Media History Timeline: 1600s CE

17th Century

Gallery

Horn book, used to teach
children to read.
Transparent sheet of horn covered page of text.

El Greco's
View of Toledo,
1609

Cervante's Don Quixote frontispiece, 1615

Cervante's
Don Quixote,
frontispiece, printed
in 1615

Harvard University
founded 1636

Velázquez's
Prince Balthasar Carlos,
1635-36

Minuet
1650

Slide rule (modern version)
originally invented 1650

Watch with minute hand
invented 1670
(this watch, circa 1810)

Mother Goose
1697

1600-1699

1600: Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for scientific ideas.; 1600: Copperplate style of handwriting uses narrow pen nibs to draw fine lines.; 1600: William Gilbert's theory tying electricity, magnetism will lead to modern media.; 1600: Start of Baroque (Portuguese: "pearl of odd shape") music era, runs to 1750.; 1601: Francis Bacon's Essays are published.; 1602: Hamlet is entered in Stationers' Register.; 1602: Description of a performance of Twelfth Night.; 1602: Thomas Bodley re-establishes Oxford Library; will be named the Bodleian.; 1602: Possible date of a revision of All's Well That Ends Well.; 1603: In Japan, kabuki drama.; 1604: Othello and Measure for Measure are performed.; 1605: First regularly published weekly newspaper appears in Antwerp.; 1606: King Lear is performed.; 1606: Ben Jonson's satirical comedy, Volpone.; 1607: Macbeth may have been performed at court.; 1607: Modern opera arguably begins with Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo.; 1608: Antony and Cleopatra and Pericles are entered in Stationers' Register.; 1609: Johannes Kepler publishes laws explaining elliptical planetary orbits.; 1609: Shakespeare's Sonnets are entered in Stationers' Register.; 1609: Troilus and Cressida is entered in Stationers' Register.; 1609: Coriolanus, Timon of Athens (possible date).
: 1610: The Roman Catholic Douay Old Testament follows the 1582 New Testament.; 1610: Ben Jonson's play, The Alchemist.; 1611: The King James edition of the Bible is published.; 1611: The Winter's Tale and Cymbeline are performed.; 1612: The Tempest is performed.; 1615: Miguel de Cervantes completes Don Quixote de la Mancha.; 1615: Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, The Peasant in His Nook.; 1616: In England, George Chapman translates the Iliad and the Odyssey.; 1617: From Scotland, "Napier's bones" are used for calculations.; 1617: John Donne's Songs and Sonnets.
: 1620: In Novuum Organum, Francis Bacon argues for objective scientific induction.; 1620: News sheets called "corantos" are sold in Europe.; 1620: A book on teaching sign language published by Juan Pablo de Bonet.; 1622: William Oughtred invents the slide rule.; 1623: Wilhelm Schickard's calculating clock, a forerunner to the computer.; 1623: John Donne's memorable line "Éfor whom the bell tolls" is written this year.; 1624: Artist Franz Hals, The Laughing Cavalier.; 1625: Holland's Hugo Grotius publishes what will be basis of international law.; 1625: Printed in an English newspaper: an advertisement.; 1625: Francesca Caccini, perhaps first woman composer, produces opera-ballet.; 1625: Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina, The Trickster of Seville.; 1627: France introduces registered mail as a way to send money.; 1628: William Harvey describes the circulation of the blood.
: 1631: A French newspaper carries classified ads.; 1631: Professional female singers make first appearance in England.; 1632: Galileo writes his Dialogo for the public in support of Copernicus.; 1633: Galileo recants during Inquisition trial, is sentenced to lifetime house arrest.; 1635: Artist Antony van Dyck, Lamentation.; 1635: Founding of Boston Latin School, first public high school in America.; 1635: Diego Vel‡zquez paints The Surrender of Breda.; 1636: Harvard University is founded.; 1637: French classical dramatist Pierre Corneille's masterpiece, Le Cid.; 1637: René Descartes' Discourse on Method is turning point to modern philosophy.; 1637: Painter Nicolas Poussin, The Rape of the Sabine Women.; 1639: In Boston, Richard Fairbanks' tavern named repository for overseas mail.; 1639: Puritans ship a printing press to the American colonies.; 1639: In Italy, the first comic opera, Chi Soffre Speri.; 1639: Peter Paul Rubens paints The Judgment of Paris.
: 1640: Puritan's press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, prints the Bay Psalm Book.; 1640: Some newssheets are printed daily; "corantos" become "diurnos".; 1642: Performance of Monteverdi's last and best opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea.; 1642: Rembrandt van Rijn paints The Night Watch.; 1644: John Milton's Areopagitica defends freedom to publish.; 1645: Future philosopher Blaise Pascal builds his ``Pascaline" calculator.; 1646: Book describes large camera obscura entered through a trap door.; 1646: Kircher, a German Jesuit scientist, builds a magic lantern to project images.; 1648: Swedes attack Prague, seize many books.; 1649: Audiences cheer Alessandro Scarlatti's opera, Gli equivoci nel sembiante.
: 1650: Leipzig has the first daily newspaper.; 1650: In Paris, the minuet, a new dance for the aristocrats is all the rage.; 1650: Anglican Bishop James Ussher dates creation from 4004 B.C.; many believe him.; 1651: Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan: life in nature: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short."; 1653: Parisians can put their postage-paid letters in mail boxes.; 1653: Jesuit priest reports Incas use "quipos," colored strings to keep records.; 1653: Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler praises the pleasures of fishing.; 1655: The word "advertising" is introduced.; 1656: Christian Huygens constructs an accurate pendulum clock.; 1656: English philosopher Margaret Cavendish writes of women's role in society.; 1657: In Paris, the earliest fountain pen carries its own ink supply.; 1657: Camera obscuras shrink from room size, can be carried under one arm.; 1659: Londoners get a private penny post for a short while.
: 1660: Samuel Pepys begins diary of his life in Restoration England.; 1660: The mezzotint, apparently invented by a German soldier.; 1661: Postal service begins within the colony of Virginia.; 1661: First Bible is published in North America, "Algonquin Indian version."; 1662: English Parliament declares that censorship is for the public good.; 1662: Church of England's Book of Common Prayer includes anthems.; 1664: A scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, is published in England.; 1664: Jean Molière's play Le Tartuffe skewers religious hypocrites.; 1665: Artist Jan Vermeer, Woman Weighing Pearls.; 1665: Pascal's Pensees argues that reason alone is inadequate to satisfy men.; 1666: Isaac Newton explains his calculus.; 1666: Robert Boyle explains temperature-pressure-volume relations in gases.; 1666: Molière's acid pen deals with anti-social people in Le Misanthrope.; 1666: Isaac Newton publishes his physical laws.; 1667: John Milton's Paradise Lost. He is paid £10.; 1668: John Dryden becomes England's first official poet laureate.; 1669: Pepys ends his diary, but it won't be published until 1825.

: 1670: Pocket watches add minute hands.; 1670: Molire's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme ridicules social climbers.; 1672: In Sweden, Uppsala University.; 1673: From Holland, a paper pulp beating machine.; 1673: Mail is delivered on a route between New York and Boston.; 1673: Gottfried Leibniz follows Newton to explain his own calculus.; 1674: French tragedian Jean Racine presents his drama Iphigenia in Aulis.; 1675: Concerned about rebellious talk, England's Charles II suppresses coffee houses.; 1677: Baruch Spinoza's Ethics published posthumously.; 1677: French classicist Jean Racine's best known play, Phèdre, is presented, attacked.; 1678: Publication of John Bunyan's allegory, Pilgrim's Progress.
: 1684: In Naples, Scarlatti helps develop operatic structures: aria, overture, recitative.; 1684: Robert Hooke lays out plan for visual telegraph; no one tries it.; 1685: Johann Sebastian Bach is born.; 1686: Leibniz posits a benevolent deity in Discourse on Metaphysics.; 1687: Newton's Principia Mathematica, arguably the greatest scientific book of all time.; 1688: The start of the Genroku period, Japan's brilliant flowering of literature.; 1689: Henry Purcell composes opera Dido and Aeneas for girl's school in Chelsea.; 1689: John Locke writes a Letter Concerning Toleration of other religions.

: 1690: Locke's empirical An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.; 1690: One issue and Publick Occurrences, first colonial newspaper, is suppressed.; 1690: In Italy, Antonius Stradivarius fashions his violins.; 1691: First papermill in the American colonies, in Germantown, PA.; 1691: The New England Primer teaches the alphabet plus religious text.; 1694: In France, Jean de La Fontaine completes his 12 volumes of animal fables.; 1696: By now England has 100 paper mills.; 1697: In Holland, Pierre Bayle writes complex Historical and Critical Dictionary.; 1697: French poet Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose tells classic fairy tales.; 1698: Public library opens in Charleston, S.C.