1885 in science

The year 1885 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

Carl Auer von Welsbach patents his first incandescent gas mantle.
Eugen Goldstein names the cathode ray, later discovered to be composed of electrons, and the canal ray, later discovered to be positive hydrogen ions that have been stripped of their electrons in a cathode-ray tube; these will later be named protons.

Eduard Suess begins publication in Vienna of his Das Antlitz der Erde setting out his theory of eustasy, the existence of the former supercontinent Gondwana, and his pioneering concepts in ecology.

January 4 – The first successful appendectomy is performed by Dr. William W. Grant on Mary Gartside.
July 6 – Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux successfully test their rabies vaccine. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy bitten by a rabid dog.
Georges Gilles de la Tourette publishes an account of nine patients with what will become known as Tourette syndrome.

January 15 – American photographer Wilson Bentley takes the first known photograph of a snowflake by attaching a view camera to a microscope.

March 24 – George H. Pegram is granted a United States patent for the Pegram truss.
April 3 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his single-cylinder water-cooled engine design.
August 29 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for the Daimler Reitwagen, regarded as the first motorcycle, which he has produced with Wilhelm Maybach.
September 30 – Tolbert Lanston makes his first application for a United States patent on a typesetting system which includes the basic Monotype System keyboard.
Autumn – Karl Benz produces the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, regarded as the first automobile.
John Kemp Starley demonstrates the Rover safety bicycle, regarded as the first practical modern bicycle.
The first, not yet practical, form of gyrocompass is patented by Marinus Gerardus van den Bos.
Rufus Eastman patents the first known electric food mixer.
Completion of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, designed by William Le Baron Jenney. With ten floors and a fireproof weight-bearing metal frame, it is regarded as the first skyscraper.
Completion of Sway Tower in Hampshire, England, designed by Andrew Peterson using concrete made with Portland cement. It remains the world's tallest non-reinforced concrete structure.
The Nipkow disk is patented by German scientist Paul Gottlieb Nipkow.

February 1 – Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, British inventor
February 8 – Nikolai Severtzov, Russian explorer and naturalist
March 14 – Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs, German medical pathologist
June 12 – Fleeming Jenkin, English engineer
September 6 – Narcís Monturiol, Catalan intellectual, artist and engineer, inventor of an early submarine
September 15 – Jumbo, African elephant, killed in railroad accident
November 26 – Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist