Inventions thru the ages

Notable Inventions and Discoveries

Date Invention Or Discovery Inventor Or Discoverer Nationality 1250 Magnifying glass Roger Bacon English 1450 Printing press Johann Gutenberg German 1504 Pocket watch Peter Henlein German 1590 Compound microscope Zacharias Janssen Dutch 1593 Water thermometer Galileo Italian 1608 Telescope Hans Lippershey Dutch 1625 Blood transfusion Jean-Baptiste Denys French 1629 Steam turbine Giovanni Branca Italian 1642 Adding machine Blaise Pascal French 1643 Barometer Evangelista Torricelli Italian 1650 Air pump Otto von Guericke German 1656 Pendulum clock Christiaan Huygens Dutch 1661 Methanol Robert Boyle Irish 1668 Reflecting telescope Isaac Newton English 1671 Calculating machine Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German 1698 Steam pump Thomas Savery English 1701 Seed drill Jethro Tull English 1710 Piano Bartolomeo Cristofori Italian 1712 Steam engine Thomas Newcomen British 1714 Mercury thermometer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit German 1717 Diving bell Edmund Halley English 1725 Stereotyping William Ged Scottish 1745 Leyden jar (condenser) E.G. von Kleist German 1752 Lightning rod Benjamin Franklin American 1758 Achromatic lens John Dollond British 1759 Marine chronometer John Harrison British 1764 Spinning jenny James Hargreaves British 1769 Spinning frame R. Arkwright English 1769 Steam engine (with separate condenser) James Watt British 1769 Automobile Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot French 1775 Submarine David Bushnell American 1780 Steel pen Samuel Harrison English 1780 Bifocal lens Benjamin Franklin American 1783 Balloon Joseph Michel Montgolfier and Jacques Étienne Montgolfier French 1784 Threshing machine Andrew Meikle British 1785 Power loom Edmund Cartwright British 1786 Steamboat John Fitch American 1788 Flyball governor James Watt British 1791 Gas turbine John Barber British 1792 Illuminating gas William Murdock Scottish 1793 Cotton gin Eli Whitney American 1795 Hydraulic press Joseph Bramah English 1796 Lithography Aloys Senefelder German 1796 Smallpox vaccination Edward Jenner British 1799 Fourdrinier machine (papermaking) Louis Robert French 1800 Jacquard loom Joseph Marie Jacquard French 1800 Electric battery Count Alessandro Volta Italian 1801 Pattern loom Joseph Marie Jacquard French 1804 Screw propeller John Stevens American 1804 Solid-fuel rocket William Congreve British 1804 Steam locomotive Richard Trevithick British 1805 Electroplating Luigi Gasparo Brugnatelli Italian 1810 Food preservation (by sterilization and exclusion of air) François Appert French 1810 Printing press Frederick Koenig German 1814 Railroad locomotive George Stephenson British 1815 Safety lamp Sir Humphry Davy British 1816 Bicycle (no pedals) Karl D. Sauerbronn German 1819 Stethoscope René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec French 1820 Hygrometer J.F. Daniell English 1820 Galvanometer Johann Salomo Cristoph Schweigger German 1821 Electric motor Michael Faraday British 1823 Silicon Jöns Jakob Berzelius Swedish 1823 Electromagnet William Sturgeon British 1824 Portland cement Joseph Aspdin British 1827 Friction match John Walker British 1829 Typewriter1 W.A. Burt American 1829 Braille printing Louis Braille French 1830 Platform scales Thaddeus Fairbanks American 1830 Sewing machine Barthélemy Thimonnier French 1831 Phosphorus match Charles Sauria French 1831 Reaper Cyrus Hall McCormick American 1831 Dynamo Michael Faraday British 1834 Electric streetcar Thomas Davenport American 1835 Pistol (revolver) Samuel Colt American 1837 Telegraph Samuel Finley Breese Morse Sir Charles Wheatstone American British 1838 Morse code Samuel Finley Breese Morse American 1839 Photography Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Niepce William Henry Fox Talbot French British 1839 Vulcanized rubber Charles Goodyear American 1839 Steam hammer James Nasmyth Scottish 1839 Bicycle (with pedals) Kirkpatrick MacMillan British 1845 Pneumatic tire Robert William Thompson American 1846 Rotary printing press Richard March Hoe American 1846 Nitroglycerin Ascanio Sobrero Italian 1846 Guncotton Christian Friedrich Schönbein German 1846 Ether Crawford Williamson Long American 1849 Reinforced concrete F.J. Monier French 1849 Safety pin Walter Hunt American 1849 Water turbine James Bicheno Francis American 1850 Mercerized cotton John Mercer British 1851 Breech-loading rifle Edward Maynard American 1851 Opthalmoscope Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz German 1852 Nonrigid airship Henri Giffard French 1852 Elevator (with brake) Elisha Graves Otis American 1852 Gyroscope Jean Bernard Léon Foucault French 1855 Hypodermic syringe Alexander Wood Scottish 1855 Safety matches J.E. Lundstrom Swedish 1856 Bessemer converter (steel) Sir Henry Bessemer British 1858 Harvester Charles and William Marsh American 1859 Spectroscope Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen German 1860 Gas engine Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir French 1861 Web-fed newspaper printing press Richard March Hoe American 1861 Electric furnace Wilhelm Siemens British 1861 Machine gun Richard Jordan Gatling American 1861 Kinematoscope Coleman Sellers American 1865 Antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister English 1866 Paper (from wood pulp, sulfite process) Benjamin Chew Tilghman American 1866 Dynamite Alfred Bernhard Nobel Swedish 1868 Dry cell Georges Leclanché French 1868 Typewriter Carlos Glidden and Christopher Latham Sholes American 1868 Air brake George Westinghouse American 1870 Celluloid John Wesley Hyatt and Isaiah Hyatt American 1871 Continuous current dynamo Zénobe-Théophile Gramme Belgian 1874 Quadruplex telegraph Thomas Alva Edison American 1876 Telephone2 Alexander Graham Bell Antonio Meucci American Italian 1877 Internal-combustion engine (four-cycle) Nikolaus August Otto German 1877 Talking machine (phonograph) Thomas Alva Edison American 1877 Microphone Emile Berliner American 1877 Electric welding Elihu Thomson American 1877 Refrigerator car G.F. Swift American 1878 Cream separator Carl Gustav de Laval Swedish 1878 Cathode ray tube Sir William Crookes British 1879 Cash register James J. Ritty American 1879 Incandescent filament lamp Thomas Alva Edison Sir Joseph Wilson Swan American British 1879 Automobile engine (two-cycle) Karl Benz German 1879 Arc lamp Charles Francis Bush American 1880 Linotype Ottmar Mergenthaler American 1884 Steam turbine C.A. Parsons English 1884 Rayon (nitrocellulose) Comte Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet French 1884 Multiple-wheel steam turbine Sir Charles Algernon Parsons British 1884 Nipkow disk (mechanical television scanning device) Paul Gottlieb Nipkow German 1884 Fountain pen Lewis Edson Waterman American 1885 Graphophone (dictating machine) Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter American 1885 AC transformer William Stanley American 1887 Air-inflated rubber tire J.B. Dunlop Scottish 1887 Gramophone (disk records) Emile Berliner American 1887 Gas mantle Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach Austrian 1887 Mimeograph Albert Blake Dick American 1887 Monotype Tolbert Lanston American 1888 Adding machine (recording) William Seward Burroughs American 1888 Kodak camera George Eastman American 1889 Steam turbine C.G. de Laval Swedish 1890 Rayon (cuprammonium) Louis Henri Despeissis French 1891 Glider Otto Lilienthal German 1891 Motion picture camera (kinetograph) Thomas Alva Edison William K. L. Dickson American British 1891 Motion picture viewer (kinetoscope) Thomas Alva Edison William K. L. Dickson American British 1891 Synthetic rubber Sir William Augustus Tilden British 1892 AC motor Nikola Tesla American 1892 Three-color camera Frederick Eugene Ives American 1892 Rayon (viscose) Charles Frederick Cross British 1892 Vacuum bottle (Dewar flask) Sir James Dewar British 1893 Photoelectric cell Julius Elster Hans F. Geitel German 1893 Diesel engine Rudolf Diesel German 1893 Gasoline automobile Charles Edgar Duryea and J. Frank Duryea American 1894 Motion picture projection Louis Jean Lumière and Auguste Marie Lumière Charles Francis Jenkins French American 1895 X-ray Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen German 1895 Rayon (acetate) Charles Frederick Cross British 1895 Wireless telegraph Marchese Guglielmo Marconi Italian 1896 Experimental airplane Samuel Pierpont Langley American 1898 Sensitized photographic paper Leo Hendrik Baekeland American 1900 Rigid dirigible airship Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin German 1902 Radiotelephone Valdemar Poulsen Reginald Aubrey Fessenden Danish American 1903 Airplane Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright American 1903 Windshield wipers Mary Anderson American 1903 Electrocardiograph Willem Einthoven Dutch 1905 Diode rectifier tube (radio) Sir John Ambrose Fleming British 1906 Gyrocompass Hermann Anschütz-Kämpfe German 1907 Bakelite Leo Hendrik Baekeland American 1907 Triode amplifier tube (radio) Lee De Forest American 1908 Cellophane Jacques Edwin Brandenberger Swiss 1908 Two-color motion picture camera C. Albert Smith British 1909 Salvarsan Paul Ehrlich German 1910 Hydrogenation of coal Friedrich Bergius German 1910 Gyroscopic compass and stabilizer Elmer Ambrose Sperry American 1911 Air conditioning W.H. Carrier American 1911 Vitamins Casimir Funk Polish 1911 Cellophane Jacques Edwin Brandenberger Swiss 1911 Neon lamp Georges Claude French 1912 Mercury-vapor lamp Peter Cooper Hewitt American 1913 Ramjet engine René Lorin French 1913 Multigrid electron tube Irving Langmuir American 1913 Cracked gasoline William Meriam Burton American 1913 Heterodyne radio receiver Reginald Aubrey Fessenden American 1915 Automobile self-starter Charles Franklin Kettering American 1916 Browning gun (automatic rifle) John Moses Browning American 1916 Gas-filled incandescent lamp Irving Langmuir American 1916 X-ray tube William David Coolidge American 1919 Mass spectrograph Sir Francis William Aston Arthur Jeffrey Dempster British American 1922-26 Sound motion pictures T.W. Case American 1922 Insulin Sir Frederick Grant Banting Canadian 1923 Autogiro Juan de la Cierva Spanish 1923 Television iconoscope Vladimir Kosma Zworykin American 1924 Quick-frozen food Clarence Birdseye American 1925 Television image dissector tube Philo Taylor Farnsworth American 1926 Aerosol can Erik Rotheim Norwegian 1926 Liquid-fuel rocket Robert Hutchings Goddard American 1928 Penicillin Sir Alexander Fleming British 1930 Bathysphere (Charles) William Beebe American 1930 Freon (low-boiling fluorine compounds) Thomas Midgley and coworkers American 1930 Modern gas-turbine engine Sir Frank Whittle British 1930 Neoprene (synthetic rubber) Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland and Wallace Hume Carothers American 1931 Cyclotron Ernest Orlando Lawrence American 1931 Differential analyzer (analogue computer) Vannevar Bush American 1932 Phase contrast microscope Frits Zernike Dutch 1932 Van de Graaff generator Robert Jemison Van de Graaff American 1933 Frequency modulation (FM) Edwin Howard Armstrong American 1935 Buna (synthetic rubber) German scientists German 1935 Radiolocator (radar) Sir Robert Watson-Watt British 1935 Cortisone Edward Calvin Kendall Tadeus Reichstein American Swiss 1935 Electron microscope German scientists German 1935 Sulfanllamide Gerhard Domagk German 1935 Nylon Wallace Hume Carothers American 1936 Twin-rotor helicopter3 Heinrich Focke German 1937 Snowmobile Armand Bombardier Canadian 1938 Ballpoint pen Georg and Ladislao Biro Hungarian 1939 DDT Paul Müller Swiss 1939 Helicopter4 Igor Sikorsky American 1940 Betatron Donald William Kerst American 1941 Turbojet aircraft engine Sir Frank Whittle British 1942 Guided missile Wernher von Braun German 1942 Nuclear reactor Enrico Fermi American 1942 Xerography Chester Carlson American 1944 V-2 (rocket-propelled bomb) German scientists German 1945 Atomic bomb U.S. government scientists American 1945 Streptomycin Selman A. Waksman American 1946 Electronic digital computer John Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W. Mauchly American 1947 Holography Dennis Gabon English 1947 Chlormycetin Mildred Rebstock American 1947 Polaroid Land camera Edwin Herbert Land American 1947 Bathyscaphe Auguste Piccard Swiss 1947 Microwave oven Percy L. Spencer American 1948 Scintillation counter Hartmut Kallmann German 1948 Aureomycin Benjamin Minge Duggar and Chandra Bose Subba Row American 1948 Transistor John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Shockley American 1949 Ramjet airplane René Leduc French 1950 Color television Peter Carl Goldmark American 1952 Hydrogen bomb U.S. government scientists American 1952 Bubble chamber (nuclear particle detector) Donald Arthur Glaser American 1953 Maser Charles Townes American 1954 Solar battery Bell Telephone Laboratory scientists American 1954 Polio vaccine Jonas Salk American 1955 Synthetic diamonds General Electric scientists American 1955 Carbon dating W.F. Libby American 1955 Optical fibers Narinder S. Kapany Indian 1956 Hovercraft Christopher Cockerell English 1956 First prototype rotary engine Felix Wankel German 1956 Videotape Charles Ginsberg Ray Dolby American 1957 Sodium-cooled atomic reactor U.S. government scientists American 1957 Artificial earth satellite USSR government scientists Soviet 1958 Communications satellite U.S. government scientists American 1959 Integrated circuit Jack Kilby Robert Noyce American 1960 Laser Charles Hard Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, and Gordon Gould American 1960 Chlorophyll synthesized Robert Burns Woodward American 1960 Birth-control pill Gregory Pincus, John Rock, and Min-chueh Chang American 1962 Light-emitting diode (LED) Nick Holonyak, Jr. American 1964 Liquid-crystal display George Heilmeier American 1965 Kevlar technology Stephanie Kwolek American 1966 Artificial heart (left ventricle) Michael Ellis DeBakey American 1966 Tunable dye laser Mary Spaeth American 1967 Human heart transplant Christiaan Neethling Barnard South Africa 1970 First complete synthesis of a gene Har Gobind Khorana American 1971 Microprocessor Ted Hoff American 1971 Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging Raymond Damadian American 1972 Electronic pocket calculator J.S. Kilby and J.D. Merryman American 1972 First magnetohydrodynamic power generator USSR government scientists Soviet 1973 Skylab orbiting space laboratory U.S. government scientists American 1974 Recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) U.S. scientists American 1975 CAT (computerized axial tomography) scanner Godfrey N. Hounsfield British 1975 Fiberoptics Bell Laboratories American 1976 Supercomputer J.H. Van Tassel and Seymour Cray American 1978 Synthesis of human insulin genes Roberto Crea, Tadaaki Hirose, Adam Kraszewski, and Keiichi Itakura American 1978 Mammal to mammal gene transplants Paul Berg, Richard Mulligan, and Bruce Howard American 1979 Compact disc Joop Sinjou Toshi Tada Doi Dutch Japanese 1979 Genetic flaw repaired in mouse cells by recombinant DNA and micromanipulation techniques W. French Anderson and coworkers American 1981 Space transportation system (space shuttle) National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers American 1982 Artificial heart Robert K. Jarvik American 1983 Scanning tunneling microscope Gerd Binnig Heinrich Rohrer German Swiss 1986 High-temperature superconductors J. Georg Bednorz Karl A. Müller German Swiss 1992 Magnetic boat Yoshiro Saji Japanese Notes 1) An impractical prototype that was never widely used. 2) Bell received a patent for the telephone in 1876, but Meucci developed an earlier model around 1860. 3) Both rotors operated on a horizontal plane. 4) One rotor operated on a horizontal plane to provide lift, while another rotor operated on a vertical plane to counter the torque generated by the first rotor.