Date Inventor Or Discoverer Nationality
1250 Magnifying glass Roger Bacon English
1450 Printing press Johann Gutenberg German
1504 Pocket watch Peter Henlein German
1590 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
Invention Or Discovery
Compound microscope
1714 Mercury thermometer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit German
1717 Diving bell Edmund Halley English
1725 Stereotyping William Ged Scottish
1745 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 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
FrenchJacques Étienne Montgolfier
1784 Threshing machine Andrew Meikle British
Leyden jar (condenser)
Steam engine (with separate condenser)
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 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
Fourdrinier machine (papermaking)
1810 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 Jöns Jakob Berzelius Swedish
1823 Electromagnet William Sturgeon British
1824 Portland cement Joseph Aspdin British
1827 Friction match John Walker British
1829 W.A. Burt American
1829 Braille printing Louis Braille French
1830 Platform scales Thaddeus Fairbanks American
Food preservation (by sterilization and exclusion of air)
Typewriter1
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 American
Sir Charles Wheatstone British
1838 Morse code Samuel Finley Breese Morse American
1839 Photography
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and French
British
1839 Vulcanized rubber Charles Goodyear American
1839 Steam hammer James Nasmyth Scottish
1839 Bicycle (with pedals) Kirkpatrick MacMillan British
Joseph Nicéphore Niepce William Henry Fox Talbot
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 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
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz
1856 Sir Henry Bessemer British
1858 Harvester Charles and William Marsh American
1859 Spectroscope
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and
GermanRobert Wilhelm Bunsen
1860 Gas engine Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir French
1861 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 Benjamin Chew Tilghman American
1866 Dynamite Alfred Bernhard Nobel Swedish
1868 Dry cell Georges Leclanché French
1868 Typewriter
Carlos Glidden and
AmericanChristopher Latham Sholes
Bessemer converter (steel)
Web-fed newspaper printing press
Paper (from wood pulp, sulfite process)
1868 Air brake George Westinghouse American
1870 Celluloid John Wesley Hyatt and Isaiah Hyatt American
1871 Zénobe-Théophile Gramme Belgian
1874 Quadruplex telegraph Thomas Alva Edison American
1876
Alexander Graham Bell American
Antonio Meucci Italian
1877 Nikolaus August Otto German
1877 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
Thomas Alva Edison American
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan British
Continuous current dynamo
Telephone2
Internal-combustion engine (four-cycle)
Talking machine (phonograph)
Incandescent filament lamp
1879 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) French
1884 Sir Charles Algernon Parsons British
1884 Paul Gottlieb Nipkow German
1884 Fountain pen Lewis Edson Waterman American
1885
Chichester A. Bell and
AmericanCharles Sumner Tainter
1885 AC transformer William Stanley American
1887 Air-inflated rubber tire J.B. Dunlop Scottish
1887 Emile Berliner American
Automobile engine (two-cycle)
Comte Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet
Multiple-wheel steam turbine
Nipkow disk (mechanical television scanning device)
Graphophone (dictating machine)
Gramophone (disk records)
1887 Gas mantle Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach Austrian
1887 Mimeograph Albert Blake Dick American
1887 Monotype Tolbert Lanston American
1888 William Seward Burroughs American
1888 Kodak camera George Eastman American
1889 Steam turbine C.G. de Laval Swedish
1890 Louis Henri Despeissis French
1891 Glider Otto Lilienthal German
1891
Thomas Alva Edison American
William K. L. Dickson British
1891
Thomas Alva Edison American
William K. L. Dickson 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
Adding machine (recording)
Rayon (cuprammonium)
Motion picture camera (kinetograph)
Motion picture viewer (kinetoscope)
1892 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
AmericanJ. Frank Duryea
1894
French
Charles Francis JenkinsAmerican
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 Leo Hendrik Baekeland American
1900 Rigid dirigible airship Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin German
1902 Radiotelephone
Valdemar Poulsen Danish
Vacuum bottle (Dewar flask)
Motion picture projection
Louis Jean Lumière and Auguste Marie Lumière
Sensitized photographic paper
1902 Radiotelephone Reginald Aubrey Fessenden American
1903 Airplane Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright American
1903 Windshield wipers Mary Anderson American
1903 Electrocardiograph Willem Einthoven Dutch
1905 Sir John Ambrose Fleming British
1906 Gyrocompass Hermann Anschütz-Kämpfe German
1907 Bakelite Leo Hendrik Baekeland American
1907 Lee De Forest American
1908 Cellophane Jacques Edwin Brandenberger Swiss
1908 C. Albert Smith British
1909 Salvarsan Paul Ehrlich German
1910 Hydrogenation of coal Friedrich Bergius German
1910 Elmer Ambrose Sperry American
1911 Air conditioning W.H. Carrier American
1911 Vitamins Casimir Funk Polish
Diode rectifier tube (radio)
Triode amplifier tube (radio)
Two-color motion picture camera
Gyroscopic compass and stabilizer
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 Reginald Aubrey Fessenden American
1915 Automobile self-starter Charles Franklin Kettering American
1916 John Moses Browning American
1916 Irving Langmuir American
1916 X-ray tube William David Coolidge American
1919 Mass spectrograph
Sir Francis William Aston British
Arthur Jeffrey Dempster American
1922-26 Sound motion pictures T.W. Case American
1922 Insulin Sir Frederick Grant Banting Canadian
1923 Autogiro Juan de la Cierva Spanish
Heterodyne radio receiver
Browning gun (automatic rifle)
Gas-filled incandescent lamp
1923 Television iconoscope Vladimir Kosma Zworykin American
1924 Quick-frozen food Clarence Birdseye American
1925 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 Thomas Midgley and coworkers American
1930 Sir Frank Whittle British
1930 American
1931 Cyclotron Ernest Orlando Lawrence American
1931 Vannevar Bush American
Television image dissector tube
Freon (low-boiling fluorine compounds)
Modern gas-turbine engine
Neoprene (synthetic rubber)
Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland and Wallace Hume Carothers
Differential analyzer (analogue computer)
1932 Frits Zernike Dutch
1932 Robert Jemison Van de Graaff American
1933 Edwin Howard Armstrong American
1935 German scientists German
1935 Radiolocator (radar) Sir Robert Watson-Watt British
1935 Cortisone
Edward Calvin Kendall American
Tadeus Reichstein Swiss
1935 Electron microscope German scientists German
1935 Sulfanllamide Gerhard Domagk German
1935 Nylon Wallace Hume Carothers American
1936 Heinrich Focke German
1937 Snowmobile Armand Bombardier Canadian
1938 Ballpoint pen Georg and Ladislao Biro Hungarian
1939 DDT Paul Müller Swiss
1939 Igor Sikorsky American
1940 Betatron Donald William Kerst American
Phase contrast microscope
Van de Graaff generator
Frequency modulation (FM)
Buna (synthetic rubber)
Twin-rotor helicopter3
Helicopter4
1941 Sir Frank Whittle British
1942 Guided missile Wernher von Braun German
1942 Nuclear reactor Enrico Fermi American
1942 Xerography Chester Carlson American
1944 German scientists German
1945 Atomic bomb U.S. government scientists American
1945 Streptomycin Selman A. Waksman American
1946
John Presper Eckert, Jr., and
AmericanJohn W. Mauchly
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
AmericanChandra Bose Subba Row
Turbojet aircraft engine
V-2 (rocket-propelled bomb)
Electronic digital computer
1948 Transistor American
1949 Ramjet airplane René Leduc French
1950 Color television Peter Carl Goldmark American
1952 Hydrogen bomb U.S. government scientists American
1952 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 Felix Wankel German
1956 Videotape
Charles Ginsberg
AmericanRay Dolby
John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Shockley
Bubble chamber (nuclear particle detector)
First prototype rotary engine
1957 U.S. government scientists American
1957 Artificial earth satellite USSR government scientists Soviet
1958 U.S. government scientists American
1959 Integrated circuit
Jack Kilby
AmericanRobert Noyce
1960 Laser American
1960 Robert Burns Woodward American
1960 Birth-control pill
Gregory Pincus, John Rock, and
AmericanMin-chueh Chang
1962 Nick Holonyak, Jr. American
1964 Liquid-crystal display George Heilmeier American
1965 Kevlar technology Stephanie Kwolek American
1966 Michael Ellis DeBakey American
1966 Tunable dye laser Mary Spaeth American
Sodium-cooled atomic reactor
Communications satellite
Charles Hard Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, and Gordon Gould
Chlorophyll synthesized
Light-emitting diode (LED)
Artificial heart (left ventricle)
1967 Christiaan Neethling Barnard South Africa
1970 Har Gobind Khorana American
1971 Microprocessor Ted Hoff American
1971 Raymond Damadian American
1972 J.S. Kilby and J.D. Merryman American
1972 USSR government scientists Soviet
1973 U.S. government scientists American
1974 U.S. scientists American
1975 Godfrey N. Hounsfield British
1975 Fiberoptics Bell Laboratories American
1976 Supercomputer J.H. Van Tassel and Seymour Cray American
Human heart transplant
First complete synthesis of a gene
Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging
Electronic pocket calculator
First magnetohydrodynamic power generator
Skylab orbiting space laboratory
Recombinant DNA (genetic engineering)
CAT (computerized axial tomography) scanner
1978 American
1978 American
1979 Compact disc
Joop Sinjou Dutch
Toshi Tada Doi Japanese
1979 W. French Anderson and coworkers American
1981 American
1982 Artificial heart Robert K. Jarvik American
1983
Gerd Binnig German
Heinrich Rohrer Swiss
1986
J. Georg Bednorz German
Karl A. Müller Swiss
Synthesis of human insulin genes
Roberto Crea, Tadaaki Hirose, Adam Kraszewski, and Keiichi Itakura
Mammal to mammal gene transplants
Paul Berg, Richard Mulligan, and Bruce Howard
Genetic flaw repaired in mouse cells by recombinant DNA and micromanipulation techniques
Space transportation system (space shuttle)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers
Scanning tunneling microscope
High-temperature superconductors
1992 Magnetic boat Yoshiro Saji JapaneseNotes
1) An impractical prototype that was never widely used.
3) Both rotors operated on a horizontal plane.
2) Bell received a patent for the telephone in 1876, but Meucci developed an earlier model around 1860.
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.