Inventions are all around us and new things are being invented everyday.

Inventions such as the iPhone and computers are very new inventions compared to things that were invented in the Victorian times.

The Victorian period saw many major inventions that made travel and communication easier for many

people.

Victorian Inventions Timeline

First photograph taken.

Pedal bicycle was invented.

Pedal steamboats were invented.

First postage stamp used.

Rubber tyres were made.

The sewing machine invented.

The first glider was built to be flown by a pilot.

Flushing public toilet opened in London.

Safety match invented.

The first horse drawn tram.

Underground railway is opened, all powered by steam.

The telephone was invented.

Electric light bulb was invented.

The petrol motor car was invented. It had 3 wheels and could go 4mph.

The Kodak box camera was invented. It became extremely popular.

Moving pictures were invented.

X-Rays were invented.

There were many other inventions such as ice cream, post boxes, typewriters, jelly babies and radios.

The Sewing Machine

• Invented by: Elias Howe (born on July 9, 1819 and died on October 3, 1867).

• His invention was a fast sewing machine. His most important contribution was that it was a lock-stitch sewing machine, so that the stitches didn't pull back out again. It was five times faster than anything else of that time. It was patented in 1846.

• Nobody in America would lend Elias the money to build a factory to make his machines, so he left for London where he and another man made improvements to his idea. While he was gone, other American businesses stole and copied his idea, even though it was patented. When he got back to America, he went to court to make those businesses pay for their theft of his idea including the very famous Singer factory. He won his case and was given lots of money from the other companies. In 1865 he established the Howe Machine Company.

The telephone

• Invented by: Alexander Graham Bell.

• Information: Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1847. When he left school, he worked for his father who was a speech therapist, teaching deaf people to speak. He caught tuberculosis (a very dangerous lung disease) when he was 23, so the family moved to Canada where the climate was drier.

• After a year the family moved to Boston in America where Bell became a Professor at Boston University. He worked on his telephone idea in his spare time trying to pass messages to his assistant in another room. He further developed his idea and by 1876 took it to the patent office to 'file' a patent on it.

The Phonograph

• 1877: The world's first recording of the human voice is heard when the inventor of the phonograph, Thomas Edison, recited 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' and played it back.

• Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder using an up-down ("hill-and-dale") motion of the stylus. The tinfoil sheet was wrapped around a grooved cylinder, and the sound was recorded as indentations into the foil.

The Bicycle

• 1879: Safety Bicycle invented. It had a chain, sprocket driven rear wheel and equally sized wheels. Early bikes of this style were known as safety bicycles because they were noted for, and marketed as, being safer than the high wheelers they were replacing. Even though modern bicycles use a similar design, the term is rarely used today, and may be considered obsolete.

• The first bike to be called a "safety" was designed by the British engineer Henery J. Lawson in 1876. Unlike penny-farthings the rider's feet were within reach of the ground, making it easier to stop. The pedals powered the rear wheel, keeping the rider's feet safely away from the front wheel. The original model used treadles to transfer power to the rear wheel, the updated 1879 model used a chain drive, an important new technology that has previously only been used on tricycles.

The Light Bulb

• The light bulb, we would be in the dark without it! Such a clever invention.

• So who invented it?

• The answer to that problem is Thomas Alva Edison. He was born in 1847.

• Thomas Alva Edison was a scientist and an inventor. In October 1879 he made a carbon filament light bulb that glowed continuously for 40 hours.

The Camera

• Invented by: William Henry Fox Talbot

• In 1833, he was able to make "photogenic drawings" (as he called them) by exposing a chemically sensitive paper to sunlight with objects such as leaves, lace, etc. on top. This produced what is now called a negative image, with white where the original scene was dark, and vice versa. Talbot recognised the value in producing a negative image at first, because it meant that the picture could be copied. When the paper negative was soaked in oil it became transparent, and could then be printed onto another piece of paper, producing a positive.

• In late September 1840, he patented the positive / negative process.

• A Frenchman called Daguerre had just announced that he also had invented a photograph, and although the image was much clearer than Talbot's, he could not make any copies of his photos.

Ice Cream

• 1851: Jacob Fussell of Baltimore, Maryland was the first to manufacture ice cream on a large scale.

• Fussell bought fresh dairy products from farmers in York County, Pennsylvania, and sold them in Baltimore. An unstable demand for his dairy products often left him with a surplus of cream, which he made into ice cream. He built his first ice-cream factory in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania, in 1851.

• Two years later, he moved his factory to Baltimore. Later, he opened factories in several other cities and taught the business to others, who operated their own plants. Mass production reduced the cost of ice cream and added to its popularity.

Chocolate Easter Eggs

• 1875: The first chocolate Easter eggs were made by Fry's of Bristol.

• The earliest Cadbury chocolate eggs were made of 'dark' chocolate with a plain smooth surface and were filled with whole almonds coated with a sugar shell in various colours. By 1893 there were no less than 19 different lines on the Cadbury Brothers Easter list in the UK. From Germany came the 'crocodile' finish which by breaking up the smooth surface, disguised minor imperfections; still used today by some manufacturers, this was the forerunner to the many distinctive finishes now available.

Cinema

• In 1893 at the Thomas Edison introduced to the public the Kinetograph - the first practical moving picture

• In late 1895 in Paris, Antoine Lumière began exhibitions of projected films before the paying public.

• The movies of the time were seen mostly via temporary storefront spaces and traveling exhibitors or as acts in vaudeville programs. A film could be under a minute long and would usually present a single scene, authentic or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event or slapstick.

• But the novelty of realistically moving photographs was enough for a motion picture industry to mushroom before the end of the century, in countries around the world.

Trains

• George Stephenson invented The Rocket.

• It was the first steam locomotive good enough to use to pull trains and cars.

• Stephenson used the new technology for his Stockton & Darlington railway in 1825.

• The first really successful railway was the Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, It was also called the L and M.

• By 1857 every town of any size in England was connected by rail.