1877 in science

The year 1877 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Events

June 19 – Eadweard Muybridge successfully produces a fast-motion sequence of photographs showing a horse in movement, Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, using multiple cameras at Palo Alto, California, demonstrating that a running horse has all four legs lifted off the ground at once. The sequence could be run on a Zoopraxiscope.{{cite book|authorlink=Brian Clegg (writer)|last=Clegg|first=Brian|title=The Man Who Stopped Time|location=Washington, DC|publisher=Joseph Henry Press|year=2007|isbn=978-0-309-10112-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780309101127}}

August 12 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars. On August 18, he discovers the larger, Phobos.

Peirce quincuncial projection devised by Charles Sanders Peirce.{{cite book|last=Peirce|first=C. S.|year=1877|chapter=Appendix No. 15. A Quincuncial Projection of the Sphere|title=Report of the Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey Showing the Progress of the Survey for Fiscal Year Ending with June 1877|pages=191–194}}

Ludwig Boltzmann establishes statistical derivations of many important physical and chemical concepts, including entropy, and distributions of molecular velocities in the gas phase.{{cite web |last=Weisstein |first=Eric W. |title=Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844–1906) |work=Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography |publisher=Wolfram Research Products |year=1996 |url=http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Boltzmann.html |accessdate=2007-03-24}}

Dr. August Eisenlohr publishes the first translation and study of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/einmathematische00eise#page/n7/mode/2up|first=August|last=Eisenlohr|title=Ein mathematisches Handbuch der alten Aegypter (Papyrus Rhind des British Museum)|publisher=J. C. Hinrichs|location=Leipzig|year=1877|accessdate=2011-10-13}}
American railroad lawyer and ethnologist Lewis H. Morgan publishes Ancient Society, linking social progress with technological change.

October 2 – Berlin urologist Maximilian Nitze and Viennese instrument-maker Josef Leiter introduce the first practical cystourethroscope with an electric light source.{{cite journal|last1=Mouton|first1=Wolfgang G.|last2=Bessell|first2=Justin R.|last3=Maddern|first3=Guy J.|title=Looking Back to the Advent of Modern Endoscopy: 150th Birthday of Maximilian Nitze|journal=World Journal of Surgery|volume=22|issue=12|pages=1256–8|year=1998|pmid=9841754|doi=10.1007/s002689900555}}
Adolph Kussmaul first describes dyslexia as "word-blindness".
William Macewen at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary develops the first bone grafts, and also performs knee surgery using a special instrument (Macewen's osteotome), for the treatment of rickets.
Patrick Manson studies animal carriers of infectious diseases.

March 28 – Frederick Wolseley is granted his first patent for a sheep shearing machine.
April 30 – French poet Charles Cros describes a method of recording sound, the Paleophone.
June – Emile Berliner files a patent for a "combined telegraph and telephone" incorporating a microphone.{{US patent|463569}}.
June 20 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario.
September 4 – Louis Brennan patents the Brennan torpedo.
October – Emile Berliner files a patent for a telephone with induction coils.{{US patent|199141}}.
November 4 – Opening of Gustave Eiffel's Maria Pia Bridge carrying the railway across the Douro into Porto, Portugal.
November 29 – Thomas Edison first demonstrates his phonograph sound recording machine.
December 13 – Thomas Edison files a patent for "telephones or speaking-telegraphs" incorporating a microphone.{{US patent|203018}}.
Surveyor and inventor George R. Carey of Boston, Massachusetts, creates a selenium telectroscope — a camera that can project a moving image to a distant point, an ancestor of television. Constantin Senlecq of Ardres, France, develops the same idea independently at about the same time.Scientific American 17 May 1878.

Copley Medal: James Dwight Dana{{cite web |title=Copley Medal {{!}} British scientific award |url=https://www.britannica.com/science/Copley-Medal |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |accessdate=23 July 2020 |language=en}}
Wollaston Medal: Robert Mallet

February 2 – Margarete Zuelzer (died 1944), German microbiologist.
February 7 – G. H. Hardy (died 1947), English mathematician.
March 16 – Thomas Wyatt Turner (died 1978), American civil rights activist, biologist and educator; first black person ever to receive a doctorate from Cornell University.
April 5 – Walter Sutton (died 1916), American geneticist and surgeon.
April 24 – José Ingenieros (died 1925), Argentine polymath.
June 14 – Ida Maclean, born Ida Smedley (died 1944), English biochemist.
September 1 – Francis William Aston (died 1945), English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate.
September 2 – Frederick Soddy (died 1956), English physical chemist.
September 11 – James Hopwood Jeans (died 1946), English mathematician.
September 13 – Wilhelm Filchner (died 1957), German explorer.
October 21 – Oswald Avery (died 1955), Canadian American bacteriologist.
October 25 – Henry Norris Russell (died 1957), American astronomer.
November 3 – Rosalie Edge (died 1962), American conservationist.

January 2 – Alexander Bain (born 1810), Scottish inventor.
January 12 – Wilhelm Friedrich Benedikt Hofmeister (born 1824), German botanist.
February 8 – Charles Wilkes (born 1798), American navigator.
April 9 – Pierre Louis Alphée Cazenave (born 1795), French dermatologist.
May 5 – Joseph Bienaimé Caventou (born 1795), French pharmacist.
June 3 – Ludwig von Köchel (born 1800), Austrian musicologist and botanist.
September 17 – H. Fox Talbot (born 1800), English pioneer of photography.
September 23 – Urbain Le Verrier (born 1811), French astronomer.
September 26 – Hermann Günther Grassmann (born 1809), German mathematician.
Choe Han-gi (born 1803), Korean philosopher of science.