The year 1838 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
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- January 6 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the electrical telegraph.
- April 4–22 – The paddle steamer SS Sirius (1837) makes the Transatlantic Crossing to New York from Cork, Ireland, in eighteen days, though not using steam continuously.[7]
- April 8–23 – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's paddle steamer SS Great Western (1838) makes the Transatlantic Crossing to New York from Avonmouth, England, in fifteen days, inaugurating a regular steamship service.[8]
- Liverpool-built barque Ironsides becomes the first large ocean-going iron ship.[9]
- William Barnett obtains a United Kingdom patent for an internal combustion engine, the first with compression of the gas/air mixture in the cylinder.[10][11]
- David Bruce, Jr., invents the Pivotal Typecaster, which replaces hand typecasting in printing.
- The first screw-pile lighthouse is built by Alexander Mitchell on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary.
- Charles Wheatstone originates the stereoscope.
- January 5 – Camille Jordan (died 1922), French mathematician.
- January 29 – Edward W. Morley (died 1923), American chemist.
- February 18 – Ernst Mach (died 1916), Austrian physicist.
- March 3 – George William Hill (died 1914), American astronomer.
- March 12 – William H. Perkin (died 1907), English chemist.
- March 15 – Alice Cunningham Fletcher (died 1923), Cuban-born American ethnologist, anthropologist and social scientist.
- April 8 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin (died 1917), German founder of the Zeppelin airship company.
- April 16 – Ernest Solvay (died 1922), Belgian chemist.
- April 18 – Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (died 1912), French chemist.
- April 21 – John Muir (died 1914), Scottish-born American naturalist.
- May 6 – Alexandra Smirnoff (died 1913), Finnish pomologist.
- June 4 – John Grigg (died 1920), New Zealand astronomer.
- July 19 – Joel Asaph Allen (died 1921), American zoologist.
- August 6 – George James Symons (died 1900), English meteorologist.
- December 12 – Sherburne Wesley Burnham (died 1921), American astronomer.
Mulder, G. J. (1838). "Over Proteine en hare Verbindingen en Ontledingsproducten". Natuur- en Scheikundig Archief. 6: 87–162.
Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
Grantham, John (1859). On Iron Ship Building (2nd ed.). London: Lockwood. pp. 13–14.
Patent No. 7615, Obtaining motive power from inflammable gases by compression and explosion.