|
Year |
INVENTION OR DISCOVERY |
INVENTOR OR DISCOVERER |
NATIONALITY |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
1705 |
Steam engine |
Thomas Newcomen |
English |
|
1709 |
First smelting of iron with coke |
Abraham Darby |
British |
|
1710 |
Piano |
Bartolomeo Cristofori |
Italian |
|
1714 |
Mercury thermometer |
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit |
German |
|
1717 |
Diving bell |
Edmond Halley |
British |
|
1725 |
Stereotyping |
William Ged |
British |
|
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 |
Richard Arkwright |
British |
|
1769 |
Steam engine |
James Watt |
British |
|
1770 |
Steam Vehicle |
Nicholas Joseph Cugnot |
French |
|
1775 |
Submersible |
David Bushnell |
American |
|
1780 |
Steel pen |
Samuel Harrison |
British |
|
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 |
British |
|
1793 |
Cotton gin |
Eli Whitney |
American |
|
1795 |
Hydraulic press |
Joseph Bramah |
British |
|
1796 |
Lithography |
Aloys Senefelder |
German |
|
1796 |
Smallpox vaccination |
Edward Jenner |
British |
|
1799 |
Fourdrinier machine (papermaking) |
Louis Robert |
French |
|
1800 |
Electric battery |
Count Alessandro Volta |
Italian |
|
1801 |
Pattern loom |
Joseph Marie Jacquard |
French |
|
1801 |
First discovery of an asteroid (Ceres) |
Giuseppe Piazzi |
Italian |
|
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 |
François Appert |
French |
|
1810 |
Printing Press |
Frederick König |
German |
|
1814 |
Railway locomotive |
George Stephenson |
British |
|
1815 |
Safety lamp |
Sir Humphry Davy |
British |
|
1816 |
Bicycle |
Karl D. Sauerbronn |
German |
|
1819 |
Stethoscope |
René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec |
French |
|
1820 |
Hygrometer |
J. F. Daniell |
British |
|
1824 |
Galvanometer |
André-Marie Ampère |
French |
|
1824 |
Portland cement |
Joseph Aspdin |
British |
|
1825 |
Electromagnet |
William Sturgeon |
British |
|
1827 |
Friction match |
John Walker |
British |
|
1829 |
Typewriter |
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 |
|
1832 |
Electric motor |
William Sturgeon |
British |
|
1834 |
Electric tram |
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 William Henry Fox Talbot |
French British |
|
1839 |
Vulcanized rubber |
Charles Goodyear |
American |
|
1839 |
Steam hammer |
James Nasmyth |
British |
|
1839 |
Bicycle with driving levers and pedals |
Kirkpatrick MacMillan |
British |
|
1842 |
Ether |
Crawford Williamson Long |
American |
|
1845 |
Pneumatic tyre |
Robert William Thompson |
American |
|
1846 |
Rotary printing press |
Richard March Hoe |
American |
|
1846 |
Gun-cotton |
Christian Friedrich Schönbein |
German |
|
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 |
Ophthalmoscope |
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz |
German |
|
1852 |
Non-rigid airship |
Henri Giffard |
French |
|
1852 |
Safety lift (with brake) |
Elisha Graves Otis |
American |
|
1852 |
Gyroscope |
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault |
French |
|
1855 |
Hypodermic syringe |
Alexander Wood |
British |
|
1855 |
Safety matches |
J. E. Lundstrom |
Swedish |
|
1855 |
Gas burner |
Robert Wilhelm Bunsen |
German |
|
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 |
Étienne Lenoir |
French |
|
1861 |
Web-fed newspaper printing press |
Richard March Hoe |
American |
|
1861 |
Electric furnace |
Wiliam Siemens |
British |
|
1861 |
Machine gun |
Richard Jordan Gatling |
American |
|
1861 |
Kinematoscope |
Coleman Sellers |
American |
|
1865 |
Antiseptic surgery |
Joseph Lister |
British |
|
1866 |
Paper (from wood pulp, sulphite process) |
Benjamin Chew Tilghman |
American |
|
1866 |
Dynamite |
Alfred Bernhard Nobel |
Swedish |
|
1868 |
Dry cell battery |
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 |
|
1874 |
Quadruplex telegraph |
Thomas Alva Edison |
American |
|
1876 |
Telephone |
Alexander Graham Bell |
American |
|
1877 |
Internal-combustion engine (four-cycle) |
Nikolaus August Otto |
German |
|
1877 |
Gramophone (cylinder recorder) |
Thomas Alva Edison |
American |
|
1877 |
Microphone |
Emile Berliner |
American |
|
1877 |
Electric welding |
Elihu Thomson |
American |
|
1877 |
Refrigerator car |
G. F. Swift |
American |
|
1878 |
Cathode ray tube |
Sir William Crookes |
British |
|
1878 |
Incandescent filament lamp |
Sir Joseph Swan |
British |
|
1879 |
Cash register |
James J. Ritty |
American |
|
1879 |
Car engine (two-cycle) |
Karl Benz |
German |
|
1879 |
Arc lamp |
Charles Francis Bush |
American |
|
1880 |
Linotype |
Ottmar Mergenthaler |
American |
|
1884 |
Steam turbine |
C. A. Parsons |
British |
|
1884 |
Rayon (nitrocellulose) |
Comte Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet |
French |
|
1884 |
Multiple-wheel steam turbine |
Sir Charles Algernon Parsons |
British |
|
1884 |
Nipkow disc (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 tyre |
J.B. Dunlop |
British |
|
1887 |
Gramophone (disc 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 |
Flexible roll-film 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 |
Synthetic rubber |
Sir William Augustus Tilden |
British |
|
1892 |
AC motor |
Nikola Tesla |
American |
|
1892 |
Three-colour 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 |
German |
|
1893 |
Diesel engine |
Rudolf Diesel |
German |
|
1893 |
Petrol-driven car |
Charles Edgar Duryea and J. Frank Duryea |
American |
|
1893 |
Moving picture viewer |
Thomas Alva Edison |
American |
|
1894 |
Moving picture projection |
Charles Francis Jenkins Louis Jean Lumière and Auguste Marie Lumière |
American French |
|
1895 |
X-ray |
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen |
German |
|
1895 |
Rayon (acetate) |
Charles Frederick Cross |
British |
|
1895 |
Wireless telegraph (radio transmission) |
Marchese Guglielmo Marconi |
Italian |
|
1896 |
Experimental aeroplane |
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 |
Aeroplane |
Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright |
American |
|
1903 |
Electrocardiograph |
Willem Einthoven |
Dutch |
|
1905 |
Diode rectifier tube (radio) |
Sir John Ambrose Fleming |
British |
|
1906 |
Gyrocompass |
Hermann Anschütz-Kampfe |
German |
|
1907 |
Bakelite |
Leo Hendrik Baekeland |
American |
|
1907 |
Triode amplifier tube (radio) |
Lee De Forest |
American |
|
1908 |
Two-colour moving 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 |
Vitamin B1 (thiamine) |
Casimir Funk |
Polish |
|
1911 |
Cellophane |
Jacques Edwin Brandenberger |
Swiss |
|
1911 |
Neon lamp |
Georges Claude |
French |
|
1912 |
Mercury-vapour lamp |
Peter Cooper Hewitt |
American |
|
1913 |
Ramjet engine |
René Lorin |
French |
|
1913 |
Multigrid electron tube |
Irving Langmuir |
American |
|
1913 |
Thermal cracking of crude oil |
William Meriam Burton |
American |
|
1913 |
Heterodyne radio receiver |
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden |
American |
|
1915 |
Car 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 |
Insulin |
Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles H. Best |
Canadian |
|
1922-26 |
Sound films |
T.W. Case |
American |
|
1923 |
Television iconoscope |
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin |
American |
|
1925 |
Quick-frozen food |
Clarence Birdseye |
American |
|
1925 |
Television image dissector tube |
Philo Taylor Farnsworth |
American |
|
1926 |
Liquid-fuel rocket |
Robert Hutchings Goddard |
American |
|
1928 |
Penicillin |
Sir Alexander Fleming |
British |
|
1930 |
Nylon (fibre-forming synthetic polyamides) |
Wallace Hume Carothers |
American |
|
1930 |
Bathysphere |
(Charles) William Beebe |
American |
|
1930 |
Freon (low-boiling fluorine compounds) |
Thomas Midgley and co-workers |
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 analyser (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) |
Scientists of IG Farbenindustrie |
German |
|
1935 |
Radar |
Sir Robert Watson-Watt |
British |
|
1935 |
Cortisone |
Edward Calvin Kendall Tadeus Reichstein |
American Swiss |
|
1935 |
Electron microscope |
M. Khal and E. Ruska |
German |
|
1935 |
Sulphanilamide |
Gerhard Domagk |
German |
|
1936 |
Twin-rotor helicopter |
Heinrich Focke |
German |
|
1937 |
Nylon |
Wallace Hume Carothers |
American |
|
1939 |
DDT |
Paul Müller |
Swiss |
|
1939 |
Helicopter |
Igor Sikorsky |
American |
|
1940 |
Betatron |
Donald William Kerst |
American |
|
1941 |
Turbojet aircraft engine |
Sir Frank Whittle |
British |
|
1942 |
Ballistic missile |
Wernher von Braun |
German |
|
1942 |
Nuclear reactor |
Enrico Fermi |
Italian |
|
1942 |
Xerography |
Chester Carlson |
American |
|
1943 |
Electronic digital computer |
Tommy Flowers |
British |
|
1945 |
Atomic bomb |
International team of scientists |
- |
|
1945 |
Streptomycin |
Selman A. Waksman |
American |
|
1947 |
Holography |
Dennis Gabor |
British |
|
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 aircraft |
René Leduc |
French |
|
1950 |
Colour television |
Peter Carl Goldmark |
American |
|
1952 |
Hydrogen bomb |
US 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 |
|
1956 |
Hovercraft |
Christopher Cockerell |
British |
|
1956 |
Rotary engine (prototype) |
Felix Wankel |
German |
|
1956 |
Videotape |
Charles Ginsberg Ray Dolby |
American American |
|
1957 |
Sodium-cooled atomic reactor |
US government scientists |
American |
|
1957 |
Artificial earth satellite |
USSR government scientists |
Soviet |
|
1958 |
Communications satellite |
US government scientists |
American |
|
1959 |
Integrated circuit |
Jack Kilby Robert Noyce American |
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 |
|
1966 |
Artificial heart (left ventricle) |
Michael Ellis DeBakey |
American |
|
1967 |
Human heart transplant |
Christiaan Neethling Barnard |
South Africa |
|
1970 |
First complete synthesis of a gene |
Har Gobind Khorana |
Indian |
|
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 |
US government scientists |
American |
|
1974 |
Recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) |
US scientists |
American |
|
1975 |
CAT (computerized axial tomography) scanner |
Godfrey N. Hounsfield |
British |
|
1975 |
Fibre optics |
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 |
|
1978 |
Jarvik-7 artificial heart |
Robert K. Jarvik |
American |
|
1979 |
Compact disc |
Joop Sinjou Toshi Tada Doi Dutch |
Japanese |
|
1979 |
Genetic flaw repaired in mouse cells by recombinant DNA and
micro-manipulation techniques |
W. French Anderson and co-workers |
American |
|
1981 |
Space transportation system (space shuttle) |
National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers |
American |
|
1983 |
Scanning tunnelling microscope |
Gerd Binnig Heinrich Rohrer |
German Swiss |
|
1984 |
What appears to be a planetary system in the process of formation
observed around the star Beta Pictoris |
Bradford Smith and Richard Terrile, using data from the IRAS satellite |
American |
|
1986 |
High-temperature superconductors |
J. Georg Bednorz Karl A. Müller |
German Swiss |
|
1989 |
COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite observes "wrinkles" in the
microwave background radiation filling the universe, revealing first
development of structure after the Big Bang |
Team led by George Smoot |
American |
|
1993 |
Clockwork radio |
Trevor Bayliss |
British |
|
1993 |
Keck 10-metre telescope, largest single optical telescope in the world,
begins its work on Mauna Kea, Hawaii |
University of California, California Institute of Technology |
American |
|
1994 |
Evidence for existence of top quark found |
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Illinois (Fermilab) |
American |
|
1995 |
Fermat's Last Theorem, a mathematical conjecture over 300 years old, was
proved by a mathematician at Princeton University |
Andrew Wiles |
British |
|
1995 |
Atoms of antimatter produced at CERN, Geneva |
International team of physicists |
German-Italian |
|
1995 |
Probe from Galileo spacecraft enters atmosphere of Jupiter |
US government scientists |
American |
|
|
|
|
|
