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Faraday, after drawing his lines of force in 19th century, is normally credited as the first to use the term field in physics. But...

  1. ... was not the term field used in the context of gravitational field already in the 17th or 18th century?

Moreover, Euler in the 18th century studied fluid flows by looking at every point of the fluid and associating to that point a vector corresponding to the velocity of the particles passing through that point. This results in the velocity field which is actually a vector field.

  1. Did Euler use any specific term for that velocity field? Did Euler draw field lines?

So, related to the previous questions,

  1. Why does Faraday deserve all the credit?
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    $\begingroup$ About Euler, see the paper linked at hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2063/… — especially §§VIII, IX. He clearly has the thing (both scalar and vector fields), but not yet the term (champ). $\endgroup$
    – Francois Ziegler
    Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 20:18
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    $\begingroup$ D’Alembert drew stream lines (1752, fig. 13); Poisson’s lignes d'aimantation (1826, p. 269) also seem to predate Faraday’s magnetic lines (1830s). $\endgroup$
    – Francois Ziegler
    Commented Oct 26, 2017 at 0:45

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