers carry the first successful manned airplane flight.[1]
1903 – Walther Ritz introduces the Ritz method to study beam theory and Chladni figures.[47]
1905 – First theory of dislocations by Vito Volterra.
1905-1906 – First successful theories of Brownian motion by Albert Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski, supporting the atomic theory of matter.
1906 – Richard Dixon Oldham identifies the separate arrival of p-waves, s-waves and surface waves on seismograms and found the first clear evidence that the Earth has a central core.[48]
↑Needham, Joseph (1959). Science and Civilization in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 626–635. Bibcode: 1959scc3.book.....N.
↑Popova, Elena; Popov, Valentin L. (2015-06-01). "The research works of Coulomb and Amontons and generalized laws of friction" (in en). Friction3 (2): 183–190. doi:10.1007/s40544-015-0074-6.
↑Faraday, M. (1831) "On a peculiar class of acoustical figures; and on certain forms assumed by a group of particles upon vibrating elastic surfaces", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London), vol. 121, pp. 299–318. "Faraday waves" are discussed in an appendix to the article, "On the forms and states assumed by fluids in contact with vibrating elastic surfaces". This entire article is also available on-line (albeit without illustrations) at "Electronic Library" .
Maxwell, J.C. (1860 A): Illustrations of the dynamical theory of gases. Part I. On the motions and collisions of perfectly elastic spheres. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 4th Series, vol.19, pp.19-32. [2]
Maxwell, J.C. (1860 B): Illustrations of the dynamical theory of gases. Part II. On the process of diffusion of two or more kinds of moving particles among one another. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 4th Ser., vol.20, pp.21-37. [3]
That Wenham and Browning were attempting to build a wind tunnel is briefly mentioned in: Sixth Annual Report of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain for the Year 1871, p. 6. From p. 6: "For this purpose [viz, accumulating experimental knowledge about the effects of wind pressure], the Society itself, through Mr. Wenham, had directed a machine to be constructed by Mr. Browning, who, he was sure, would take great interest in the work, and would give to it all the time and attention required."
In 1872, the wind tunnel was demonstrated to the Aeronautical Society. See: Seventh Annual Report of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain for the Year 1872, pp. 6–12.
↑"Apparatus fro continuously measuring flow rate of fine material flowing through transport pipe". International Journal of Multiphase Flow11 (6): I. 1985. doi:10.1016/0301-9322(85)90034-5. ISSN0301-9322.
↑Batchelor, G. K. (2010). An Introduction to fluid dynamics. Cambridge mathematical library (14. print ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN978-0-521-66396-0.
↑A.E.H. Love, "Some problems of geodynamics", first published in 1911 by the Cambridge University Press and published again in 1967 by Dover, New York, USA.
↑Jeffery, G. B. "L. The two-dimensional steady motion of a viscous fluid." The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 29.172 (1915): 455–465.
↑Hamel, Georg. "Spiralförmige Bewegungen zäher Flüssigkeiten." Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung 25 (1917): 34–60.
↑Truesdell, C. (1954). The kinematics of vorticity (Vol. 954). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
↑Griffith, A. A. (1921). "The Phenomena of Rupture and Flow in Solids". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences221 (582–593): 163–198. doi:10.1098/rsta.1921.0006. Bibcode: 1921RSPTA.221..163G.