Birth of a Bomber- Aircraft Production in Britain, 1942 D7080

The following is a list and timeline of

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed enti ...

s as well as

invention An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

s and discoveries that involved

British people British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs m ...

or the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

including predecessor states in the

history of the formation of the United Kingdom The formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has involved personal and political union across Great Britain and the wider British Isles. The United Kingdom is the most recent of a number of sovereign states that hav ...

. This list covers innovation and invention in the mechanical, electronic, and industrial fields, as well as medicine, military devices and theory, artistic and scientific discovery and innovation, and ideas in religion and ethics. Factors that historians note spurred innovation and discovery include the 17th century

scientific revolution The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transforme ...

and the 18th/19th century

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. Another possible influence is British the

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

system which had medieval origins and was codified with the Patent Act of 1852.

17th century

;1605 * Bacon's cipher, a method of

steganography Steganography ( ) is the practice of representing information within another message or physical object, in such a manner that the presence of the information is not evident to human inspection. In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file, ...

(hiding a secret message), is devised by Sir

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

. ;1614 *

John Napier John Napier of Merchiston (; 1 February 1550 – 4 April 1617), nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8th Laird of Merchiston. His Latinized name was Ioan ...

publishes his work '' Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio'' introducing the concept of

logarithm In mathematics, the logarithm is the inverse function to exponentiation. That means the logarithm of a number to the base is the exponent to which must be raised, to produce . For example, since , the ''logarithm base'' 10 ...

s which simplifies mathematical calculations. ;1620 * The first navigable

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

is designed by William Bourne and built by Dutchman

Cornelius Drebbel Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel ( ) (1572 – 7 November 1633) was a Dutch engineer and inventor. He was the builder of the first operational submarine in 1620 and an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, ...

. ;1625 * Early experiments in water

desalination Desalination is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance, as in soil desalination, which is an issue for agriculture. Salt ...

are conducted by Sir

. ;1657 *

Anchor escapement In horology, the anchor escapement is a type of escapement used in pendulum clocks. The escapement is a mechanism in a mechanical clock that maintains the swing of the pendulum by giving it a small push each swing, and allows the clock's wheels ...

for clock making is invented by

Robert Hooke Robert Hooke FRS (; 18 July 16353 March 1703) was an English polymath active as a scientist, natural philosopher and architect, who is credited to be one of two scientists to discover microorganisms in 1665 using a compound microscope that ...

. ;1667 * A tin can telephone is devised by

. ;1668 * Sir

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, Theology, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosophy, natural philosopher"), widely ...

invents the first working reflecting

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to obse ...

. ;1698 * The first commercial steam-powered device, a water pump, is developed by

Thomas Savery Thomas Savery (; c. 1650 – 15 May 1715) was an English inventor and engineer. He invented the first commercially used steam-powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as the "Savery engine". Savery's steam pump was a revolutionar ...

18th century

;1701 * An improved

seed drill A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sows seeds for crops by positioning them in the soil and burying them to a specific depth while being dragged by a tractor. This ensures that seeds will be distributed evenly. The seed drill sow ...

is designed by Jethro Tull. It is used to spread seeds around a field with a rotating handle which makes seed planting a lot easier. ;1705 *

Edmond Halley Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, H ...

makes the first prediction of a

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

's return. ;1712 * The first practical steam engine is designed by

Thomas Newcomen Thomas Newcomen (; February 1664 – 5 August 1729) was an English inventor who created the atmospheric engine, the first practical fuel-burning engine in 1712. He was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. He ...

. ;1718 *

discovers stellar motion. ;1730 * The Rotherham

plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

, the first plough to be widely built in factories and commercially successful, is patented by Joseph Foljambe. ;1737 * Andrew Rodger invents the winnowing machine. ;1740 * The first

electrostatic motor An electrostatic motor or capacitor motor is a type of electric motor based on the attraction and repulsion of electric charge. An alternative type of electrostatic motor is the spacecraft electrostatic ion drive thruster where forces and motion ...

s are developed by Andrew Gordon in the 1740s. ;1744 * The earliest known reference to

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

is made in a publication, '' A Little Pretty Pocket-Book'', by

John Newbery John Newbery (9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767), considered "The Father of Children's Literature", was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported ...

. It contains a rhymed description of "base-ball" and a

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

that shows a field set-up somewhat similar to the modern game—though in a triangular rather than diamond configuration, and with posts instead of ground-level bases. ;1753 * Invention of hollow-pipe

drainage Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of a surface's water and sub-surface water from an area with excess of water. The internal drainage of most agricultural soils is good enough to prevent severe waterlogging (anaerobic condition ...

is credited to Sir Hugh Dalrymple who died in 1753. ;1765 *

James Hargreaves James Hargreaves ( 1720 – 22 April 1778) was an English weaver, carpenter and inventor who lived and worked in Lancashire, England. He was one of three men responsible for the mechanisation of spinning: Hargreaves is credited with inventing ...

invented the

spinning jenny The spinning jenny is a multi- spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Sta ...

, which was a multi- spindle

spinning frame The spinning frame is an Industrial Revolution invention for spinning thread or yarn from fibres such as wool or cotton in a mechanized way. It was developed in 18th-century Britain by Richard Arkwright and John Kay. Historical context In 1 ...

, and was one of the key developments in the

industrialisation Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...

textile manufacturing Textile Manufacturing or Textile Engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful goods ...

during the early

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. * James Small advances the design of the plough using mathematical methods to improve on the Scotch plough of

James Anderson of Hermiston James Anderson FRSE FSAScot (1739 – 15 October 1808) was a Scottish agriculturist, journalist and economist. A member of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, Anderson was a prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He invented the Sco ...

. ;1767 *

Adam Ferguson Adam Ferguson, (Scottish Gaelic: ''Adhamh MacFhearghais''), also known as Ferguson of Raith (1 July N.S./20 June O.S. 1723 – 22 February 1816), was a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment. Ferguson was sympathet ...

(1767), often known as 'The Father of Modern Sociology', publishes his work '' An Essay on the History of Civil Society''. ;1776 * Scottish economist

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——� ...

, often known as 'The father of modern economics', publishes his seminal text ''

The Wealth of Nations ''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'', generally referred to by its shortened title ''The Wealth of Nations'', is the '' magnum opus'' of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in ...

''. * The

Watt steam engine The Watt steam engine design became synonymous with steam engines, and it was many years before significantly new designs began to replace the basic Watt design. The first steam engines, introduced by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, were of the "a ...

, conceived in 1765, goes into production. It is the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric. ;1779 *

Samuel Crompton Samuel Crompton (3 December 1753 – 26 June 1827) was an English inventor and pioneer of the spinning industry. Building on the work of James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright he invented the spinning mule, a machine that revolutionised th ...

invented the

spinning mule The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of tw ...

, which improved the industrialised production of thread for textile manufacture. The spinning mule combined features of

and

Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as ...

water frame The water frame is a spinning frame that is powered by a water-wheel. Water frames in general have existed since Ancient Egypt times. Richard Arkwright, who patented the technology in 1769, designed a model for the production of cotton thread; ...

. ;1781 *

The Iron Bridge The Iron Bridge is a cast iron arch bridge that crosses the River Severn in Shropshire, England. Opened in 1781, it was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron. Its success inspired the widespread use of cast iron as a st ...

, the first arch bridge made of

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuri ...

, is built by

Abraham Darby III Abraham Darby III (24 April 1750 – 1789) was an English ironmaster and Quaker. He was the third man of that name in several generations of an English Quaker family that played a pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution. Life Abraham Darby ...

. ;1783 * A pioneer of

selective breeding Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant ...

and

artificial selection Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant mal ...

, Robert Bakewell, forms the Dishley Society to promote and advance the interests of livestock breeders. ;1786 * The

threshing machine A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that threshes grain, that is, it removes the seeds from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, thr ...

is invented by

Andrew Meikle Andrew Meikle (5 May 1719 – 27 November 1811) was a Scottish mechanical engineer credited with inventing the threshing machine, a device used to remove the outer husks from grains of wheat. He also had a hand in assisting Firbeck in the inve ...

. ;1798 *

Edward Jenner Edward Jenner, (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was a British physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines, and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms ''vaccine'' and ''vaccination'' are derived f ...

invents the first

vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified.

19th century

;1802 * Sir

Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for ...

creates the first

incandescent light An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxidat ...

by passing a current from a battery, at the time the world's most powerful, through a thin strip of

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

. ;1804 * The world's first

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the ...

-hauled

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a p ...

journey is made by

Richard Trevithick Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a British inventor and mining engineer. The son of a mining captain, and born in the mining heartland of Cornwall, Trevithick was immersed in mining and engineering from an early age. He w ...

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the loco ...

. ;1807 *

Alexander John Forsyth Alexander John Forsyth (28 December 1768 – 11 June 1843) was a Scottish Church of Scotland minister who first successfully used fulminating (or 'detonating') chemicals to prime gunpowder in fire-arms thereby creating what became known as pe ...

invents percussion ignition, the foundation of modern

firearms A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see Legal definitions). The first firearms originated in 10th-century China, when bamboo tubes ...

. ;1814 *

Robert Salmon Robert Salmon (1775 – ) was a maritime artist, active in both England and America. Salmon completed nearly 1,000 paintings, all save one of maritime scenes or seascapes. He is widely considered the Father of American Luminism. Early ...

patents the first haymaking machine. ;c1820 *

John Loudon McAdam John Loudon McAdam (23 September 1756 – 26 November 1836) was a Scottish civil engineer and road-builder. He invented a new process, " macadamisation", for building roads with a smooth hard surface, using controlled materials of m ...

develops the

Macadam Macadam is a type of road construction, pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam around 1820, in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly. A binding layer of stone dust (crushed stone from the ...

road construction technique. ;1822 *

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

proposes the idea for a

Difference engine A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. It was designed in the 1820s, and was first created by Charles Babbage. The name, the difference engine, is derived from the method of divide ...

, an automatic

mechanical calculator A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or (historically) a simulation such as an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators w ...

designed to tabulate polynomial functions, in a paper to the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the

computation Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm). Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An esp ...

of astronomical and mathematical tables". ;1823 * An improved system of

soil drainage Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of a surface's water and sub-surface water from an area with excess of water. The internal drainage of most agricultural soils is good enough to prevent severe waterlogging (anaerobic condition ...

is developed by James Smith. ;1824 * William Aspdin obtains a patent for

Portland cement Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the early 19t ...

(concrete). ;1825 *

William Sturgeon William Sturgeon (22 May 1783 – 4 December 1850) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical British electric motor. Early life Sturgeon was born on 22 May 1783 in Whittington, ...

invents the

electromagnet An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in ...

. ;1828 * A mechanical

reaping machine A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps (cuts and often also gathers) crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in Roma ...

is invented by Patrick Bell. ;1831 *

Electromagnetic induction Electromagnetic or magnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force (emf) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field. Michael Faraday is generally credited with the discovery of induction in 1831, and James Cle ...

, the operating principle of

transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

s and nearly all modern electric generators, is discovered by

Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...

. ;1835 * Scotsman James Bowman Lindsay invents the

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxi ...

. ;1836 * The

Marsh test The Marsh test is a highly sensitive method in the detection of arsenic, especially useful in the field of forensic toxicology when arsenic was used as a poison. It was developed by the chemist James Marsh and first published in 1836. The met ...

for detecting

arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, b ...

poisoning is developed by James Marsh. ;1837 *

describes an

Analytical Engine The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a desig ...

, the first mechanical, general-purpose programmable computer. * The

Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph was an early electrical telegraph system dating from the 1830s invented by English inventor William Fothergill Cooke and English scientist Charles Wheatstone. It was a form of needle telegraph, and the first te ...

, first commercially successful

electric telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...

, is designed by Sir

Charles Wheatstone Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE DCL LLD (6 February 1802 – 19 October 1875), was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope (a device for di ...

and Sir

William Fothergill Cooke Sir William Fothergill Cooke (4 May 1806 – 25 June 1879) was an English inventor. He was, with Charles Wheatstone, the co-inventor of the Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph, which was patented in May 1837. Together with John Ricardo he f ...

. ;1839 * A pedal bicycle is invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan. ;1840 *

Sir Rowland Hill Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his solut ...

reforms the postal system with

Uniform Penny Post The Uniform Penny Post was a component of the comprehensive reform of the Royal Mail, the UK's official postal service, that took place in the 19th century. The reforms were a government initiative to eradicate the abuse and corruption of the e ...

and introduces the first

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...

, the

Penny Black The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom (referred to in philatelic circles as Great Britain), on 1 May 1840, but was not valid for use until 6 May ...

, on 1 May. ;1841 * Alexander Bain patents his design produced the prior year for an

electric clock An electric clock is a clock that is powered by electricity, as opposed to a mechanical clock which is powered by a hanging weight or a mainspring. The term is often applied to the electrically powered mechanical clocks that were used before qu ...

. ;1842 *

Superphosphate Triple superphosphate is a component of fertilizer that primarily consists of monocalcium phosphate, Ca(H2PO4)2. Triple superphosphate is obtained by treating phosphate rock with phosphoric acid. Traditional routes for extraction of phosphate roc ...

, the first chemical

fertiliser A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...

, is patented by John Bennet Lawes. ;1843 *

SS Great Britain SS ''Great Britain'' is a museum ship and former passenger steamship that was advanced for her time. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great We ...

, the world's first steam-powered, screw propeller-driven passenger liner with an iron hull is launched. Designed by

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "on ...

, it was at the time the largest ship afloat. * Alexander Bain patents a design for a

facsimile machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

. ;1846 * A design for a chemical telegraph is patented by Alexander Bain. Bain's telegraph is installed on the wires of the Electric Telegraph Company on one line. Later, in 1850, it was used in America by

Henry O'Reilly Henry O'Reilly (February 6, 1806 – August 17, 1886) was an Irish-American businessman and telegraphy pioneer. Early life O'Reilly was born in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland. He emigrated with his father to New York City in 1816, wher ...

. ;1847 *

Boolean algebra In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas i ...

, the basis for digital logic, is introduced by

George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in ...

in his book ''The Mathematical Analysis of Logic''. ;1851 * Improvements to the

are demonstrated by

Frederick Bakewell Frederick Collier Bakewell (29 September 1800 – 26 September 1869) was an English physicist who improved on the concept of the facsimile machine introduced by Alexander Bain in 1842 and demonstrated a working laboratory version at the 1 ...

at the 1851 World's Fair in London. ;1852 * A steam-driven ploughing engine is invented by John Fowler. ;1853 * Scottish physician Alexander Wood develops a medical hypodermic syringe with a needle fine enough to pierce the skin. ;1854 * The

Playfair cipher The Playfair cipher or Playfair square or Wheatstone–Playfair cipher is a manual symmetric encryption technique and was the first literal digram substitution cipher. The scheme was invented in 1854 by Charles Wheatstone, but bears the name of ...

, the first literal digraph substitution cipher, is invented by

and later promoted for use by Lord Playfair. ;1868 * Mushet steel, the first commercial steel

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductili ...

, is invented by

Robert Forester Mushet Robert Forester Mushet (8 April 1811 – 29 January 1891) was a British metallurgist and businessman, born on 8 April 1811, in Coleford, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. He was the youngest son of Scottish parents, Agnes Wilson ...

. *

Thomas Humber Thomas Humber (16 October 1841 – 24 November 1910) was a British engineer and cycle manufacturer who developed and patented a safety bicycle (1884) with a diamond-shaped frame and wheels of similar size. It became a pattern for subsequent ...

develops a bicycle design with the pedals driving the rear wheel. * The first manually operated gas-lamp

traffic light Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – known also as robots in South Africa are signalling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order to control flows of traffic. Traffic light ...

s are installed outside the

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

on 10 December. ;1869 * A bicycle design is developed by Thomas McCall. ;1873 * Discovery of the

photoconductivity Photoconductivity is an optical and electrical phenomenon in which a material becomes more electrically conductive due to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, ultraviolet light, infrared light, or gamma radiation ...

of the element

selenium Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and tellurium, ...

by Willoughby Smith. This led to the invention of photoelectric cells (

solar panels A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

), including those used in the earliest television systems. ;1876 * Scotsman

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and T ...

patents the

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

in the U.S. * The first

safety bicycle A safety bicycle (or simply a safety) is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing ("ordinary") and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were know ...

is designed by the English engineer Harry John Lawson (also called Henry). Unlike the

penny-farthing The penny-farthing, also known as a high wheel, high wheeler or ordinary, is an early type of bicycle. It was popular in the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel providing high speeds (owing to its travelling a large distance for every r ...

, the rider's feet were within reach of the ground, making it safer to stop. ;1878 * Demonstration of an

by Joseph Wilson Swan. ;1883 * The Fresno scraper, which became a model for modern earth movers, is invented in California by Scottish emigrant

James Porteous James Porteous (1848–1922) was the Scottish-American inventor of the Fresno scraper. James Porteous was born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland. His father, William Porteous, had been a wheelwright and blacksmith who built and repair ...

. ;1884 * The

light switch In electrical wiring, a light switch is a switch most commonly used to operate electric lights, permanently connected equipment, or electrical outlets. Portable lamps such as table lamps may have a light switch mounted on the socket, base, or i ...

is invented by

John Henry Holmes Eugene Cyril Smith (1857 – 1935) was an English Electrical engineering, electrical engineer, inventor, Quaker and pioneer of electric lighting who invented the quick break light switch, the technology behind which remains the basis for modern w ...

, Quaker of Newcastle. * Reaction steam turbine invented by Anglo-Irish engineer

Charles Algernon Parsons Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, (13 June 1854 – 11 February 1931) was an Anglo-Irish engineer, best known for his invention of the compound steam turbine, and as the eponym of C. A. Parsons and Company. He worked as an engineer on d ...

. ;1885 * The first commercially successful safety bicycle, called the ''Rover'', is designed by

John Kemp Starley John Kemp Starley (24 December 1855 – 29 October 1901) was an English inventor and industrialist who is widely considered the inventor of the modern bicycle, and also originator of the name Rover. Early life Born on 24 December 1855 Star ...

. The following year Dan Albone produces a derivative of this called the ''Ivel Safety cycle''. ;1886 * Walter Parry Haskett Smith, often called the ''Father of Rock Climbing'' in Britain, completes his first ascent of the Napes Needle, solo and without any protective equipment. ;1892 * Sir

Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, Anthropology, anthropologist, tropical Exploration, explorer, geographer, Inventio ...

devises a method for classifying

fingerprint A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...

s that proved useful in

forensic science Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal ...

. ;1897 * Sir

Joseph John Thomson Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered. In 1897, Thomson showed that ...

discovers the

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have n ...

. * The world's first wireless station is established on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Is ...

20th century

;1901 * The first wireless signal across the Atlantic is sent from Cornwall in England and received in Newfoundland in Canada (a distance of 2,100 miles) by Italian scientist

Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to Marconi ...

. * The first commercially successful light farm

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...

is patented by Dan Albone. ;1902 * Edgar Purnell Hooley develops

Tarmac Tarmac may refer to: Engineered surfaces * Tarmacadam, a mainly historical tar-based material for macadamising road surfaces, patented in 1902 * Asphalt concrete, a macadamising material using asphalt instead of tar which has largely superseded tar ...

;1906 * The introduction of , a revolutionary capital ship design. ;1907 * Henry Joseph Round discovers

electroluminescence Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission resulting fro ...

, the principle behind LEDs. ;1910 * The first formal driving school, the

British School of Motoring The British School of Motoring (BSM) is a driving school in the United Kingdom, providing training in vehicle operation and road safety. BSM has around 1000 driving instructors. RAC's parent company, Aviva, sold BSM to Arques Industries AG in ...

, is founded in London. *

Frank Barnwell Captain Frank Sowter Barnwell OBE AFC FRAeS BSc (23 November 1880 – 2 August 1938) was a Scottish aeronautical engineer. With his elder brother Harold, he built the first successful powered aircraft made in Scotland and later went on to a c ...

establishes the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow, having made the first powered flight in Scotland the previous year. ;1916 * The first use in battle of the military

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful ...

(although the tank was also developed independently elsewhere). ;1918 * The

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

becomes the first independent air force in the world * The introduction of

HMS Argus Nine ships of the Royal Navy and one of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary have been named ''Argus'', after Argus, the hundred-eyed giant of mythology: * was a 10-gun sloop, originally a French privateer, captured in 1799 and broken up in 1811. * HMS ' ...

the first example of the standard pattern of aircraft carrier, with a full-length flight deck that allowed wheeled aircraft to take off and land. ;1922 * In

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

, France, Englishman Edwin Belin demonstrates a mechanical scanning device, an early precursor to modern

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

. ;1926 *

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly dem ...

makes the first public demonstration of a

mechanical television Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is a television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a si ...

on 26 January (the first successful transmissions were in early 1923 and February 1924). Later, in July 1928, he demonstrated the first

colour television Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...

.The World's First High Definition Colour Television System
McLean, p. 196. ;1930 * The

jet engine A jet engine is a type of reaction engine discharging a fast-moving jet (fluid), jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition can include Rocket engine, rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and ...

is patented by Sir

Frank Whittle Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 fo ...

. ;1932 * The

Anglepoise lamp The Anglepoise lamp is a balanced-arm lamp designed in 1932 by British designer George Carwardine. History and development George Carwardine (1887–1947) was a car designer and, at the same time he invented the Anglepoise lamp, (as a freela ...

is patented by George Carwardine, a design consultant specialising in vehicle suspension systems. ;1933 * The Cat's eye road marking is invented by

Percy Shaw Percy Shaw, (15 April 1890 – 1 September 1976) was an English inventor and businessman. He patented the reflective road stud or " cat's eye" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935. Biography Percy Shaw was born i ...

and patented the following year. ;1936 * English economist

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

publishes his work '' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money'' which challenged the established

classical economics Classical economics, classical political economy, or Smithian economics is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam S ...

and led to the Keynesian Revolution in the way economists thought. * The world's first public broadcasts of

high-definition television High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

are made from

Alexandra Palace Alexandra Palace is a Grade II listed entertainment and sports venue in London, situated between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in the London Borough of Haringey. It is built on the site of Tottenham Wood and the later Tottenham Wood Farm. Origi ...

, North London, by the

BBC Television Service BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

. It is the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular

broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

. ;1937 * First available in the London area, the 999 telephone number is introduced as the world's first emergency telephone service. ;1939 * The initial design of the

Bombe The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functi ...

, an electromechanical device to assist with the deciphering of messages encrypted by the Enigma machine, is produced by

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...

at the

Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

. ;1943 *

Colossus computer Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus ...

begins working, the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. ;1949 * The

Manchester Mark 1 The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester, England from the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). Work began in August 1948, and the first version was oper ...

computer, significant because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers, ran its first programme error free. Its chief designers are Freddie Williams and

Tom Kilburn Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With ...

. ;1951 * The concept of microprogramming is developed by

Maurice Wilkes Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010) was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who i ...

from the realisation that the

Central Processing Unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

(CPU) of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialised computer program in high-speed ROM. * LEO is the first business application (a payroll system) on an electronic computer. ;1952 * The introduction of the

de Havilland Comet The de Havilland DH.106 Comet was the world's first commercial jet airliner. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It featured an aerodynamically clean design with four d ...

the world's first commercial

jet airliner A jet airliner or jetliner is an airliner powered by jet engines (passenger jet aircraft). Airliners usually have two or four jet engines; three-engined designs were popular in the 1970s but are less common today. Airliners are commonly clas ...

. * Autocode, regarded as the first compiled programming language, is developed for the Manchester Mark 1 by Alick Glennie. ;1953 * Englishman

Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical stru ...

and American

James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick a ...

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

in the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, analysed X-ray crystallography data taken by

Rosalind Franklin Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

, to decipher the double helical structure of DNA. They share the 1962

Nobel Prize in Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...

for their work. ;1955 * The first accurate atomic clock, a caesium standard based on a certain transition of the caesium-133 atom, is built by

Louis Essen Louis Essen FRS O.B.E. (6 September 1908 – 24 August 1997) was an English physicist whose most notable achievements were in the precise measurement of time and the determination of the speed of light. He was a critic of Albert Einstein' ...

at the National Physical Laboratory. This clock enabled further development of general relativity, and started a basis for an enhanced SI unit system. ;1956 * Metrovick 950, the first commercial

transistor computer A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, ...

, is built by the

Metropolitan-Vickers Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial el ...

company. ;1961 * The first electronic desktop

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

s, the ANITA Mk7 and ANITA Mk8, are manufactured by the Bell Punch Company and marketed by its

Sumlock Comptometer The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887. A key-driven calculator is extremely fast because each key adds or subtracts its value to the accumula ...

division. ;1963 * High strength

carbon fibre Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...

is invented by engineers at the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), before finally losing its identity in me ...

. * The

Lava lamp A lava lamp is a decorative lamp, invented in 1963 by British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker, the founder of the lighting company Mathmos. It consists of a bolus of a special coloured wax mixture inside a glass vessel, the remainder of which ...

is invented by British accountant

Edward Craven Walker Edward Craven Walker (4 July 1918 – 15 August 2000) was a British inventor, who invented the psychedelic Astro lamp, also known as the lava lamp. War record Craven was a pilot in World War II, flying a DeHavilland Mosquito over Germany to ...

. ;1964 * The first theory of the

Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Stan ...

is put forward by

Peter Higgs Peter Ware Higgs (born 29 May 1929) is a British theoretical physicist, Emeritus Professor in the University of Edinburgh,Griggs, Jessica (Summer 2008The Missing Piece ''Edit'' the University of Edinburgh Alumni Magazine, p. 17 and Nobel Prize ...

, a particle-physics theorist at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

, and five other physicists. The particle is discovered in 2012 at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gen ...

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundr ...

and its existence is confirmed in 2013. ;1965 * A pioneer of the development of

dairy farming Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for long-term production of milk, which is processed (either on the farm or at a dairy plant, either of which may be called a dairy) for eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a history t ...

systems,

Rex Paterson Rex Munro Paterson OBE (1902 in London – 1978 in Hampshire) was an English agricultural pioneer whose extensive business and meticulous record keeping enabled him to carry out research and development in dairy farming systems on a scale that w ...

, set out his principles for labour management. * The Touchscreen was invented by E.A.Johnson working at the Radar Research Establishment, Malvern, Worcestershire. ;1966 * The

cash machine An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...

and

personal identification number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitati ...

system are patented by

James Goodfellow James Goodfellow OBE, KCHS, FIIE (born 1937) is a Scottish inventor. In 1966, he patented personal identification number (PIN) technology and an automated teller machine (ATM). He is generally considered the inventor of the modern ATM. G ...

. ;1969 * The first

fabric in the world is weaved in

Stockport Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is withi ...

, England. ;1970 * One of the first handheld televisions, the MTV-1, is developed by Sir

Clive Sinclair Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (30 July 1940 – 16 September 2021) was an English entrepreneur and inventor, best known for being a pioneer in the computing industry, and also as the founder of several companies that developed consumer electronic ...

. ;1973 *

Clifford Cocks Clifford Christopher Cocks (born 28 December 1950) is a British mathematician and cryptographer. In 1973, while working at the United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), he invented a public-key cryptography algorithm equiv ...

develops the algorithm for the RSA cipher while working at the

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

, approximately three years before it was independently developed by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. The British government declassified the 1973 invention in 1997. ;1976 *

M. Stanley Whittingham Michael Stanley Whittingham (born 22 December 1941) is a British- American chemist. He is currently a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamto ...

develops the first

Lithium-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also s ...

, while working as a researcher for

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 3 ...

. ;1977 * Steptoe and Edwards successfully carried out a pioneering conception which resulted in the birth of the world's first baby to be conceived by

IVF In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro ("in glass"). The process involves monitoring and stimulating an individual's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) f ...

Louise Brown Louise Joy Brown (born 25 July 1978) is an English woman who was the first human to have been born after conception by ''in vitro'' fertilisation experiment (IVF). Her birth, following a procedure pioneered in Britain, has been lauded among "t ...

on 25 July 1978, in Oldham General Hospital, Greater Manchester, UK. ;1979 * The

tree shelter A tree shelter, tree guard or tree tube (sometimes also Tuley tube) is a structure that protects planted tree saplings from browsing animals and other dangers as the trees grow. The purpose of tree shelters is to protect young trees from browsing ...

is invented by Graham Tuley to protect tree seedlings. * One of the first

laptop computer A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

s, the

GRiD Compass The Grid Compass (written ''GRiD'' by its manufacturer GRiD Systems Corporation) is one of the first laptop computers. History Development began in 1979, and the main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during t ...

, is designed by Bill Moggridge. ;1984 *

DNA profiling DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual's DNA characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding. DNA profiling is a forensic t ...

is discovered by Sir

Alec Jeffreys Sir Alec John Jeffreys, (born 9 January 1950) is a British geneticist known for developing techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now used worldwide in forensic science to assist police detective work and to resolve ...

at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_lab ...

. * One of the world's first

computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback ...

s to use

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

Elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. ...

, is developed by

David Braben David John Braben (born 2 January 1964) is a British video game developer and designer, founder and CEO of Frontier Developments, co-creator of the '' Elite'' series of space trading video games, first published in 1984. He is also a co-found ...

and

Ian Bell Ian Ronald Bell (born 11 April 1982) is an English former cricketer who played international cricket in all formats for the England cricket team and county cricket for Warwickshire County Cricket Club. A right-handed higher/middle order batsm ...

. ;1989 * Sir

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profes ...

writes a proposal for what will become the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

. The following year, he specified HTML, the hypertext language, and HTTP, the protocol. * The

Touchpad A touchpad or trackpad is a pointing device featuring a tactile sensor, a specialized surface that can translate the motion and position of a user's fingers to a relative position on the operating system that is made output to the screen. Touchp ...

pointing device is first developed for Psion computers. ;1991 * A patent for an

iris recognition Iris recognition is an automated method of biometric identification that uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on video images of one or both of the irises of an individual's eyes, whose complex patterns are unique, stable, and can ...

algorithm is filed by John Daugman while working at the

which became the basis of all publicly deployed iris recognition systems. * The source code for the world's first

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

, called

WorldWideWeb WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion between the software and the World Wide Web) is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor. The source code was released in ...

(later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the

), is released into the public domain by Sir

. ;1992 * The first

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

message in the world is sent over the UK's GSM network. ;1995 * The world's first national

DNA database A DNA database or DNA databank is a database of DNA profiles which can be used in the analysis of genetic diseases, genetic fingerprinting for criminology, or genetic genealogy. DNA databases may be public or private, the largest ones being nat ...

is developed. ;1996 *

Animal cloning Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, c ...

, a female domestic sheep became the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, by scientists at the

Roslin institute The Roslin Institute is an animal sciences research institute at Easter Bush, Midlothian, Scotland, part of the University of Edinburgh, and is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. It is best known for creati ...

. ;1997 *Scottish scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, produce the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. * The

ThrustSSC ThrustSSC, Thrust SSC or Thrust SuperSonic Car is a British jet car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers, and Jeremy Bliss. Thrust SSC holds the world land speed record, set on 15 October 1997, and driven by Andy Green, ...

jet-propelled car, designed and built in England, sets the

land speed record The land speed record (or absolute land speed record) is the highest speed achieved by a person using a vehicle on land. There is no single body for validation and regulation; in practice the Category C ("Special Vehicles") flying start regul ...

21st century

;2003 *

Beagle 2 The ''Beagle 2'' is an inoperative British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 ''Mars Express'' mission. It was intended to conduct an astrobiology mission that would have looked for evidence of past life on Mar ...

, a British landing spacecraft that forms part of the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

's 2003

Mars Express ''Mars Express'' is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA). The ''Mars Express'' mission is exploring the planet Mars, and is the first planetary mission attempted by the agency. "Express" originally ref ...

mission lands on the surface of Mars but fails to communicate. It is located twelve years later in a series of images from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, an ...

that suggest two of Beagle's four solar panels failed to deploy, blocking the spacecraft's communications antenna. ;2004 *

Graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

is isolated from graphite at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

Andre Geim , birth_date = , birth_place = Sochi, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union , death_date = , death_place = , workplaces = , nationality = Dutch and British , fields = Condensed matter physics , ...

and Konstantin Novoselov. ;2005 * The design for a machine to lay rail track, the "Trac Rail Transposer", is patented and goes on to be used by

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's len ...

in the United Kingdom and the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October ...

in the United States. ;2012 *

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

, a single-board computer, is launched and quickly becomes popular for education in programming and computer science. ;2014 * The

Philae ; ar, فيلة; cop, ⲡⲓⲗⲁⲕ , alternate_name = , image = File:File, Asuán, Egipto, 2022-04-01, DD 93.jpg , alt = , caption = The temple of Isis from Philae at its current location on Agilkia Island in Lake Nasse ...

lander leaves the

Rosetta Rosetta or Rashid (; ar, رشيد ' ; french: Rosette ; cop, ϯⲣⲁϣⲓⲧ ''ti-Rashit'', Ancient Greek: Βολβιτίνη ''Bolbitinē'') is a port city of the Nile Delta, east of Alexandria, in Egypt's Beheira governorate. The R ...

spacecraft and makes the first ever landing on a comet. The Philae lander was built with significant British expertise and technology, alongside that of several other countries. ;2016 *

SABRE A sabre (French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as t ...

or Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine is an example of a Rocket-Jet hybrid hypersonic air-breathing rocket engine. ;2020 * Became the first country in the world to deploy an approved COVID-19 vaccine

Ceramics

Bone china Bone china is a type of ceramic that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material, and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phos ...

–

Josiah Spode Josiah Spode (23 March 1733 – 18 August 1797) was an English potter and the founder of the English Spode pottery works which became famous for the high quality of its wares. He is often credited with the establishment of blue underglaze tran ...

Ozgundogdu, Feyza Cakir. "Bone China from Turkey" Ceramics Technical; May2005, Issue 20, p29-32. *

Ironstone china Ironstone china, ironstone ware or most commonly just ironstone, is a type of vitreous pottery first made in the United Kingdom in the early 19th century. It is often classed as earthenware although in appearance and properties it is similar t ...

– Charles James Mason *

Jasperware Jasperware, or jasper ware, is a type of pottery first developed by Josiah Wedgwood in the 1770s. Usually described as stoneware, it has an unglazed matte "biscuit" finish and is produced in a number of different colours, of which the most com ...

–

Josiah Wedgwood Josiah Wedgwood (12 July 1730 – 3 January 1795) was an English potter, entrepreneur and abolitionist. Founding the Wedgwood company in 1759, he developed improved pottery bodies by systematic experimentation, and was the leader in the indus ...

Clock making

–

Balance wheel A balance wheel, or balance, is the timekeeping device used in mechanical watches and small clocks, analogous to the pendulum in a pendulum clock. It is a weighted wheel that rotates back and forth, being returned toward its center position by a ...

–

* Coaxial escapement – George Daniels * Grasshopper escapement, H1, H2, H3 and H4 watches (a watch built to solve the

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek let ...

measurement problem) –

John Harrison John Harrison ( – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revo ...

* Gridiron pendulum –

Lever escapement The lever escapement, invented by the English clockmaker Thomas Mudge in 1754 (albeit first used in 1769), is a type of escapement that is used in almost all mechanical watches, as well as small mechanical non-pendulum clocks, alarm clocks, an ...

The greatest single improvement ever applied to

pocket watch A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwa ...

es – Thomas Mudge *

Longcase clock A grandfather clock (also a longcase clock, tall-case clock, grandfather's clock, or floor clock) is a tall, freestanding, weight-driven pendulum clock with the pendulum held inside the tower or waist of the case. Clocks of this style are common ...

or grandfather clock – William Clement *

Marine chronometer A marine chronometer is a precision timepiece that is carried on a ship and employed in the determination of the ship's position by celestial navigation. It is used to determine longitude by comparing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or in the mode ...

–

Self-winding watch An automatic watch, also known as a self-winding watch or simply an automatic, is a mechanical watch where the natural motion of the wearer provides energy to wind the mainspring, making manual winding unnecessary if worn enough. It is distingui ...

– John Harwood

Clothing manufacturing

*Derby Rib (stocking manufacture) –

Jedediah Strutt Jedediah Strutt (1726 – 7 May 1797) or Jedidiah Strutt – as he spelled it – was a hosier and cotton spinner from Belper, England. Strutt and his brother-in-law William Woollat developed an attachment to the stocking frame that allowed the ...

Flying shuttle The flying shuttle was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. It allowed a single weaver to weave much wider fabrics, and it could be mechanized, allowing for automatic machine l ...

– John Kay *

Mauveine Mauveine, also known as aniline purple and Perkin's mauve, was one of the first synthetic dyes. It was discovered serendipitously by William Henry Perkin in 1856 while he was attempting to synthesise the phytochemical quinine for the treatment of ...

, the first synthetic organic dye –

William Henry Perkin Sir William Henry Perkin (12 March 1838 – 14 July 1907) was a British chemist and entrepreneur best known for his serendipitous discovery of the first commercial synthetic organic dye, mauveine, made from aniline. Though he failed in trying ...

Power loom A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed in 1786 by Edmund Cartwright and first built that same year. ...

–

Edmund Cartwright Edmund Cartwright (24 April 174330 October 1823) was an English inventor. He graduated from Oxford University and went on to invent the power loom. Married to local Elizabeth McMac at 19, he was the brother of Major John Cartwright, a politi ...

Spinning frame The spinning frame is an Industrial Revolution invention for spinning thread or yarn from fibres such as wool or cotton in a mechanized way. It was developed in 18th-century Britain by Richard Arkwright and John Kay. Historical context In 1 ...

– John Kay *

Spinning jenny The spinning jenny is a multi- spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Sta ...

–

Spinning mule The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of tw ...

–

Sewing machine A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with Thread (yarn), thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. ...

– Thomas Saint in 1790 *

Water frame The water frame is a spinning frame that is powered by a water-wheel. Water frames in general have existed since Ancient Egypt times. Richard Arkwright, who patented the technology in 1769, designed a model for the production of cotton thread; ...

–

Stocking frame A stocking frame was a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry. It was invented by William Lee of Calverton near Nottingham in 1589. Its use, known traditionally as framework knitting, was the first major stage in the mechanis ...

– William Lee *Warp-

loom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but t ...

and

Bobbinet Bobbinet tulle or genuine tulle is a specific type of tulle which has been made in the United Kingdom since the invention of the bobbinet machine. John Heathcoat coined the term "bobbin net", or bobbinet as it is spelled today, to distinguish th ...

–

John Heathcoat John Heathcoat (7 August 1783 – 18 January 1861) was an English inventor from Duffield, Derbyshire. During his apprenticeship he made an improvement to the warp-loom, so as to produce mitts of a lace-like appearance. He set up his own busine ...

Communications

Christmas card A Christmas card is a greeting card sent as part of the traditional celebration of Christmas in order to convey between people a range of sentiments related to Christmastide and the holiday season. Christmas cards are usually exchanged during ...

–

Sir Henry Cole Sir Henry Cole FRSA (15 July 1808 – 18 April 1882) was a British civil servant and inventor who facilitated many innovations in commerce and education in the 19th century in the United Kingdom. Cole is credited with devising the concept of ...

Clockwork radio Human power is work or energy that is produced from the human body. It can also refer to the power (rate of work per time) of a human. Power comes primarily from muscles, but body heat is also used to do work like warming shelters, food, or othe ...

–

Trevor Baylis Trevor Graham Baylis (13 May 1937 – 5 March 2018) was an English inventor best known for the wind-up radio. The radio, instead of relying on batteries or external electrical source, is powered by the user winding a crank. This stores energy ...

Faraday's law of induction Faraday's law of induction (briefly, Faraday's law) is a basic law of electromagnetism predicting how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce an electromotive force (emf)—a phenomenon known as electromagnetic in ...

Began as a series of experiments by Faraday that later became some of the first ever experiments in the discovery of

radio waves Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz ( GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (s ...

and the development of

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

–

Fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

pioneer in

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...

– Charles K. Kao and George Hockham *

Geostationary satellites A geostationary orbit, also referred to as a geosynchronous equatorial orbit''Geostationary orbit'' and ''Geosynchronous (equatorial) orbit'' are used somewhat interchangeably in sources. (GEO), is a circular geosynchronous orbit in altitude ...

concept originator for the use of

relays –

Arthur C Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space ...

Kennelly–Heaviside layer The Heaviside layer, sometimes called the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, named after Arthur E. Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside, is a layer of ionised gas occurring roughly between 90km and 150 km (56 and 93 mi) above the ground — one ...

first proposed, a layer of ionised gas that reflects

around the Earth's curvature –

Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently develope ...

* Light signalling between ships: Admiral

Philip H. Colomb Vice-Admiral Philip Howard Colomb, RN (29 May 1831 – 13 October 1899). Born in Knockbrex, near Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, he was a Royal Navy officer, historian, critic and inventor. He was the son of General Geor ...

(1831–1899) *

Mechanical pencil A mechanical pencil, also clutch pencil, is a pencil with a replaceable and mechanically extendable solid pigment core called a "lead" . The lead, often made of graphite, is not bonded to the outer casing, and can be mechanically extended as its ...

– Sampson Mordan and

John Isaac Hawkins John Isaac Hawkins (1772–1855) was an inventor who practised civil engineering. He was known as the co-inventor of the ever-pointed pencil, an early mechanical pencil, and of the upright piano. Early life Hawkins was born 14 March 1772 at Taun ...

in 1822. *

Pencil A pencil () is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand. Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving a tra ...

–

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

Pitman Shorthand Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman (1813–1897), who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent lett ...

–

Isaac Pitman Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...

* Adhesive

and the

postmark A postmark is a postal marking made on an envelope, parcel, postcard or the like, indicating the place, date and time that the item was delivered into the care of a postal service, or sometimes indicating where and when received or in transit ...

– James Chalmers (1782–1853) *

Radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, Marine radar, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor v ...

–

Robert Watson-Watt Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt (13 April 1892 – 5 December 1973) was a Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accura ...

(1892–1973) *

Radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

, the first transmission using a Spark Transmitter, achieving a range of approximately 500 metres. – David E. Hughes * Underlying principles of

–

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...

(1831–1879) *

Radio communication Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a trans ...

development pioneer– William Eccles * Roller printing – Thomas Bell (patented 1783) * Long-lasting materials for today's

liquid crystal displays A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but i ...

– Team headed by Sir Brynmor Jones and Developed by Scotsman George Gray and Englishman Ken Harrison In conjunction with the Royal Radar Establishment and the

University of Hull , mottoeng = Bearing the Torch f learning, established = 1927 – University College Hull1954 – university status , type = Public , endowment = £18.8 million (2016) , budget = £190 million ...

Shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''s ...

–

Timothy Bright Timothie Bright, M.D. (1551?–1615) was an Early Modern English physician and clergyman, the inventor of modern shorthand. Early life Bright was born in or about 1551, probably in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. He matriculated as a sizar at Tr ...

(1550/1-1615). Invented first modern shorthand * Developed 'binaural sound' for the

Stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

–

Alan Blumlein Alan Dower Blumlein (29 June 1903 – 7 June 1942) was an English electronics engineer, notable for his many inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereophonic sound, television and radar. He received 128 patents and was considered o ...

* Print stereotyping –

William Ged William Ged (169919 October 1749) was a Scottish goldsmith who has been credited with the invention of stereotyping. However, he was not the first to use the process. Ged was born in Edinburgh, where he carried on business as a goldsmith. In 1 ...

(1690–1749) *

Teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

Information Service – The British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC) *

Totalisator A tote board (or totalisator/totalizator) is a numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (to display the total amount donated to the chari ...

– George Julius *

Typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

– First patent for a device similar to a typewriter granted to

Henry Mill Henry Mill (c. 1683–1771) was an English inventor who patented the first typewriter in 1714. He worked as a waterworks engineer for the New River Company, and submitted two patents during his lifetime. One was for a coach spring, while the o ...

in 1714. *

Teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...

– Frederick G. Creed (1871–1957) *

Universal Standard Time Universal Time (UT or UT1) is a time standard based on Earth's rotation. While originally it was mean solar time at 0° longitude, precise measurements of the Sun are difficult. Therefore, UT1 is computed from a measure of the Earth's angle with ...

: Sir

Sandford Fleming Sir Sandford Fleming (January 7, 1827 – July 22, 1915) was a Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to colonial Canada at the age of 18. He promoted worldwide standard time zones, a prime meridian, ...

(1827–1915) * Valentines card – Modern card 18th century England

Computing

* ACE and

Pilot ACE The Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom. Built at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s, it was also one of the earliest general-purpose, stored-program computers ...

–

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

The ARM CPU design is the microprocessor architecture of 98% of mobile phones and every smartphone. *

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...

, an early

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...

and was the fastest computer in the world until the release of the American

CDC 6600 The CDC 6600 was the flagship of the 6000 series of mainframe computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it outperformed the industry's prior recordholder, the IBM ...

. This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts:

spooling In computing, spooling is a specialized form of multi-programming for the purpose of copying data between different devices. In contemporary systems, it is usually used for mediating between a computer application and a slow peripheral, such a ...

interrupts In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, ...

instruction pipelining In computer engineering, instruction pipelining or ILP is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing incom ...

interleaved memory In computing, interleaved memory is a design which compensates for the relatively slow speed of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) or core memory, by spreading memory addresses evenly across memory banks. That way, contiguous memory reads and w ...

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very ...

and

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage ...

– Team headed by

*The first graphical

OXO on the

EDSAC The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Univer ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

–

A.S. Douglas Alexander Shafto "Sandy" Douglas CBE (21 May 1921 – 29 April 2010) was a British professor of computer science, credited with creating the first graphical computer game OXO, a Noughts and Crosses computer game in 1952 on the EDSAC computer ...

*First

computer generated music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

was played by the

Ferranti Mark 1 The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commer ...

computer –

Christopher Strachey Christopher S. Strachey (; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing.F. J. Corbató, et al. ...

Denotational semantics In computer science, denotational semantics (initially known as mathematical semantics or Scott–Strachey semantics) is an approach of formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects (called ''denotations' ...

–

pioneer in programming language design *

Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm The Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm is a deterministic quantum algorithm proposed by David Deutsch and Richard Jozsa in 1992 with improvements by Richard Cleve, Artur Ekert, Chiara Macchiavello, and Michele Mosca in 1998. Although of little current pra ...

and first

universal quantum computer A quantum Turing machine (QTM) or universal quantum computer is an abstract machine used to model the effects of a quantum computer. It provides a simple model that captures all of the power of quantum computation—that is, any quantum algorith ...

described – David Deutsch *

Digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

–

Kane Kramer Kane Kramer is a British inventor and businessman. He is credited with the initial invention of the digital audio player, in 1979. Invention of the DAP In 1981 Kramer filed for a UK patent for his newly conceived digital audio player, the IXI ...

was the first complete, fully functional computer to use the

von Neumann architecture The von Neumann architecture — also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture — is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by John von Neumann, and by others, in the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC''. T ...

, the basis of every modern computer –

* EDSAC 2 the successor to the

Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Univers ...

. It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed (

Microcode In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a la ...

)

control unit The control unit (CU) is a component of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) that directs the operation of the processor. A CU typically uses a binary decoder to convert coded instructions into timing and control signals that direct the op ...

and a

bit slice Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length; in theory to make an arbitrary ''n''-bit central processing unit (CPU). Each of these com ...

hardware architecture – Team headed by

– Also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer was the first computer to use the principles of early

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

design (Central processing unit) – Freddie Williams and

– Also the world's first successful commercially available general-purpose electronic computer. * Flip-flop circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory (

Random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the ...

) in computers – William Eccles and F. W. Jordan *Conceptualised

Integrated Circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

– Geoffrey W.A. Dummer *

Josephson effect In physics, the Josephson effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two superconductors are placed in proximity, with some barrier or restriction between them. It is an example of a macroscopic quantum phenomenon, where the effects of quantum mec ...

and theorised

Pi Josephson junction A Josephson junction is a quantum mechanical device which is made of two superconducting electrodes separated by a barrier (thin insulating tunnel barrier, normal metal, semiconductor, ferromagnet, etc.). A Josephson junction is a Josephson jun ...

and

Josephson junction In physics, the Josephson effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two superconductors are placed in proximity, with some barrier or restriction between them. It is an example of a macroscopic quantum phenomenon, where the effects of quantum mec ...

–

Brian David Josephson Brian David Josephson (born 4 January 1940) is a Welsh theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge. Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nob ...

*Heavily involved in the development of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

– Andrew Morton & Alan Cox *

Manchester Baby The Manchester Baby, also called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill, and ran its ...

was the world's first electronic

stored-program computer A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms. The definition ...

. Developed by

Frederic Calland Williams Sir Frederic Calland Williams, (26 June 1911 – 11 August 1977), known as F.C. Williams or Freddie Williams, was an English engineer, a pioneer in radar and computer technology. Education Williams was born in Romiley, Stockport, and edu ...

Osborne 1 The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable computer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs , cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2 operating system. It is powered from a wall socket, as it has no ...

The first commercially successful portable computer, the precursor to the

Laptop computer A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

–

Adam Osborne Adam Osborne (March 6, 1939 – March 18, 2003) was a British author, book and software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. He introduced the Osborne 1, the first commercially su ...

Packet switching In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into '' packets'' that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the p ...

co-invented by British engineer

Donald Davies Donald Watts Davies, (7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000) was a Welsh computer scientist who was employed at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL). In 1965 he conceived of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communic ...

and American

Paul Baran Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran ; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dom ...

– National Physical Laboratory,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

*First PC-compatible

palmtop A handheld personal computer (PC) is a miniature computer typically built around a clamshell form factor and is significantly smaller than any standard laptop computer, but based on the same principles. It is sometimes referred to as a ''palmto ...

computer (

Atari Portfolio The Atari Portfolio (Atari PC Folio) is an IBM PC-compatible palmtop PC, released by Atari Corporation in June 1989. This makes it the world's first palmtop computer.

) – Ian H. S. Cullimore *First

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

–

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the An ...

*First Programming Language

ordercode –

and

Psion Organiser Psion Organiser was the brand name of a range of pocket computers developed by the British company Psion in the 1980s. The Organiser I (launched in 1984) and Organiser II (launched in 1986) had a characteristic hard plastic sliding cover pro ...

) world's first handheld computer – Psion PLC *First experimental

quantum algorithm In quantum computing, a quantum algorithm is an algorithm which runs on a realistic model of quantum computation, the most commonly used model being the quantum circuit model of computation. A classical (or non-quantum) algorithm is a finite s ...

demonstrated on a working 2-qubit NMR quantum computer used to solve Deutsch's problem -

Jonathan A. Jones Jonathan A. Jones (born 1967) is a professor in atomic and laser physics at the University of Oxford, and a fellow and tutor in physics at Brasenose College, Oxford. Education Jones studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1985 to 198 ...

. *The first

rugged computer A rugged computer or ruggedized computer is a computer specifically designed to operate reliably in harsh usage environments and conditions, such as strong vibrations, extreme temperatures and wet or dusty conditions. They are designed from incepti ...

– Husky (computer) *

Sumlock ANITA calculator The ANITA Mark VII and ANITA Mark VIII calculators were launched simultaneously in late 1961 as the world's first all- electronic desktop calculators. Designed and built by the Bell Punch Co. in Britain, and marketed through its Sumlock Co ...

the world's first all-electronic desktop

–

Bell Punch The Bell Punch Company was a British company manufacturing a variety of business machines, most notably several generations of public transport ticket machines and the world's first desktop electronic calculator, the Sumlock ANITA. History The ...

Co *

Sinclair Executive The Sinclair Executive was the world's first "slimline" pocket calculator, and the first to be produced by Clive Sinclair's company Sinclair Radionics. Introduced in 1972, there were at least two different versions of the Sinclair Executive, ...

was the first 'slimline'

pocket calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

, amongst other electrical/electronic innovations – Sir

*Co-Inventor of the first

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball to position the o ...

device – developed by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and

Kenyon Taylor Maurice Kenyon Taylor (26 June 1908 – 29 June 1986) was an English electrical engineer and inventor, responsible for many diverse technological developments and inventions, producing over 70 patents during his career. He spent most of his career ...

Universal Turing machine In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simu ...

– The UTM model is considered to be the origin of the "stored program computer" used by

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest c ...

in 1946 for his "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears von Neumann's name: the

, also UTM is considered the first

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

–

Williams tube The Williams tube, or the Williams–Kilburn tube named after inventors Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, is an early form of computer memory. It was the first random-access digital storage device, and was used successfully in several early co ...

– a

cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), ...

used to electronically store

binary data Binary data is data whose unit can take on only two possible states. These are often labelled as 0 and 1 in accordance with the binary numeral system and Boolean algebra. Binary data occurs in many different technical and scientific fields, wher ...

(Can store roughly 500 to 1,000 bits of data) – Freddie Williams &

* Wolfram's 2-state 3-symbol Turing machine –

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...

Engineering

Adjustable spanner An adjustable spanner (UK and most other English-speaking countries) or adjustable wrench (US and Canada) is any of various styles of spanner (wrench) with a movable jaw, allowing it to be used with different sizes of fastener head ( nut, bol ...

–

Edwin Beard Budding Edwin Beard Budding (25 August 1796 – 25 September 1846), an engineer born in Eastington, Stroud, was the English inventor of the lawnmower (1830) and adjustable spanner (1842). Lawnmower Budding had the idea of the lawnmower after seeing a ma ...

Backhoe loader A backhoe loader, also called a loader backhoe, loader excavator, digger in layman's terms, or colloquially shortened to backhoe within the industry, is a heavy equipment vehicle that consists of a tractor-like unit fitted with a loader-style s ...

–

Joseph Cyril Bamford Joseph Cyril Bamford CBE (21 June 1916 – 1 March 2001)Ritchie, BerrObituary: Joseph Bamford obituary, ''The Independent'', 7 March 2001 was a British businessman, who was the founder of the JCB company, manufacturing heavy plant. Biogr ...

*First coke-consuming

Blast Furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheri ...

–

Abraham Darby I Abraham Darby, in his later life called Abraham Darby the Elder, now sometimes known for convenience as Abraham Darby I (14 April 1677 – 5 May 1717, the first and best known of several men of that name), was an English ironmaster and foundr ...

*First working and volume production Brushless Alternator – Newage Engineers *

Carey Foster bridge In electronics, the Carey Foster bridge is a bridge circuit used to measure medium resistances, or to measure small differences between two large resistances. It was invented by Carey Foster as a variant on the Wheatstone bridge. He first described ...

–

Carey Foster George Carey Foster FRS (October 1835 – 9 February 1919) was a chemist and physicist, born at Sabden in Lancashire. He was Professor of Physics at University College London, and served as the first Principal (salaried head of the College) fr ...

Cavity magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field whi ...

– John Randall and

Harry Boot Henry Albert Howard Boot (29 July 1917 – 8 February 1983) was an English physicist who with Sir John Randall and James Sayers developed the cavity magnetron, which was one of the keys to the Allied victory in the Second World War. Biograph ...

critical component for

Microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...

generation in Microwave ovens and high powered Radios (

) *First

compression ignition The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...

engine aka the

Diesel Engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-cal ...

–

Herbert Akroyd Stuart Herbert Akroyd-Stuart (28 January 1864 – 19 February 1927) was an English inventor who is noted for his invention of the hot bulb engine, or heavy oil engine. Life Akroyd-Stuart was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, but lived in Australia for a p ...

*Hydraulic crane – William George Armstrong *

Crookes tube A Crookes tube (also Crookes–Hittorf tube) is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, with partial vacuum, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were ...

the first

s –

William Crookes Sir William Crookes (; 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing t ...

*The first electrical

measuring instrument A measuring instrument is a device to measure a physical quantity. In the physical sciences, quality assurance, and engineering, measurement is the activity of obtaining and comparing physical quantities of real-world objects and events. Est ...

, the

electroscope The electroscope is an early scientific instrument used to detect the presence of electric charge on a body. It detects charge by the movement of a test object due to the Coulomb electrostatic force on it. The amount of charge on an object is ...

– William Gilbert *

Fourdrinier machine A paper machine (or paper-making machine) is an industrial machine which is used in the pulp and paper industry to create paper in large quantities at high speed. Modern paper-making machines are based on the principles of the Fourdrinier Mac ...

–

Henry Fourdrinier Henry Fourdrinier (11 February 1766 – 3 September 1854) was a British paper-making entrepreneur. He was born in 1766, the son of paper maker and stationer Henry Fourdrinier, and grandson of the engraver Paul Fourdrinier, 1698–1758, sometimes ...

Francis turbine The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts. Francis turbines are the most common water turbine in use today, and can achieve over 95% efficiency. The proc ...

–

James B. Francis James Bicheno Francis (May 18, 1815 – September 18, 1892) was a British-American civil engineer, who invented the Francis turbine. Early years James Francis was born in South Leigh, near Witney, Oxfordshire, in England, United Kingdom. ...

Gas turbine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directio ...

–

John Barber (engineer) John Barber (1734–1793) was an English coal viewer and inventor. He was born in Nottinghamshire, but moved to Warwickshire in the 1760s to manage collieries in the Nuneaton area. For a time he lived in Camp Hill House, between Hartshill an ...

Hot air engine A hot air engine (historically called an air engine or caloric engine) is any heat engine that uses the expansion and contraction of air under the influence of a temperature change to convert thermal energy into mechanical work. These engine ...

(open system) –

George Cayley Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aer ...

Hot bulb engine Hot or the acronym HOT may refer to: Food and drink *Pungency, in food, a spicy or hot quality *Hot, a wine tasting descriptor Places *Hot district, a district of Chiang Mai province, Thailand ** Hot subdistrict, a sub-district of Hot Distric ...

heavy oil engine The Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine, named after its inventor Herbert Akroyd Stuart and the manufacturer Richard Hornsby & Sons, was the first successful design of an internal combustion engine using heavy oil as a fuel. It was the first to use a se ...

–

Hydraulic accumulator A hydraulic accumulator is a pressure storage reservoir in which an incompressible hydraulic fluid is held under pressure that is applied by an external source of mechanical energy. The external source can be an engine, a spring, a raised weigh ...

*The world's first house powered with

hydroelectricity Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...

–

Cragside Cragside is a Victorian country house near the town of Rothbury in Northumberland, England. It was the home of William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, founder of the Armstrong Whitworth armaments firm. An industrial magnate, scientist, phila ...

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land ...

Hydrogen Fuel Cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...

–

William Robert Grove Sir William Robert Grove, FRS FRSE (11 July 1811 – 1 August 1896) was a Welsh judge and physical scientist. He anticipated the general theory of the conservation of energy, and was a pioneer of fuel cell technology. He invented the Grove volt ...

Internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal co ...

– Samuel Brown *

light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...

(did not invent the first visible light, only theorised) –

H. J. Round Captain Henry Joseph Round (2 June 1881 – 17 August 1966) was an English engineer and one of the early pioneers of radio. He was the first to report observation of electroluminescence from a solid state diode, leading to the discovery of the l ...

Linear motor A linear motor is an electric motor that has had its stator and rotor "unrolled", thus, instead of producing a torque (rotation), it produces a linear force along its length. However, linear motors are not necessarily straight. Characteristica ...

is a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor –

then improved by

Eric Laithwaite Eric Roberts Laithwaite (14 June 1921 – 27 November 1997) was a British electrical engineer, known as the "Father of Maglev" for his development of the linear induction motor and maglev rail system. Biography Eric Roberts Laithwaite wa ...

*First person to person to publicly predict and describe (although not the inventor) of the

Microchip An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

– Geoffrey W.A. Dummer *

Microturbines A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...

– Chris and Paul Bladon of

Bladon Jets Bladon or Bladon Micro Turbine formerly was called Bladon Jets is a pioneer in the design, development and manufacture of Micro Turbine Gensets (MTGs) - using high-speed, ultra reliable and clean-burning microturbines. This British company designs ...

*The world's first

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liq ...

and a process of extracting paraffin from coal laying the foundations for the modern oil industry – James Young (1811–1883) * Pendulum governor –

Frederick Lanchester Frederick William Lanchester LLD, Hon FRAeS, FRS (23 October 1868 – 8 March 1946), was an English polymath and engineer who made important contributions to automotive engineering and to aerodynamics, and co-invented the topic of operations ...

*Modified version of the Newcomen steam engine (Pickard engine) – James Pickard *Contributed to the development of

– Scotsman

and Englishman

Arnold Frederic Wilkins Arnold Frederic Wilkins OBE (20 February 1907 – 5 August 1985) was a pioneer in developing the use of radar. It was Arnold Wilkins who suggested to his boss, Robert Watson-Watt, that reflected radio waves might be used to detect aircraft, ...

*Pioneer of radio guidance systems –

Archibald Low Archibald Montgomery Low (17 October 1888 – 13 September 1956) developed the first powered drone aircraft. He was an English consulting engineer, research physicist and inventor, and author of more than 40 books. Low has been called the "fa ...

* Screw-cutting lathe – Henry Hindley **The first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe –

Henry Maudslay Henry Maudslay ( pronunciation and spelling) (22 August 1771 – 14 February 1831) was an English machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology. His inventions were ...

*Devised a standard for

screw threads A screw thread, often shortened to thread, is a helical structure used to convert between rotational and linear movement or force. A screw thread is a ridge wrapped around a cylinder or cone in the form of a helix, with the former being called a ...

leading to its widespread acceptance –

Joseph Whitworth Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet (21 December 1803 – 22 January 1887) was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for scre ...

*Rectilinear

Slide rule The slide rule is a mechanical analog computer which is used primarily for multiplication and division, and for functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry. It is not typically designed for addition or subtraction, which ...

–

William Oughtred William Oughtred ( ; 5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660), also Owtred, Uhtred, etc., was an Kingdom of England, English mathematician and Anglican ministry, Anglican clergyman.'Oughtred (William)', in P. Bayle, translated and revised by J.P. Bernar ...

*Compound

steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam tu ...

–

Stirling engine A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by the cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas (the ''working fluid'') between different temperatures, resulting in a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work. More specif ...

–

Robert Stirling Robert Stirling (25 October 1790 – 6 June 1878) was a Scottish clergyman and engineer. He invented the Stirling engine and was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2014. Early life Robert Stirling was born at Fatal Fiel ...

Supercharger In an internal combustion engine, a supercharger compresses the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement. The current categorisation is that a supercharger is a form of forced indu ...

–

Dugald Clerk Sir Dugald Clerk (sometimes written as Dugald Clark) KBE, LLD FRS (1854, Glasgow – 1932, Ewhurst, Surrey) was a Scottish engineer who designed the world's first successful two-stroke engine in 1878 and patented it in England in 1881. He wa ...

* Electric

–

Two-stroke engine A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of ...

– Joseph Day *The Wimshurst machine is an

Electrostatic generator An electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is an electrical generator that produces ''static electricity'', or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current. The knowledge of static electricity dates back to the earliest ci ...

for producing high

voltages Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to mo ...

– James Wimshurst *

Wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

–

Francis Herbert Wenham __NOTOC__ Francis Herbert Wenham (1824, Kensington – 1908) was a British marine engineer who studied the problem of human flight and wrote a perceptive and influential academic paper, which he presented to the first meeting of the Royal Aeronaut ...

*Vacuum diode also known as a

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as ...

–

John Ambrose Fleming Sir John Ambrose Fleming FRS (29 November 1849 – 18 April 1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist who invented the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, designed the radio transmitter with which the first transatlantic r ...

Household appliances

* Perambulator – William Kent designed a baby carriage in 1733 *Collapsible baby buggy – Owen Maclaren *Domestic dishwasher – key modifications by William Howard Livens *"Bagless" vacuum cleaner – James Dyson *"Puffing Billy" – First powered vacuum cleaner – Hubert Cecil Booth *Fire extinguisher – George William Manby *Folding carton – Charles Henry Foyle * Lawn mower –

*Rubber band – Stephen Perry (inventor), Stephen Perry *Daniell cell – John Frederic Daniell *Tin can – Peter Durand *Corkscrew – Reverend Samuell Henshall *Mouse trap – James Henry Atkinson *Modern flushing toilet – John Harington (writer), John Harington * The pay toilet – John Nevil Maskelyne, Maskelyne invented a lock for London toilets, which required a penny to operate, hence the euphemism "spend a penny". *Electric toaster – Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton *Teasmade – Albert E. Richardson *Magnifying glass – Roger Bacon *Thermosiphon, which forms the basis of most modern central heating systems – Thomas Fowler (inventor), Thomas Fowler *Automatic electric kettle – Russell Hobbs *Thermos flask, Thermos Flask – James Dewar *Toothbrush – William Edward Addis *Sunglasses – James Ayscough * The Refrigerator – William Cullen (1748) * The Flush toilet: Alexander Cummings (1775) * The first distiller to triple distill Irish whiskey:John Jameson (Whisky distiller) * The first automated can-filing machine John West (captain), John West (1809–1888) * The waterproof Mackintosh – Charles Macintosh (1766–1843) * The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) * Keiller's marmalade Janet Keiller (1797) – The first recipe of rind suspended marmalade or Dundee marmalade produced in Dundee. * The modern lawnmower –

(1830) * The Lucifer friction match: Sir Sir Isaac Holden, 1st Baronet, Isaac Holden (1807–1897) * The self filling pen – Robert William Thomson, Robert Thomson (1822–1873) * Cotton-reel Yarn, thread – J & J Clark of Paisley, Renfrewshire, Paisley * Lime Cordial – Peter Burnett in 1867 * Bovril beef extract – John Lawson Johnston in 1874 * Wellington boots, Wellington Boots * Can Opener – Robert Yeates 1855

Ideas, religion and ethics

* Agnosticism by Thomas Henry Huxley * Anglicanism by Henry VIII of England * Classical Liberalism – John Locke known as the "Father of Classical Liberalism". * Malthusianism and the groundwork for the study of population dynamics – Thomas Robert Malthus with his work An Essay on the Principle of Population. * Methodism by John Wesley and Charles Wesley * Quakers, Quakerism by George Fox * Utilitarianism by Jeremy Bentham

Industrial processes

*Crucible steel, English crucible steel – Benjamin Huntsman *Steel production Bessemer process – Henry Bessemer *Hydraulic press – Joseph Bramah *Parkesine, the first man-made plastic – Alexander Parkes *

– Joseph Aspdin *Sheffield plate – Thomas Boulsover *

–

*Stainless steel – Harry Brearley *Rubber Masticator – Thomas Hancock (inventor), Thomas Hancock *Power Loom –

*Parkes process – Alexander Parkes *Lead chamber process – John Roebuck *Development of the world's first commercially successful manufacture of high quality flat glass using the float glass process – Alastair Pilkington *The first commercial electroplating process – George Elkington *The Wilson Yarn Clearer – Peter Wilson *Float glass, Float Glass – Alastair Pilkington – Modern Glass manufacturing process *Contact Process *Froth Flotation – William Haynes and A H Higgins. *Extrusion – Joseph Bramah

Medicine

*First correct description of circulation of the blood – William Harvey *Smallpox vaccine –

with his discovery is said to have "saved more lives (...) than were lost in all the wars of mankind since the beginning of recorded history." *Surgical forceps – Stephen HalesScientific American inventions and discoveries By Rodney P. Carlisle *Antiseptic, Antisepsis in surgery – Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, Joseph Lister *Artificial intraocular lens transplant surgery for cataract patients – Harold Ridley (ophthalmologist), Harold Ridley *Clinical thermometer – Thomas Clifford Allbutt. * isolation of fibrinogen ("coagulable lymph"), investigation of the structure of the lymphatic system and description of red blood cells by the surgeon William Hewson (surgeon) *Credited with discovering how to culture embryonic stem cells in 1981 – Martin Evans *First blood pressure measurement and first cardiac catheterisation-Stephen Hales *Pioneer of anaesthesia and father of epidemiology for locating the source of cholera – John Snow (physician) *pioneered the use of sodium cromoglycate as a remedy for asthma – Roger Altounyan *The first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen and one of the founders of orthopedy – Percivall Pott *Performed the first successful blood transfusion – James Blundell (physician), James Blundell *Discovered the active ingredient of Aspirin – Edward Stone (clergyman), Edward Stone *Discovery of Protein crystallography – Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin *The world's first successful stem cell transplant – John Raymond Hobbs *First typhoid vaccine – Almroth Wright *Pioneer of the treatment of epilepsy – Edward Henry Sieveking *discovery of Nitrous oxide (entonox/"laughing gas") and its anaesthetic properties –

*Computed Tomography (CT scanner) – Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield *Gray's Anatomy widely regarded as the first complete human anatomy textbook – Henry Gray *Discovered Parkinson's disease – James Parkinson *General anaesthetic – Pioneered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow (physician), John Snow *Contributed to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – Sir Peter Mansfield *Statistical parametric mapping – Karl J. Friston *Nasal cannulaWilfred Jones *The development of in vitro fertilization – Patrick Christopher Steptoe and Robert Geoffrey Edwards *First baby genetically selected to be free of a breast cancer – University College London *Viagra – Peter Dunn, Albert Wood, Dr Nicholas Terrett *Acetylcholine – Henry Hallett Dale *EKG (underlying principles) – various *Discovery of vitamins – Frederick Gowland Hopkins * Earliest pharmacopoeia in English *The hip replacement operation, in which a stainless steel stem and 22mm head fit into a polymer socket and both parts are fixed into position by Poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA cement – pioneered by John Charnley *In vitro fertilisation – Developed by Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards with a first successful birth in 1978 as a result of natural cycle IVF where no stimulation was made. *Description of Hay fever – John Bostock (physician) in 1819 * Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870) Drug discovery: a history By Walter Sneader * Discovery of hypnotism (November 1841) – James Braid (surgeon), James Braid (1795–1860) The Discovery of Hypnosis – The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father of Hypnotism By James Braid, Donald Robertson (ed.) * Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932) Assam Branch, Indian Tea Association, 1889–1989: centenary souvenir * Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (microbiologist), David Bruce (1855–1931) Madkour's Brucellosis M. Monir Madkour – 2001 * Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865–1926) Recruit Medicine edited by Bernard DeKoning * Discovering insulin – John J R Macleod (1876–1935) with others * Ambulight PDT: light-emitting sticking plaster used in photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating non-melanoma skin cancer. Developed by Ambicare Dundee's Ninewells Hospital and St Andrews University. (2010) * Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe – Later Queen's physician in Scotland) Research in British universities, polytechnics and colleges British Library, British Library. RBUPC Office * Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964 Milestones in health and medicine Anne S. Harding Oryx Press, 2000 – Medical * Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale (physician), Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974) * EKG [Electrocardiography]: Alexander Muirhead (1911) Clinical Examination In Cardiology By Rao * Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870) * Discovery of hypnotism (November 1841) – James Braid (surgeon), James Braid (1795–1860) * Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (microbiologist), David Bruce (1855–1931) * Development of ibuprofen * Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865–1926) * The earliest discovery of an antibiotic, penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) * Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s * Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe – Later Queen's physician in Scotland) * Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964 * EKG [Electrocardiography]: Alexander Muirhead (1911) * Discovering secretin, the first hormone, and its role as a chemical messenger: William Bayliss and Ernest Starling.

Military

*Aircraft carrier – *Flight deck#Angled flight deck, Angled Flight Deck, Optical landing system, Optical Landing System and Aircraft catapult#Steam catapult, Steam catapult for Aircraft Carriers-Dennis Cambell CB DSC, Nicholas Goodhart and C. C. Mitchell, Commander Colin C. Mitchell RNVR respectively *Armstrong Gun – Sir William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, William Armstrong *Bailey bridge – Donald Bailey (civil engineer), Donald Bailey *Battle Tank/The tank – During WWI, developed separately in Britain and France, and first used in combat by the British. In Britain designed by Walter Gordon Wilson and William Tritton. *Bouncing bomb – Barnes Wallis *Bullpup firearm configuration – Thorneycroft carbine *Chobham armour *Congreve rocket – William Congreve (inventor), William Congreve *Depth charge *Dreadnought battleship – *The side by side Boxlock action, AKA the double barreled shotgun – Anson and Deeley *Percussion ignition *Turret ship – Although designs for a rotating gun turret date back to the late 18th century, was the first warship to be outfitted with one. *Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife – William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes *Fighter aircraft – The Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus of 1914 was the first of its kind. *Fuse (explosives), Safety fuse – William Bickford (1774–1834), William Bickford *H2S radar (airborne radar to aid bomb targeting) –

*Harrier jump jet – VTOL (Vertical take-off and landing aircraft) *High explosive squash head – Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney *Livens Projector – William Howard Livens *The first self-powered machine gun Maxim gun – Sir Hiram Maxim, Although the Inventor is American, the Maxim gun was financed by Albert Vickers of Vickers Limited company and produced in Hatton Garden

*Mills bombthe first modern fragmentation grenade. *Nuclear fission chain reaction – Leo Szilard whilst crossing the road near Russell Square. *Puckle Gun – James Puckle *Rubber bullet and Plastic bullet – Developed by the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. *Self-propelled gun - The Gun Carrier Mark I was the first piece of Self-propelled artillery ever to be produced. *Shrapnel shell – Henry Shrapnel * Smokeless propellant to replace gunpowder with the use of Cordite – Frederick Abel *The world's first practical underwater active sound detection apparatus, the ASDIC Active Sonar – Developed by Canadian physicist Robert William Boyle and English physicist Albert Beaumont Wood *Special forces – Special Air Service, SAS Founded by David Stirling, Sir David Stirling. *Stun grenades – invented by the Special Air Service in the 1960s. *Torpedo – Robert Whitehead *The Whitworth rifle, considered the first sniper rifle. During the American Civil War the Whitworth rifle had been known to kill at ranges of about – Sir

Mining

*Beam engine – Used for pumping water from mines *Davy lamp –

*Geordie lamp – George Stephenson *Tunnel boring machine – James Henry Greathead and

Musical instruments

*Concertina –

*Theatre organ – Robert Hope-Jones *Logical bassoon, an electronically controlled version of the bassoon – Giles Brindley *Northumbrian smallpipes *Tuning fork – John Shore (trumpeter), John Shore * The piano footpedal – John Broadwood (1732–1812)

Photography

*Ambrotype – Frederick Scott Archer *Calotype – William Fox Talbot *Cinematography – William Friese-Greene *Collodion process – Frederick Scott Archer **Collodion-albumen process – Joseph Sidebotham in 1861 *Dry plate process also known as gelatine process, is the first economically successful durable photographic medium – Richard Leach Maddox *First Film called "The Horse in Motion" in 1878 – Eadweard Muybridge *Kinetoscope the first Motion picture camera – William Kennedy Laurie Dickson *Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914 – George Albert Smith *The first movie projector, the Zoopraxiscope – Eadweard Muybridge *Negative (photography), Photographic negative - William Fox Talbot *Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805), Thomas Wedgwood – pioneer of photography, devised the method to copy visible images chemically to permanent media. *Single-lens reflex camera and earliest Panoramic Camera with wide-angle lens - Thomas Sutton *Stereoscope –

Publishing firsts

*Oldest publisher and printer in the world (having been operating continuously since 1584): Cambridge University Press *first book printed in English: "The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye" by Englishman William Caxton in 1475 * The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768–81) * The first English textbook on surgery(1597) * The first modern pharmacopoeia, William Cullen (1776) The book became 'Europe's principal text on the classification and treatment of disease' * The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK

Science

*Triple achromatic lens – Peter Dollond *Joint first to discover alpha decay via quantum tunnelling – Ronald Wilfred Gurney *Alpha particle, Alpha and beta particle, Beta rays discovered – Ernest Rutherford *Argon element discovered– John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh with Scotsman William Ramsay *Atom (nuclear model of) discovered– Ernest Rutherford *Atomic theory – Considered the father of modern chemistry, John Dalton's experiments with gases led to the development of what is called the modern atomic theory. *Atwood machine used for illustrating the law of uniformly accelerated motion – George Atwood *Barometer (Marine) –

*Bell's theorem – John Stewart Bell *Calculus – Sir Isaac Newton *Cell biology – Credit for the discovery of the first cells is given to

who described the microscopic compartments of cork cells in 1665 *Chromatography (Partition) – Richard Laurence Millington Synge and Archer J.P. Martin *Coggeshall slide rule – Henry Coggeshall *Correct theory of combustion –

*Coumarin synthesised, one of the first synthetic perfumes, and cinnamic acid via the Perkin reaction –

*Hygrometer#Chilled mirror dew point hygrometer, Dew Point Hygrometer – John Frederic Daniell *Earnshaw's theorem – Samuel Earnshaw *Electrical generator (dynamo) –

*Electromagnet –

in 1823. *Electron and isotopes discovered – J. J. Thomson *Equals sign Robert Recorde *Optical amplifier#Erbium-doped optical fiber amplifiers, Erbium-doped fibre amplifier - Sir David N. Payne *Faraday cage –

*First Law of Thermodynamics demonstrated that electric circuits obey the law of the conservation of energy and that electricity is a form of energy . Also the unit of energy, the Joule is named after him – James Prescott Joule *Hawking radiation – Stephen Hawking *Helium – Norman Lockyer *Holography – First developed by Dennis Gabor in Rugby, England. Improved by Nicholas J. Phillips who made it possible to record multi-colour reflection holograms *Hooke's Law (equation describing elasticity) –

*Infrared#Human history, Infrared radiation – discovery commonly attributed to William Herschel. *Iris diaphragm –

*The Law of Gravity – Sir

*Magneto-optical effect –

*Mass spectrometer invented - J. J. Thomson *Maxwell's equations -

*Micrometer (device), Micrometer – William Gascoigne (scientist), William Gascoigne **Micrometer (device), Micrometer (first bench one) that was capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch –

*Neutron discovered – James Chadwick *Newtonian telescope – Sir

*Newton's laws of motion – Sir Isaac Newton *First full-scale commercial Nuclear Reactor at Calder Hall, opened in 1956. *Nuclear transfer – Is a form of cloning first put into practice by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell (biologist), Keith Campbell to clone Dolly the Sheep *Oxygen gas (O2) discovered – Joseph Priestley *Pell's equation – John Pell (mathematician), John Pell *Penrose graphical notation – Roger Penrose *Periodic Table – John Alexander Reina Newlands *pion and (pi-meson) discovered – Cecil Frank Powell *William Kingdon Clifford#Premonition of relativity, Pre-empting elements of General Relativity theory – William Kingdon Clifford *Proton discovered – Ernest Rutherford *

pioneering development –

*Rayleigh scattering, form of Elastic scattering discovered - John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh *Seismograph – John Milne *

, the world's first small electronic

– Sir

–

*Standard deviation –

*Symbol for "is less than" and "is greater than" – Thomas Harriot 1630 *Theory of Evolution – Charles Darwin *Thomson scattering - J. J. Thomson *Weather map – Sir Francis Galton *Wheatstone bridge – Samuel Hunter Christie *"×" symbol for multiplication as well as the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions –

Astronomy

*Discovery of the "White Spot" on Saturn – Will Hay *Discovery of Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to the Sun, by Robert T. A. Innes, Robert Innes (1861–1933) *Discovery of the planet Uranus and the moons Titania (moon), Titania, Oberon (moon), Oberon, Enceladus (moon), Enceladus, Mimas (moon), Mimas by Sir William Herschel (German born astronom, later in life British) *Discovery of Triton (moon), Triton and the moons Hyperion (moon), Hyperion, Ariel (moon), Ariel and Umbriel (moon), Umbriel – William Lassell *Planetarium – John Theophilus Desaguliers *Predicts the existence and location of Neptune from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus – John Couch Adams *Important contributions to the development of radio astronomy – Bernard Lovell *Newtonian telescope – Sir

*Achromatic doublet lens – John Dollond *Coining the phrase 'Big Bang' – Fred Hoyle *First theorised existence of black holes, binary stars; invented torsion balance – John Michell *Stephen Hawking – World-renowned theoretical physicist made many important contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes *Spiral galaxies – William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse *Discovery of Halley's Comet –

*Discovery of pulsars – Antony Hewish *Discovery of Sunspots and was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a

– Thomas Harriot * The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object – Arthur Stanley Eddington *Aperture synthesis, used for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources in the field of Radio astronomy – Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish

Chemistry

*Aluminium first discovered – Sir

*Concept of atomic number introduced to fix inadequacies of Mendeleev's periodic table, which had been based on atomic weight – Henry Moseley *Baconian method, an early forerunner of the scientific method – Sir Francis Bacon *Benzene first isolated, the first known aromatic hydrocarbon –

*Boron first isolated –

*Bragg's law and establish the field of X-ray crystallography, an important tool for elucidating the crystal structure of substances – William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg *Buckminsterfullerene discovered – Sir Harry Kroto *Callendar effect the theory that linked rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature (Global warming) – Guy Stewart Callendar *Chemical Oceanography established : Robert Boyle. *Dalton's law and Law of multiple proportions – John Dalton *The structure of DNA and pioneering the field of molecular biology – co-developed by

and the American James D. Watson, James Watson *DNA sequencing by chain termination – Frederick Sanger *Electrolysis and electrochemistry discovered : William Nicholson (chemist), William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle. *Chemical Fertilizer invented : John Lawes *Structure of Ferrocene discovered – Geoffrey Wilkinson & others *Pioneer of the Fuel Cell – Francis Thomas Bacon *Henderson limit - Richard Henderson (biologist), Richard Henderson *Hydrogen discovered as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air – Henry Cavendish *Introns discovered in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing – Richard J. Roberts *Concept of Isotopes first proposed, elements with the same chemical properties may have differing atomic weights – Frederick Soddy *Josephson voltage standard - Brian Josephson *Kerosene invented : Abraham Gesner and James Young (chemist), James Young. *Kinetic theory of gases developed : James Clerk Maxwell, James Maxwell. *Proposes the law of octaves, a precursor to the Periodic Law – John Alexander Reina Newlands, John Newlands *Pioneer of Meteorology by developing a nomenclature system for clouds in 1802 – Luke Howard *Potassium first isolated –

*Rayleigh scattering explains why the sky is blue, and predicted the existence of the surface waves – John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh *Silicones discovered : Frederic Kipping. *Publishes Opus Maius, which among other things, proposes an early form of the Scientific Method, and contains results of his experiments with Gunpowder – Roger Bacon *Publishes several Aristotelian commentaries, an early framework for the Scientific Method – Robert Grosseteste *Sodium first isolated –

*Thallium discovered –

*valence (chemistry), Valence discovered : Edward Frankland. *Chemical composition of Water discovered : Henry Cavendish. *Weston cell – Edward Weston (chemist) *The synthesising of Xenon hexafluoroplatinate the first time to show that noble gases can form chemical compounds – Neil Bartlett (chemist), Neil Bartlett

Sport

*Association football, Football – The rules as we know them today were established in 1848 at

, Sheffield F.C. is acknowledged by The Football Association and FIFA as the world's first and oldest football club. *Rugby football, Rugby – William Webb Ellis *Cricket – the world's second-most popular sport can be traced back to the 13th century *Tennis – widely known to have originated in England. *Boxing – England played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing. Boxing was first accepted as an Olympic sport in Ancient Greece in 688 BC * Golf – Modern game invented in Scotland * Billiards * Badminton *Darts – a traditional pub game, the numbering layout was devised by Brian Gamlin *Table-Tennis – was invented on the dinner tables of Britain as an indoor version of tennis *Snooker – Invented by the British Army in India *Ping pong – The game has its origins in England, in the 1880s *Bowls – has been traced to 13th century England *Field hockey – the modern game grew from English public schools in the early 19th century *Netball – the sport emerged from early versions of women's basketball, at Martina Bergman-Österberg, Madame Österberg's College in England during the late 1890s. *Rounders – the game originates in England most likely from an older game known as stool ball *The Oxford and Cambridge The Boat Race, Boat Race, the first race was in 1829 on the River Thames in

*Thoroughbred Horseracing – Was first developed in 17th and 18th century England *Polo – its roots began in Persia as a training game for cavalry units, the formal codification of the rules of modern Polo as a sport were established in 19th century England *The format of Modern Olympics – William Penny Brookes * The first Paralympic games competition were held in England in 1948 – Ludwig Guttmann *Hawk-Eye ball tracking system.

Transport

*Pedal driven bicycle - Kirkpatrick Macmillan

Aviation

*Aeronautics and flight. As a pioneer of glider aircraft, glider development & first well-documented human flight he discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight – weight, Lift (soaring), lift, Drag (physics), drag, and thrust. Modern airplane design is based on those discoveries including Camber (aerodynamics), cambered wings. He is sometimes called the "Father of aviation" –

*Steam-powered flight with the Aerial Steam Carriage – John Stringfellow – The world's first powered flight took place at Chard in Somerset 55 years before the Wright brothers attempt at Kitty Hawk *VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) fighter-bomber aircraft – Hawker P.1127, designed by Sydney Camm *The first commercial

(

) *The first Supersonic airliner, Supersonic Airliner – Concorde. Developed by the British Aircraft Corporation in partnership with Aérospatiale 1969 *The first aircraft capable of supercruise – English Electric Lightning *Ailerons – Matthew Piers Watt Boulton *Head-up display (HUD) – The

(RAE) designed the first equipment and it was built by Cintel with the system first integrated into the Blackburn Buccaneer. *Pioneer of parachute design – Robert Cocking * The first human-powered aircraft to make an officially authenticated take-off and flight (Southampton University Man Powered Aircraft, SUMPAC) – The University of Southampton *Hale rockets, improved version of the Congreve rocket design that introduced Thrust vectoring – William Hale (British inventor), William Hale *

engine- The first hypersonic jet/rocket capable of working in air and space to allow the possibility of HOTOL. *Air force, Air Force –

Railways

* Great Western Railway –

* Stockton and Darlington Railway the world's first operational steam passenger railway * First inter-city steam-powered railway – Liverpool and Manchester Railway

Locomotives

*''Blücher (locomotive), Blücher'' – George Stephenson *''Puffing Billy (locomotive), Puffing Billy'' -William Hedley *''Locomotion No 1'' – Robert Stephenson *''Sans Pareil'' – Timothy Hackworth *''Stourbridge Lion'' – Foster, Rastrick and Company *''Stephenson's Rocket'' – George Stephenson, George and Robert Stephenson *''Salamanca (locomotive), Salamanca'' – Matthew Murray *''LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman, Flying Scotsman''- Sir Nigel Gresley

Other railway developments

*Displacement lubricator, Ramsbottom safety valve, the water trough, the split piston ring – John Ramsbottom (engineer), John Ramsbottom * Maglev (transport) rail system –

* World's first underground railway and the first rapid transit system. It was also the first underground railway to operate electric trains – London Underground *Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was an experimental High Speed Train that introduced tilting train, tilting – British Rail

Roads

*Bowden cable – Frank Bowden *Hansom cab – Joseph Hansom *Seat belt –

*Sinclair C5 – Sir

– E. Purnell Hooley *Tension-spoke wire wheels –

*LGOC B-type – the first mass-produced bus *Tire, Pneumatic tyre – Robert William Thomson is deemed to be inventor, despite John Boyd Dunlop being initially credited *Disc brakes – Frederick W. Lanchester *Belisha beacon – Leslie Hore-Belisha *Lotus 25: considered the first modern F1 race car, designed for the 1962 Formula One season; a revolutionary design, the first fully stressed monocoque chassis to appear in Formula One – Colin Chapman, Team Lotus *Horstmann suspension, tracked armoured fighting vehicle suspension – Sidney Horstmann *Steam fire engine – John Braithwaite (engineer), John Braithwaite *Penny-farthing – James Starley *Dynasphere (vehicle), Dynasphere – John Archibald Purves *Continuous track, Caterpillar track – Richard Lovell Edgeworth *Mini-roundabout – Frank Blackmore *Quadbike – Standard Motor Company patented the 'Jungle Airborne Buggy' (JAB) in 1944

Sea

*Plimsoll Line – Samuel Plimsoll *Hovercraft – Christopher Cockerell *Lifeboat (rescue), Lifeboat – Lionel Lukin *Resurgam – George Garrett (inventor), George Garrett *Transit (ship) – Richard Hall Gower *Turbinia, the first

powered steamship, designed by the engineer Sir

and built in Newcastle upon Tyne *Diving Equipment/Scuba Gear – Henry Fleuss *Diving bell – Edmund Halley *Sextant – John Bird (astronomer), John Bird *Octant (instrument) – Independently developed by Englishman John Hadley and the American Thomas Godfrey (inventor), Thomas Godfrey *Whirling speculum, This device can be seen as a precursor to the gyroscope – John Serson *Screw propeller – Francis Pettit Smith *The world's first patent for an underwater echo ranging device (Sonar) – Lewis Fry Richardson *hydrophone Before the invention of Sonar convoy escort ships used them to detect U-boats, greatly lessening the effectiveness of the

– Research headed by Ernest Rutherford *Hydrofoil – John Isaac Thornycroft *Inflatable boat * The world's first iron armoured and iron hulled warship.

Scientific innovations

* The theory of electromagnetism –

(1831–1879) * The Gregorian telescope – James Gregory (astronomer and mathematician), James Gregory (1638–1675) * The concept of latent heat – Joseph Black (1728–1799) * The pyroscope, atmometer and aethrioscope scientific instruments: Sir John Leslie (physicist), John Leslie (1766–1832) * Identifying the cell nucleus, nucleus in living cell (biology), cells – Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773), Robert Brown (1773–1858) * Hypnotism – James Braid (surgeon), James Braid (1795–1860) * Transplant rejection: Professor Thomas Gibson (1940s) the first medical doctor to understand the relationship between donor graft tissue and host tissue rejection and tissue transplantation by his work on aviation burns victims during World War II. * Colloid chemistry – Thomas Graham (chemist), Thomas Graham (1805–1869) * The kelvin SI Units of measurement, unit of temperature – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) * Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds – Alexander Crum Brown (1838–1922) * Criminal

ing – Henry Faulds (1843–1930) * The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916) * The Cloud chamber – Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869–1959) * Pioneering work on nutrition and poverty – John Boyd Orr (1880–1971) * The ultrasound scanner – Ian Donald (1910–1987) * Ferrocene synthetic substances – Peter Ludwig Pauson in 1955 * The MRI body scanner – John Mallard and James Huchinson from (1974–1980) * The first Cloning, cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): Was conducted in The Roslin Institute research centre in 1996 * Seismometer innovations thereof – James David Forbes * Metamaterials, Metaflex fabric innovations thereof – University of St. Andrews (2010) application of the first manufacturing fabrics that manipulate light in bending it around a subject. Before this such light manipulating atoms were fixed on flat hard surfaces. The team at St Andrews are the first to develop the concept to fabric. * Macaulayite: Dr Jeff Wilson of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen.

Miscellaneous

* Oldest police force in continuous operation: Marine Police Force founded in 1798 and now part of the Metropolitan Police Service * Oldest life insurance company in the world: Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office founded 1706 * First Glee Club, founded in Harrow School in 1787. *Oldest arts festival – Norwich 1772 *Oldest music festival – The Three Choirs Festival *Oldest literary festival – The Cheltenham Literature Festival *Bayko – Charles Plimpton *Linoleum – Frederick Walton *Chocolate bar – J. S. Fry & Sons *Meccano – Frank Hornby *Crossword puzzle – Arthur Wynne *Gas mask – (disputed) John Tyndall and others *Graphic telescope – Cornelius Varley *Steel-ribbed Umbrella – Samuel Fox (industrialist), Samuel Fox *Plastic – Alexander Parkes *Plasticine – William Harbutt *Carbonation, Carbonated soft drink – Joseph Priestley *Friction Match – John Walker (inventor), John Walker *Invented the rubber balloon –

*The proposal of a new decimal metrology which predated the Metric system – John Wilkins *Edmondson railway ticket – Thomas Edmondson *The world's first Nature Reserve – Charles Waterton *Public Park – Joseph Paxton *Scouts – Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell *Spirograph – Denys Fisher *The Young Men's Christian Association YMCA was founded in London – George Williams (YMCA), George Williams *The Salvation Army, known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid – Methodist minister (Christianity), minister William Booth *Prime meridian – George Biddell Airy *Produced the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English – Myles Coverdale *Founder of the Bank of Scotland – John Holland (banker), John Holland *Venn diagram – John Venn *Vulcanisation of rubber – Thomas Hancock (inventor), Thomas Hancock *Silicone – Frederick Kipping *Pykrete – Geoffrey Pyke *Vantablack – The world's blackest known substance *Stamp collecting – John Edward Gray bought penny blacks on first day of issue in order to keep them * lorgnette – George Adams (scientist, died 1773), George Adams *Boys' Brigade *Bank of England devised by William Paterson (banker), William Paterson *Bank of France devised by John Law (economist), John Law *Colour photography: the first known permanent colour photograph was taken by

(1831–1879) The Focal encyclopedia of photography By Leslie Stroebel, Richard D. Zakia * Barnardos * Boy Scouts * Girl Guides * RSPCA * RSPB * RNLI