1830 ca, ITALY: The italian physicist and patriot MACEDONIO MELLONI (1798 1854), notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light. In 1831, soon after the Melloni discovery of thermoelectricity by Thomas Johann Seebeck, he and Leopoldo Nobili employed the instrument in experiments especially concerned with characteristics of (in modern language) black body radiation transmitted by various materials