In the seventeenth century James Ussher (1581–1656) suggested that the Earth was created at midnight on 22 October 4001 BC. This was not a scientific estimate. The first attempt to estimate the age of the Earth by careful observation and reasoning was made by the geologist James Hutton (1726– 1797). He suggested that features in the landscape gradually changed through geological processes, and concluded that as these processes were very slow, the Earth could not be young.
Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) estimated the age of the Earth by considering how long it would take to cool from an original molten state. He came up with a series of values between 20 million years and 200 million years.
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