Editing 1877 in science (section)

==Technology==
* March 28 – [[Frederick Wolseley]] is granted his first [[patent]] for a sheep shearing machine.
* April 30 – French poet [[Charles Cros]] describes a method of recording sound, the [[Phonograph#Paleophone|Paleophone]].
* June – Emile Berliner files a patent for a "combined telegraph and telephone" incorporating a [[microphone]].<ref>{{US patent|463569}}.</ref> 
* June 20 – [[Alexander Graham Bell]] installs the world's first commercial telephone service in [[Hamilton, Ontario]].
* September 4 – [[Louis Brennan]] patents the [[Brennan torpedo]].
* October – Emile Berliner files a patent for a telephone with [[induction coil]]s.<ref>{{US patent|199141}}.</ref>
* November 4 – Opening of [[Gustave Eiffel]]'s [[Maria Pia Bridge]] carrying the railway across the [[Douro]] into [[Porto]], [[Portugal]].
* November 29 – [[Thomas Edison]] first demonstrates his [[phonograph]] sound recording machine.
* December 13 – Thomas Edison files a patent for "telephones or speaking-telegraphs" incorporating a microphone.<ref>{{US patent|203018}}.</ref>
* Surveyor and inventor [[George R. Carey]] of [[Boston]], Massachusetts, creates a [[selenium]] [[telectroscope]] — a camera that can project a moving image to a distant point, an ancestor of [[television]]. [[Constantin Senlecq]] of [[Ardres]], France, develops the same idea independently at about the same time.<ref>''[[Scientific American]]'' 17 May 1878.</ref>