Notable Inventions and Discoveries

vengabeats

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
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.
 
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