The year 1712 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

John Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis is first published, against his will and without credit by Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley with the influence of Dr. Arbuthnot. (A final version, approved by Flamsteed, is published posthumously in 1725.)

Mathematics

Giacomo F. Maraldi experimentally obtains the angle in the rhombic dodecahedron shape, still called the Maraldi angle.

Technology

The first known working Newcomen steam engine is built by Thomas Newcomen with John Calley to pump water out of mines in the Black Country of England.[1]

Births

March 8 - John Fothergill, English physician (d. 1780)
March 27 - Claude Bourgelat, French veterinary surgeon (d. 1779)
undated - Angélique du Coudray, French pioneer of modern midwifery (d. 1789)

Deaths

February 2 - Martin Lister, English naturalist (b. c. 1638)
March 25 - Nehemiah Grew, English naturalist (b. 1641)
August 29 - Gregory King, English statistician (b. 1648)
September 14 - Giovanni Cassini, Italian-born astronomer (b. 1625)
approx. date - Denis Papin, French physicist, mathematician and inventor (b. 1647)

References

^ Rolt, L. T. C.; Allen, J. S. (1977). "The First Newcomen Engines c1710-15". The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (new ed.). Hartington: Moorland. pp. 44–57. ISBN 0-903485-42-7.