Inventors and Inventions

 

 

YEAR OF INVENTION	INVENTOR	INVENTION	NATIONALITY
c. 2 million years ago	Homo habilis	stone tools
27th century BCE	Imhotep	step pyramid	Egyptian
3rd century BCE	Archimedes	Archimedes screw	Greek
3rd century BCE	Ctesibius of Alexandria	float-type clepsydra (water clock)	Greek
1st century CE	Heron of Alexandria	aeolipile (steam-powered turbine)	Greek
2nd century CE	Cai Lun	paper	Chinese
c. 1450	Johannes Gutenberg	printing press	German
1589	William Lee	knitting machine	English
c. 1590; 1608	Hans Lippershey	compound microscope; telescope	German-Dutch
1620	Cornelis Drebbel	oar-powered submarine	Dutch
1643	Evangelista Torricelli	mercury barometer	Italian
1650	Otto von Guericke	air pump	Prussian
1658	Christiaan Huygens	pendulum clock	Dutch
1664	Giuseppe Campani	lens-grinding lathe	Italian
c. 1670	Antonie van Leeuwenhoek	single-lens microscope	Dutch
1679	Denis Papin	pressure cooker	French-English
1680	Daniel Quare	repeating watch mechanism for sounding the nearest hour and quarter hour	English
1698	Thomas Savery	steam-driven vacuum pump	English
1701	Jethro Tull	mechanical seed drill	English
1709	Abraham Darby	used coke to smelt iron	English
1712	Thomas Newcomen	atmospheric steam engine	English
1730	John Hadley	quadrant for determining latitude	English
1730	Thomas Godfrey	quadrant for determining latitude	American
1732	Henri Pitot	pitot tube	French
1733	John Kay	flying shuttle	English
1735	John Harrison	marine chronometer	English
c. 1740	Benjamin Franklin	Franklin stove	American
c. 1740	Benjamin Huntsman	crucible steel	English
c. 1742	Thomas Boulsover	Sheffield plate	English
1745	Jacques de Vaucanson	automated loom	French
1764	Sir Richard Arkwright	water frame (spinning machine)	English
1765	James Watt	improved steam engine with separate condenser	Scottish
1769	Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot	steam-driven gun carriage	French
c. 1775	David Bushnell	hand-powered submarine	American
1776	Patrick Ferguson	breech-loading flintlock rifle	Scottish
1779	Samuel Crompton	spinning mule	English
1781	Jonathan Hornblower	reciprocating compound steam engine	English
c. 1781	William Murdock	Sun-and-planet motion for steam engines	Scottish
1782	Montgolfier brothers	hot-air balloon	French
1782	Josiah Wedgwood	pyrometer	English
1783	Claude-François-Dorothée, marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans	early paddlewheel steamboat	French
1787	John Fitch	early steamboat	American
1788	Andrew Meikle	threshing machine	Scottish
1789	Edmund Cartwright	wool-combing machine	English
1790	Oliver Evans	high-pressure steam engine (U.S.)	American
1790	William Nicholson	hydrometer	English
1794	Claude Chappe	semaphore telegraph	French
1794	Eli Whitney	cotton gin	American
1795	Joseph Bramah	hydraulic press	English
1795	Nicolas-Jacques Conté	graphite pencil	French
1798	Alois Senefelder	lithography	German
c. 1800	Henry Maudslay	metal lathe	English
1800	Alessandro Volta	electric battery	Italian
1802	John Stevens	screw-driven steamboat	American
1803	Richard Trevithick	steam railway locomotive	English
1804–05	Joseph-Marie Jacquard	Jacquard loom	French
1805	William Congreve	military rocket	English
1805–07	Alexander John Forsyth	percussion-lock musket	Scottish
1807	Robert Fulton	commercial steamboat	American
1809	John Heathcoat	lace-making machine	English
1812–13	John Blenkinsop	geared steam locomotive	English
1815	John Loudon McAdam	macadam road surface	Scottish
1816	Robert Stirling	Stirling external-combustion engine	Scottish
1818	Marc Isambard Brunel	geared steam tunneling shield	French-English
1819	René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec	stethoscope	French
1821	Thomas Hancock	rubber masticator	English
1823	Charles Macintosh	mackintosh waterproof fabric	Scottish
1824	Louis Braille	Braille writing system	French
1825	Richard Roberts	automatic spinning mule	Welsh
1825	George Stephenson	passenger train pulled by steam locomotive	English
1826–27	Nicéphore Niépce	permanent photographic image	French
1827	Nikolaus von Dreyse	needle-firing rifle	German
1827	Benoît Fourneyron	water turbine	French
1830	Goldsworthy Gurney	steam carriage	English
1830	Peter Cooper	Tom Thumb steam locomotive	American
c. 1830	Henri-Gustave Delvigne	cylindrical bullet	French
1831	Cyrus Hall McCormick	mechanical reaper	American
1832	Jeanne Villepreux-Power	glass aquarium	French
1833	Obed Hussey	mechanical reaper	American
1834	Thomas Davenport	electric motor	American
c. 1835	Charles Babbage	Analytical Engine mechanical computer	English
1835	Samuel Colt	revolver	American
1835–40	Rowland Hill	postage stamp	English
1836	John Frederic Daniell	Daniell cell battery	English
c. 1836	Edward Davy	electromagnetic telegraph repeater	English
1837	Isambard Kingdom Brunel	Great Western transatlantic steamer	English
1837	Isaac Pitman	Pitman shorthand	English
1837	Charles Wheatstone	electric needle telegraph	English
1837; 1838	Samuel F.B. Morse	electric telegraph; Morse code	American
1838	John Deere	all-steel one-piece plow	American
c. 1838	Chauncey Jerome	one-day brass clock movement	American
1839	Isaac Babbitt	babbitt metal	American
1839	Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre	daguerreotype	French
1839	Charles Goodyear	vulcanized rubber	American
1839–41	Johann Georg Bodmer	gear-making machine	Swiss
1840	William Howe	Howe truss for bridges	American
1842	Antoine-Joseph Sax	saxophone	Belgian-French
c. 1845	Thomas Jackson Rodman	prismatic gunpowder	American
1846	Elias Howe	sewing machine	American
1847	Richard March Hoe	rotary printing press	American
1849	Claude-Étienne Minié	cylindrical Minié bullet	French
c. 1850	William Kelly	pneumatic steel-making process	American
1851	Frederick Scott Archer	wet collodion photography process	English
1851	Hugh Burgess	soda papermaking process	English American
1851	Isaac Merrit Singer	domestic sewing machine	American
1852	Elisha Graves Otis	safety elevator	American
1853	George Cayley	first glider to carry a human	English
1856	Henry Bessemer	Bessemer steelmaking process	English
1858	Étienne Lenoir	internal-combustion engine	Belgian
1859	Gaston Planté	electric storage battery	French
1860	Christopher M. Spencer	Spencer breech-loading carbine	American
1860	Sondre Nordheim	ski bindings	Norwegian
1861	Robert Parker Parrott	Parrott gun (rifled cannon)	American
1861	William Siemens	open-hearth furnace	German English
c. 1862	Warren De la Rue	astronomical photography	English
1862	Richard Jordan Gatling	Gatling gun	American
1863	Louis Pasteur	pasteurization	French
1863	Linus Yale	Yale cylinder lock	American
1864–65	Siegfried Marcus	gasoline-powered automobile	German
1865	Samuel Cunliffe Lister	silk-combing machine	English
1865	George M. Pullman	Pullman sleeping car	American
1866	Thomas Clifford Allbutt	modern clinical thermometer	English
c. 1866	Georges Leclanché	dry-cell battery	French
1867	Alfred Ely Beach	pneumatic tube	American
c. 1867	Joseph Monier	reinforced concrete	French
1867	Alfred Bernhard Nobel	dynamite	Swedish
1868	Christopher Latham Sholes	typewriter	American
1869	Louis Ducos du Hauron	trichrome process of colour photography	French
1869	George Westinghouse	air brake	American
1870	John Wesley Hyatt	celluloid	American
1871	Margaret Knight	flat-bottomed paper bag	American
1871	James Starley	bicycle with centre-pivot steering	English
1873	Joseph Farwell Glidden	barbed wire	American
1876	Alexander Graham Bell	telephone	Scottish American
1876	Elisha Gray	telephone	American
1876	Melville Reuben Bissell	carpet sweeper	American
1876	Nikolaus August Otto	four-stroke internal-combustion engine	German
1876	Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov	Yablochkov candle (arc lamp)	Russian
1877	Joseph Rogers Brown	universal grinding machine	American
c. 1877	Ephraim Shay	geared steam locomotive	American
1877; c. 1879	Thomas Alva Edison	phonograph cylinder sound recorder; incandescent lightbulb	American
1880	Maria Beasley	life raft	English
1880–88	Nikola Tesla	alternating-current electric motor	Serbian American
1884	Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet	rayon	French
1884	Hiram Maxim	Maxim machine gun	American British
1884	Ottmar Mergenthaler	Linotype typesetting machine	German American
1884	Charles Algernon Parsons	multistage steam turbine	English
1885	Karl Friedrich Benz	practical automobile with an internal-combustion engine	German
1885	Gottlieb Daimler	high-speed internal-combustion engine	German
1886	Josephine Cochrane	mechanical dishwasher	American
1886	Charles Sumner Tainter	graphophone cylinder sound recorder	American
1886	Charles Martin Hall	electrolytic aluminum smelting	American
1886	Paul-Louis-Toussaint Héroult	electrolytic aluminum smelting	French
1887	Emil Berliner	Gramophone disc sound recorder	German American
1887	John Boyd Dunlop	pneumatic rubber tire	Scottish
1888	George Eastman	Kodak camera	American
1889	Franklin Hiram King	cylindrical grain silo	American
c. 1890	Herman Hollerith	tabulating machine	American
1890–1900	Ferdinand von Zeppelin	zeppelin airship	German
1891	James A. Naismith	basketball	Canadian American
1892	William Seward Burroughs	adding machine	American
c. 1892	James Dewar	vacuum flask	Scottish
1892	Rudolf Diesel	diesel engine	German
c. 1892	Hayward A. Harvey	carburizing (surface hardening of steel plate)	American
1893	Edward Goodrich Acheson	Carborundum	American
1894	Otto Lilienthal	Lilienthal standard glider	German
1894	Lumière brothers	Cinématographe motion-picture camera and projector	French
1895	King Camp Gillette	disposable razor	American
1896	Guglielmo Marconi	wireless telegraph	Italian
1898	John Philip Holland	gasoline-electric submarine	Irish American
1900	Valdemar Poulsen	telegraphone magnetic wire recorder	Danish
1900	Reginald Aubrey Fessenden	amplitude modulation (AM) of radio waves	Canadian American
1902	Willis Haviland Carrier	air-conditioning	American
1903	Mary Anderson	windshield wiper	American
1903	Wilbur and Orville Wright	powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight	American
1904	John Ambrose Fleming	vacuum diode rectifier	English
1906	Lee De Forest	Audion vacuum tube amplifier	American
1906–09	Ole Evinrude	marine outboard motor	Norwegian American
1908	Melitta Bentz	coffee filters	German
1908	Hans Geiger	Geiger counter	German
c. 1909	Leo Hendrik Baekeland	Bakelite	Belgian American
1910	Paul Ehrlich	arsphenamine anti-syphilis drug	German
1911	Isaac Newton Lewis	Lewis machine gun	American
1911	Elmer Ambrose Sperry	gyroscopic compass	American
1912	Charles F. Kettering	automobile electrical starter	American
1913–14	Henry Ford	automobile assembly line	American
1916	Irving Wightman Colburn	Colburn flat-glass machine	American
1916	William D. Coolidge	X-ray tube	American
1918	John Moses Browning	Browning automatic rifle	American
1923–31	Vladimir Kosma Zworykin	Iconoscope and Kinescope electronic television camera and receiver	Russian American
1924	John Logie Baird	electromechanical television	Scottish
c. 1924	Clarence Birdseye	rapid-frozen food	American
1926	Robert Hutchings Goddard	liquid-fueled rocket engine	American
1927	Philo Taylor Farnsworth	Image Dissector electronic television camera	American
1929	Robert Jemison Van de Graaff	Van de Graaff generator for particle accelerators	American
1931	László József Bíró	ballpoint pen	Hungarian
1931–35	Isaac Shoenberg	high-definition electronic television system	Russian English
1933	Edwin H. Armstrong	frequency modulation (FM) of radio waves	American
1933	Ernst Ruska	electron microscope	German
1934	Laurens Hammond	Hammond organ (electronic keyboard)	American
1934	Ernest Orlando Lawrence	cyclotron particle accelerator	American
1935	Wallace Hume Carothers	nylon	American
1935	Robert Alexander Watson-Watt	radar early warning	Scottish
1937	Frank Whittle	jet engine	English
1938	Katharine Blodgett	nonreflective glass	American
1938	Chester F. Carlson	xerography	American
1938	Albert Hofmann	LSD	Swiss
1939	Paul Hermann Müller	DDT	Swiss
1939	Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain	jet aircraft	German
1939	Igor Sikorsky	production helicopter	Russian American
1942	Hedy Lamarr	spread-spectrum technology	American
1942	George Antheil	spread-spectrum technology	American
1943	Jacques-Yves Cousteau	Aqua-Lung	French
1946	John W. Mauchly	ENIAC general-purpose electronic computer	American
1947	John Bardeen	transistor	American
1947	Walter H. Brattain	transistor	American
1947	William B. Shockley	transistor	American
c. 1947	R. Buckminster Fuller	geodesic dome	American
1947	Edwin Herbert Land	Polaroid instant-print camera	American
c. 1947	Willard Frank Libby	carbon-14 dating	American
c. 1947	Les Paul	eight-track tape recorder	American
1948	Leo Fender	electric guitar	American
1948	Mária Telkes	solar-heated home	American
c. 1949	Charles Stark Draper	inertial guidance systems for aircraft	American
1949	Tom Kilburn	Manchester Mark I stored-program digital computer	English
1952	Grace Hopper	compiler	American
1952	Virginia Apgar	Apgar Score System	American
1953	Charles Hard Townes	maser	American
1954	Uziel Gal	Uzi submachine gun	Israeli
1954	Felix Wankel	Wankel rotary gasoline engine	German
1958	Jack Kilby	integrated circuit	American
1958	Robert Noyce	integrated circuit	American
1960	Theodore H. Maiman	ruby laser	American
1964	Michael DeBakey	coronary artery bypass	American
1964	Seymour Cray	supercomputer	American
1964	Douglas Engelbart	computer mouse	American
1965	Stephanie Kwolek	Kevlar	American
1969	Kenneth L. Thompson	UNIX operating system	American
1969	Dennis M. Ritchie	UNIX operating system	American
c. 1971	Stephanie Kwolek	Kevlar	American
1973	Paul Lauterbur	magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)	American
1973	Peter Mansfield	magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)	English
1974	Vinton Cerf	Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)	American
1974	Robert Kahn	Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)	American
1974	Erno Rubik	Rubik's cube	Hungarian
1977	Frederick Sanger	DNA sequencing	English
1977	Stephen Wozniak	Apple II personal computer	American
1981	Gerd Binnig	scanning tunneling microscope	German
1981	Heinrich Rohrer	scanning tunneling microscope	Swiss
1981	Patricia Bath	Laserphaco Probe	American
1990–91	Tim Berners-Lee	World Wide Web	English
1991	Linus Torvalds	Linux open-source operating system	Finnish