Inventions thru the age

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 Ø©tienne 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 JÙ�ns 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 SchÙ�nbein 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-Ø©tienne 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 RÙ�ntgen 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-Kنmpfe 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.