This timeline describes the major developments, both experimental and theoretical understanding offluid mechanics andcontinuum mechanics. This timeline includes developments in:

• Theoretical models ofhydrostatics,hydrodynamics andaerodynamics.
• Hydraulics
• Elasticity
• Mechanical waves andacoustics
• Valves andfluidics
• Gas laws
• Turbulence modeling
• Plasticity andrheology
• Quantum fluids likeBose–Einstein condensates andsuperfluidity
• Microfluidics

• Before 3000 BC –Civilization starts by settling around rivers, coast and lakes.
• 3000 BC – Irrigation techniques develop inMesopotamia andAncient Egypt.^[1]Indus Valley Civilisation develops city-wide drainage systems and toilet systems.^[1] Egyptians developreed boats.
• 2300 BC – Construction of theNahrawan Canal.^[1]
• 2000–1500 BC – First dams constructed in India to control water.^[1]
• 1700 BC –Windmill are used inBabylonia to pump water.
• 14th century BC –Water clock are developed in Egypt under the reign ofAmenhotep III. Clepsydra water clock design is developed inancient Greece.^[1]
• 6th century BC –Theodorus of Samos invents thewater level.Ancient Rome's drainage system is designed during the reign ofTarquinius Priscus. Rome'sCloaca Maxima is constructed by lining a river bed with stone.Tunnel of Eupalinos is constructed inSamos.^[1]
• 4th century BC –Mencius describes how to measure an elephant using displacement of water. Development ofrain gauges in India.^[1]Aqua Appia firstRoman aqueduct is built in Rome.^[1]
• 3rd century BC –Archimedes publishedOn Floating Bodies describing the generalprinciple forbuoyancy andhydrostatics.Archimedes developsArchimedes' screw for water extraction.^[1]
• 2nd century BC – The aqueductAqua Tepula andAqua Marcia aqueducts are completed in Rome.^[1]Zhang Heng ofHan dynasty designs the first knownseismoscope.^[2][3][4]
• 1st century BC –Frontinus publishes his treatiseDe aquaeductu on Roman water engineering.Hero of Alexandria makes a series of experiments and devices with fluids, including theaeolipile steam device and wind harnessing devices.

• 8th–13th century –Arab Agricultural Revolution
• 725 –Northumbrian monkBede publishesThe 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]
• 850 – TheBook of Ingenious Devices is published by theBanū Mūsā brothers, describing a number of earlyautomatic controls using fluid mechanics.^[6][7]
• 1206 –Ismail al-Jazari invented water-powered programmable automata/robots and water music devices.^[8]

• 1432 – Portuguese developcaravels for long-distance ocean travel.^[1]
• 1450 –Nicholas of Cusa publishes his experiments with fluids inIdiota de staticis experimentis, including the first proposal to measureair moisture using wool.
• 1480-1510 –Leonardo da Vinci develops the first sophisticatedparachute, the first descriptions ofcapillary action, and the first turbine water wheels designs.^[1]
• 1586 –Simon Stevin publishesDe Beghinselen des Waterwichts ("Principles on the weight of water") on hydrostatics. He first details thehydrostatic paradox.^[9]
• 1596 –Galileo Galilei produces the first(Galileo) thermometer.^[1]

• 1619 –Benedetto Castelli publishedDella Misura dell'Acque Correnti ("On the Measurement of Running Waters"), one of the foundations of modern hydrodynamics.^[10]
• 1619 –William Harvey provides first model of the humancirculatory system.^[1]
• 1624 –Jan Baptist van Helmont coins the term "gas".^[1]
• 1631 –René Descartes first describes the principle of the mercurybarometer.
• 1643 –Evangelista Torricelli provides a relation between the speed of fluid flowing from an orifice to the height of fluid above the opening, given byTorricelli's law. He also builds a mercury barometer and does a series of experiments onvacuum.^[1]
• 1650 –Otto von Guericke invents the firstvacuum pump.^[1]
• 1653–1663Blaise Pascal establishesPascal's law of hydrostatics.
• 1662-1678 –Robert Boyle andEdme Mariotte independently discover agas law that describes the relationship between pressure and volume given byBoyle's law (or Boyle-Mariotte's law).
• 1678 –Robert Hooke publishesHooke's law describing linear deformation of a spring.
• 1687 –Isaac Newton publishesPhilosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), introducing theNewton's laws of motion ofclassical mechanics.^[11] He also introduces the concept ofNewtonian fluid.

• 1713 –Antoine Parent introduces the concept ofshear stress.^[12]
• 1714 –Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit develops themercury-in-glass thermometer along theFahrenheit temperature scale.^[1]
• 1718–1719 –James Jurin writes the law of capillary action, known asJurin's law.
• 1727 –Leonhard Euler introduceslinear elasticity and theYoung's modulus.^[12]
• 1732 –Henri Pitot discovers how to measure the pressure from the speed of a fluid using aPitot tube.^[13]
• 1738 –Daniel Bernoulli publishesHydrodynamica discussing the mathematical relation between pressure and velocity of fluids according toBernoulli's principle.^[1]
• 1742 –Anders Celsius designs a thermometer with theCelsius scale.
• 1744 – Euler introduces the concept ofdeformation and strain.^[12]
• 1747 –Jean le Rond d'Alembert'sformula for the solutions of thewave equation in a string gets published.^[14]
• 1752 – D'Alembert show an inconsistency of treating fluids as inviscid incompressible fluids, known asd'Alembert's paradox.
• 1757 – Euler introduces theEuler equations of fluid dynamics for incompressible and non-viscous flow. He also introduces the mathematical model forbuckling.^[12]
• 1764 –James Watt develops his steam water condenser leading to efficientsteam engines.^[1]
• 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 withBorda–Carnot equation.
• 1768 –Antoine de Chézy provides a semi-empirical formula for resistance of open channel flow, described byChézy formula.^[1]
• 1775 –Pierre-Simon Girard invents thewater turbine.^[1]
• 1776 –Charles Bossut, supervised by theMarquis de Condorcet and d'Alembert, publishesNouvelles expériences sur la resistance de fluides, a report on a series experiments to test currents theories of hydraulics.
• 1775-76 –Pierre-Simon Laplace introduces the mathematical theory fortidal forces on oceans.^[16]
• 1779 –Pierre-Louis-Georges du Buat publishesPrincipes 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 byCharles's law.
• 1782 – TheMontgolfier brothers invent thehot air balloon.^[1]
• 1785 – First theories of friction are introduced byCharles-Augustin de Coulomb.^[19]
• 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.
• 1797 –Giovanni Battista Venturi discovers theVenturi effect.^[20]
• 1799 –George Cayley introduces modernfixed wing-machines and identifies three important factors for flying machines:thrust,lift,drag, andweight.

• 1801 –Robert Fulton develops the first submarine.^[1]
• 1805-1806 – The development ofYoung–Laplace equation byThomas Young and improved by Laplace.^[21]
• 1808-1809 –Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac describes thelaw of combining gases.
• 1811–1812 –Amedeo Avogadro andAndré-Marie Ampère independently discover a gas law relating volume and quantity of gas, given byAvogadro's law (or Avogadro-Ampère's law).
• 1821 –Claude-Louis Navier introducesviscosity in to Euler equations of fluids.
• 1821 –Sophie Germain wins a contest of theFrench Academy of Sciences for providing a partial theory for the vibration of an elastic surfaces.^[22]
• 1827 –Augustin-Louis Cauchy introduces theCauchy stress tensor and the concept ofstress inelasticity.^[23][12]
• 1827 –Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773), identifies theBrownian motion ofpollen grains suspended in water.
• 1831–Michael Faraday first describes vibrational modes in liquids, known asFaraday waves.^[24][25]
• 1831-1833–Thomas Graham first studies thediffusion in gases.^[26]
• 1834 –Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron unifies many of the empirical gas laws into theideal gas law.
• 1834 –John Scott Russell first describes the observation of solitary waves.
• 1837 –George Green find the minimal number ofelastic moduli.^[12]
• 1838-40 –Gotthilf Hagen andJean Léonard Marie Poiseuille study laminar flow, independently establishingHagen–Poiseuille equation.^[1]
• 1841 –George Biddell Airy publishes the first correct formulation ofAiry wave theory of water waves.^[27]
• 1842 –Christian Doppler introduces theDoppler effect.
• 1842-1850 –Stokes completes the equations of motions of fluids, now referred asNavier–Stokes equations. He also extends Airy wave theory to non-linearStokes wave theory.^[28]
• 1852 –Heinrich Gustav Magnus describes theMagnus effect.^[29][30]
• 1855 –Lord Kelvin calculates the thermodynamics work and energy due to elastic deformation.^[12]
• 1855 –Adolf Eugen Fick publishesFick's laws of diffusion.
• 1857 –Henry Darcy studies flow through porous media, leading to the discovery ofDarcy's law.^[31]
• 1857 –Rudolf Clausius introduces the first model for thekinetic theory of gases.^[32]
• 1859 –W. H. Besant introduces an equation for the dynamics of bubbles in an incompressible fluid.^[33]
• 1860 –James Clerk Maxwell introduces theMaxwell distribution of velocity of classical gas molecules.
• 1863 –Hermann von Helmholtz publishesSensations of Tone on the physics of sound perception.
• 1864 –August Toepler inventsSchlieren photography.
• 1865 – Lord Kelvin introduces theKelvin material model forviscoelasticity.^[34]
• 1856 –Carlo Marangoni studies thetears of wine, now explained by theMarangoni effect.
• 1867 – Helmholtz works onHelmholtz's theorems forvortex dynamics.
• 1867 –James Clerk Maxwell introduces theMaxwell material model for viscoelasticity.
• 1868–1871 – Helmholtz and Kelvin study and develop the theory of theKelvin–Helmholtz instability.^[35]
• 1870 –William Rankine develops an equation for the study ofshock waves.
• 1871 –Francis Herbert Wenham designs and builds the firstwind tunnel.^[36][37]
• 1872-1877 –Joseph Valentin Boussinesq introduces the concept of turbulence in forms ofeddy viscosity, as well asBoussinesq approximation for water waves andBoussinesq approximation for buoyancy.^[1]
• 1873 –Johannes Diderik van der Waals introduces theVan der Waals equation.^[38]
• 1883 –Osborne Reynolds demonstrates the transition and differences between laminar and turbulent pipe flow.^[1]
• 1885 –Lord Rayleigh predicts the existence ofRayleigh surface waves.^[39]
• 1885 – Helmholtz describes the concept ofHelmholtz resonance.^[40]
• 1887 –Pierre Henri Hugoniot based on the work of Rankine, introduces theRankine–Hugoniot conditions to model shock waves.
• 1887 – First models ofsupersonic waves byErnst Mach.^[41] He introduces the concept ofMach number.
• 1888 – First commercialVenturi tube byClemens Herschel.^[42]
• 1888-1890 – Independently, Henry R. A. Mallock andMaurice Couette find the mathematical solution for theCouette flow.^[43]
• 1889 –Robert Manning producesManning's formula for open channel flow.^[1]
• 1893 –Carl Barus develops the theory of thedie swell in complex fluids.
• 1895 –Diederik Korteweg andGustav de Vries (1895) rediscover theKorteweg–De Vries equation first treated by Boussinesq and introduce the idea ofsoliton solutions.^[44][45]

• 1902 –Martin Kutta discusses the air flow through anairfoil using theKutta condition.
• 1903 – TheWright brothers carry the first successful manned airplane flight.^[1]
• 1903 –Walther Ritz introduces theRitz method to study beam theory and Chladni figures.^[46]
• 1905 – First theory ofdislocations byVito Volterra.
• 1905-1906 – First successful theories of Brownian motion byAlbert Einstein andMarian Smoluchowski, supporting theatomic theory of matter.
• 1906 –Richard Dixon Oldham identifies the separate arrival ofp-waves, s-waves and surface waves onseismograms and found the first clear evidence that the Earth has a central core.^[47]
• 1908 –Paul Richard Heinrich Blasius introduces the concept ofboundary layer.^[1]
• 1908 – Experimental confirmation of the theories of Brownian motion byJean Baptiste Perrin.
• 1910:
  • Harry Fielding Reid put forward theelastic rebound theory forearthquakes.^[48]
  • Lord Rayleigh introduces the concept ofRayleigh flow.^[49]
  • Nikolay Zhukovsky introduces theJoukowsky transform and theKutta–Joukowski theorem based on the work of Kutta.
  • Carl Wilhelm Oseen solves theStokes' paradox by introducingOseen's approximation.^[50]
• 1911 –Augustus Edward Hough Love predicts the existence ofLove surface waves.^[51]
• 1915–1916 –Frederick W. Lanchester comes up with theLanchester's laws, a set of differential equations that were practical for flying combat.
• 1915-1917 –George Barker Jeffery^[52] andGeorg Hamel^[53] introduce the equations ofJeffery–Hamel flow.
• 1916 –Horace Lamb coins the term "vorticity".^[54]
• 1916 –Eugene C. Bingham studiesBingham plastics
• 1916-1923 – Lord Rayleigh, and laterG. I. Taylor describeRayleigh–Taylor instability.
• 1917 – Lamb introducesLamb waves, generalizing Rayleigh's wave theory for thin metal plates.
• 1918 –Ludwig Prandtl develops theory of flow over airplane wings.^[1]
• 1919 –Jacob Bjerknes established the bases theNorwegian cyclone model.^[1]
• 1920 –Nikola Tesla patents theTesla valve, opening the field offluidics.^[55]
• 1920 – Bingham coins the termrheology from a suggestion by a colleague,Markus Reiner.^[56]
• 1921 –Theodore von Kármán introduces the turbulence model ofVon Kármán swirling flow, and phenomena likeKármán vortex street.^[57]
• 1921 –Alan Arnold Griffith develops his theory offracture mechanics.^[58]
• 1922 –Supersonic wind tunnel is invented inNational Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom).
• 1926 – Einstein solves thetea leaf paradox.
• 1925 –Jakob Ackeret publishes the theory of supersonic airfoils.
• 1926 –Erwin Madelung relates quantum mechanics with hydrodynamics through hisquantum hydrodynamics equations, known asMadelung equations.
• 1931 –Sylvia Skan and Victor Montague Falkner introduce the equations for theFalkner–Skan boundary layer.^[59]
• 1932 – The concept of quantum of sound (phonons) is introduced byIgor Tamm.
• 1937 –Superfluidity is discovered inhelium-4 byPyotr Kapitsa^[60] and independently byJohn F. Allen andDon Misener.^[61]
• 1938 –Philip Saffman and G. I. Taylor publish onSaffman–Taylor instability.^[62]
• 1937 –Lev Landau introducesLandau theory ofphase transitions.
• 1940-1941 –László Tisza and Landau introduce thetwo-fluid model forhelium.
• 1941 – Landau introduces the concept ofsecond sound in condensed matter.^[63]
• 1942 – Firstmagnetohydrodynamics descriptions of plasma byHannes Alfvén. He also introduced the idea ofAlfvén waves.^[64][65]
• 1948 –Milton S. Plesset improves on Rayleigh and Bessant equations for the dynamics of bubbles by including surface tension according toRayleigh–Plesset equation.^[66]
• 1941 –Andrey Kolmogorov introduces his detailed theory ofturbulence.
• 1947–Karl Weissenberg introduces theWeissenberg effect in non-Newtonian fluids.
• 1950 –James G. Oldroyd introduces theOldroyd-B model of viscoelasticity.^[67]
• 1944 –Lewis Ferry Moody plotsDarcy–Weisbach friction factor againstReynolds number for various values of relativeroughness, leading to the firstMoody chart.^[1]
• 1961 –Eugene P. Gross^[68] andLev Pitaevskii^[69] introduceGross–Pitaevskii equation for the condensation ofbosons.
• 1963 – Alex Kaye describes theKaye effect in viscoelastic liquids.
• 1972 –David Lee,Douglas Osheroff andRobert Coleman Richardson discovered two phase transitions ofhelium-3 along the melting curve, which were soon realized to be the two superfluid phases.
• 1995 – The firstBose–Einstein condensate is produced byEric Cornell andCarl Wieman at theUniversity of Colorado at BoulderNIST–JILA lab, in a gas ofrubidium atoms cooled to 170nanokelvins (nK).^[70] Shortly thereafter,Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT produced a Bose–Einstein condensate in a gas ofsodium atoms.

• c. 2000 – Development on the field ofmicrofluidics.^[71]
• 2003 –Deborah S. Jin and her collaboration produce the firstfermionic condensate.^[72]

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