This timeline describes the major developments, both experimental and theoretical understanding of fluid mechanics and continuum mechanics. This timeline includes developments in:
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.
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]
1206 – Ismail al-Jazari invented water-powered programmable automata/robots and water music devices.[8]
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).
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]
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.
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.[28]
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.[45]
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.
Agnew, Duncan Carr (2002). "History of seismology". International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology. International Geophysics. 81A: 3–11. doi:10.1016/S0074-6142(02)80203-0. ISBN9780124406520.
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"Archived 2019-09-17 at the Wayback Machine.
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.
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.
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.
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.