Notable Inventions and Discoveries

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	Steam-powered 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 Gabor	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.