The year 1715 in science and technology involved some significant events.

Astronomy

May 3 - Total solar eclipse across southern England, Sweden and Finland (last total eclipse visible in London for almost 900 years).
Edmond Halley suggests that nebulae are clouds of interstellar gas.
Publication in London of David Gregory's The elements of astronomy, physical and geometrical... Done into English, containing the first recorded use in English of the word Physics in its modern scientific sense[1] and the first mention of a series approximating the Titius–Bode law on celestial orbits.

Discoveries

Ginseng, first used by Native Americans, is discovered by a Jesuit missionary in Canada.
Mine La Motte, in Madison county, Missouri, is discovered by De la Motte Cadillac.
The "miracle" springs are discovered in Cheltenham, England, a small Cotswold village at the time.

Geology

Edmund Halley suggests using the salinity and evaporation of salt lakes to determine the age of the Earth.[2]

Mathematics

Brook Taylor's Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa adds a new branch to the higher mathematics, now designated the "calculus of finite differences", and introduces Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series.
Taylor also publishes his Essay on Linear Perspective, which discusses the principles of perspective and the vanishing point.

Medicine

French anatomist Raymond Vieussens's Traité nouveau de la structure et des causes du mouvement naturel du coeur is published in Toulouse, giving the first description of valvular disease of the heart.

Technology

The first recognised fire extinguisher is invented.
approx. date - In clockmaking, George Graham invents his deadbeat escapement and experiments with compensation pendulums.[3]

Births

April 3 - William Watson, English physician, botanist and physicist (d. 1787)
September 22 - Jean-Étienne Guettard, French physician and scientist (d. 1786)
October 8 - Michel Benoist, French Jesuit missionary and scientist (d. 1774)
November 13 - Dorothea Erxleben, German physician (d. 1762)
November 23 - Pierre Charles Le Monnier, French astronomer (d. 1799)

Deaths

January 19 - Nicolas Lemery, French chemist (b. 1645)
February 17 - Antoine Galland, French archaeologist (b. 1646)
March - William Dampier, English explorer, hydrographic surveyor and triple circumnavigator (b. 1651)
May - Thomas Savery, English engineer, inventor of a steam pump (b. c.1650)
May 21 - Pierre Magnol, French botanist (b. 1638)
August 16 - Raymond Vieussens, French anatomist (b. c.1635)
September 24 - Wilhelm Homberg, Dutch chemist working in France (b. 1652)

13 October 1715 Death of Nicholas Malebranche in Paris, France
October 15 - Humphry Ditton, English mathematician (b. 1675)

1715 Death of Giuseppe Campani

References

^ "physics, n.". Oxford English Dictionary online version. Oxford University Press. September 2011. Retrieved 2011-11-02. subscription or UK public library membership required
^ "A Short Account of the Cause of the Saltness of the Ocean, and of the Several Lakes That Emit no Rivers; With a Proposal, by Help Thereof, to Discover the Age of the World". Jackson, Patrick Wyse (2006). The Chronologers' Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth. Cambridge University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-521-81332-8.
^ Britten, F. J. (1894). Former Clock & Watchmakers and their Work. London: E. & F.N. Spon. pp. 89–97.