Our Family History

The Genealogy of Robert and Christina Barritt

1768 - 1776 (7 years)

	Date	Event(s)
1	1768	1768: Great Britain - Grafton ministry. The Middlesex Election Crisis occurs. 1768: Great Britain - General election, reformer Wilkes elected as member for Middlesex amid scenes of jubilation; Royal Academy (painting) founded
2	1769	1769: Great Britain - James Watt patented a new type of steam engine with a separate condensing chamber and an air pump to bring steam into the chamber and equipped it with a simple 'governor' for safety: if the engine started to go too fast, the power would be automatically cut back. He coined the term horsepower and later loaned his name to the unit of power, or work done per unit of time 1769: Great Britain - Captain James Cook's first voyage to explore the Pacific begins 1769: Great Britain - Richard Arkwright develops the water-powered spinning frame
3	1770	1770: Great Britain - Lord North begins service as Prime Minister. The Falkland Island Crisis occurs. Edmund Burke publishes his Thoughts on the Present Discontents 1770: Australia - James Cook documents the location of Australia 1770: Great Britain - Gum pencil eraser invented 1770: Great Britain - Early skeleton suits begin to appear - the first specialized children's clothing. The earliest were still worn with knee breeches, but by the 1780s they were warn with long trousers.
4	1771	1771: Great Britain - The Encyclopedia Britannica is first published 1771: Great Britain - Richard Arkwright builds the first spinning mill
5	1772	1772: Great Britain - Lord Mansfield makes slavery illegal 1772: Great Britain - James Burgh publishes Political Disquisitions, advocates universal male suffrage
6	1773	1773: British North America - Colonists protest at the East India Company's monopoly over tea exports to the colonies, at the so-called Boston Tea Party 1773: Coalbrookedale, England - The world's first Cast Iron bridge is constructed over the River Severn 1773: Great Britain - Benjamin Delessert was born. French industrialist who developed the first successful process to extract sugar from sugar beets.
7	1774	1774: Great Britain - Franz Anton Mesmer began the psychotherapeutic practice of hypnotism, which he called 'animal magnetism' and conceived it to be an actual fluid. Apparently he had some success with psychosomatic illnesses. Part of his technique seems to have been used earlier by exorcists. 1774: Great Britain - Parliament passes the Coercive Acts in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party 1774: Great Britain - Joseph Priestley isolates oxygen 1774: Great Britain - Georges-Louis Le Sage patents the electric telegraph.
8	1775	1775: British North America - American War of Independence begins when colonists fight British troops at Lexington. 1775: Great Britain - Alexander Cummings invents the flush toilet. 1775: Great Britain - Jacques Perrier invents a steamship.
9	1776	1776: England - Common Sense published by Tom Paine 1776: Great Britain - Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, advanced the idea that businesses survive through successful trading in pursuit of their self-interest, and that the resulting equilibrium was not by design. 1776: Great Britain - Wilkes introduces bill for universal male suffrage 1776: Great Britain - David Bushnell invents a submarine. 1776: Great Britain - Edward Gibbon authors Decline and Fall of Roman Empire in period to 1788 4 Jul 1776: USA - The American Congress passes their Declaration of Independence from Britain.