Who was it in history who said that there was nothing new to discover?

Question

I blieve that it was a British minister around the time of Isaac Newton, and John Harrison(inventor of the Chronometer). I seem to remember that a very stuck-up minister in England was balking at either Newton or Harrison and said that there was nothing new left to discover. Maybe, even, it was years after?

Answer 1

According to a great many different web sites :-

"In 1899 Charles Duell, head of the US patent office, suggested that his office be abolished, saying, 'everything that can be discovered, has been discovered.' "

However, a few sites are positive that he said no such thing, and that people just keep copying the misquotation. One of them says :-

An archivist's study debunked this story in 1940, suggesting that it might have stemmed from the 1843 report to Congress by the Commissioner of Patents Henry Ellsworth. "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, . . . seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."

Ellsworth resigned two years later, but not for this reason. There is another report of this archivist's study, and its result, on the web page shown below.

Answer 2

Wasn't it something from a Jules Verne novel?

Answer 3

You have the time-line correct...