| 2021 |
James Webb Space Telescope |
NASA, ESA, CSA Engineers |
International |
To peer further back into the dawn of the universe than ever before using a massive, folding, gold-plated beryllium mirror optimized for infrared light. |
| 2020 |
Reusable Spacecraft (Crew Dragon) |
SpaceX Engineers |
American |
To return human spaceflight capabilities to the private sector using a fully autonomous, highly reusable capsule system. |
| 2020 |
Artificial General Intelligence (Concept / Ongoing) |
Global AI Researchers |
International |
To pursue the ultimate frontier of computer science: the creation of a machine capable of understanding, learning, and applying intelligence across any intellectual task that a human being can perform. |
| 2020 |
Protein Structure Prediction (AlphaFold) |
DeepMind Technologies |
British |
To solve a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology by using AI to accurately predict the 3D shapes of proteins, accelerating drug discovery globally. |
| 2020 |
Large Language Models (LLMs) |
OpenAI Researchers |
American |
To provide AI capable of writing code, drafting essays, and reasoning through complex logic by training neural networks on vast portions of the entire internet. |
| 2019 |
Quantum Supremacy |
Google AI Quantum Team |
American |
To officially prove that a quantum computer could perform a highly complex mathematical calculation in minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of years. |
| 2018 |
Ray Tracing (Real-Time) |
Nvidia Engineers |
American |
To create photorealistic video game graphics by using specialized hardware to simulate the exact physical path of millions of individual light rays bouncing off objects. |
| 2017 |
Transformer Neural Network |
Ashish Vaswani, Google Brain |
International |
To completely revolutionize Artificial Intelligence by allowing models to process entire sentences at once and understand context, forming the architecture for modern AI. |
| 2017 |
CAR T-cell Therapy |
Carl June |
American |
To cure highly aggressive blood cancers by extracting a patient's immune cells, genetically rewiring them to hunt cancer, and injecting them back into the body. |
| 2015 |
Reusable Orbital Rocket Booster |
SpaceX Engineers |
American |
To dramatically lower the cost of spaceflight by programming the massive first stage of an orbital rocket to autonomously fly back to Earth and land itself vertically after launching its payload. |
| 2015 |
Diffusion AI Model |
Jascha Sohl-Dickstein |
American |
To generate stunning, highly detailed AI artwork from text prompts by training a model to gradually remove digital "noise" until a coherent image is formed. |
| 2015 |
Gravitational Wave Detection |
LIGO Scientific Collaboration |
International |
To literally feel the ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by two colliding black holes billions of lightyears away using incredibly sensitive lasers. |
| 2015 |
CRISPR-Cas12 |
Feng Zhang |
American |
To provide an even more precise and versatile alternative to Cas9 gene editing, allowing scientists to target different DNA sequences and improving the accuracy of genetic therapies. |
| 2015 |
CRISPR Gene Drive |
Kevin Esvelt |
American |
To alter the fate of entire wild ecosystems by permanently forcing a specific genetic modification (like malaria immunity) to rapidly spread through an entire species of mosquito. |
| 2014 |
Smart Speaker |
Amazon (Alexa Team) |
American |
To completely control a house's lighting, music, and timers hands-free by placing a far-field microphone array and cloud-connected AI assistant into a tabletop speaker. |
| 2014 |
Non-Fungible Token (NFT) |
Kevin McCoy, Anil Dash |
American |
To establish verifiable digital ownership and provenance of unique digital assets (like artwork or video clips) using blockchain ledger technology. |
| 2014 |
USB-C |
USB Implementers Forum |
International |
To solve the ultimate technological annoyance by providing a universal, high-speed data and power cable that is completely reversible (no wrong way to plug it in). |
| 2014 |
Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) |
Ian Goodfellow |
American |
To train artificial intelligence to create ultra-realistic fake images by pitting two neural networks against each other (one generates images, the other tries to spot the fakes). |
| 2014 |
Smart Contact Lens |
Google X |
American |
To monitor a diabetic patient's glucose levels continuously and painlessly using microscopic sensors embedded in a contact lens that analyzes their tears (still highly experimental). |
| 2013 |
Artificial Retina |
Mark Humayun |
American |
To partially restore vision to people with severe retinal blindness by implanting an electronic microchip in the eye that translates camera images directly into optic nerve signals. |
| 2013 |
Hoverboard (Self-balancing scooter) |
Shane Chen |
Chinese-American |
To provide a battery-powered, two-wheeled recreational vehicle that remains upright purely through internal gyroscopic sensors. |
| 2013 |
Lab-Grown Meat (Cultured Meat) |
Mark Post |
Dutch |
To solve the environmental and ethical issues of factory farming by cultivating actual, edible animal muscle tissue directly from stem cells in a bioreactor. |
| 2013 |
Bionic Eye (Argus II) |
Second Sight Medical |
American |
To restore functional vision to patients blinded by retinitis pigmentosa by bypassing damaged eye cells and sending camera signals directly to the optic nerve. |
| 2013 |
Virtual Reality Treadmill |
Virtuix Omni |
American |
To allow VR gamers to physically run, walk, and turn 360 degrees inside a video game without smashing into the walls of their actual living room. |
| 2013 |
Smart Contracts |
Vitalik Buterin |
Russian-Canadian |
To execute complex financial agreements and logic automatically on a decentralized blockchain network (Ethereum) without needing lawyers or middlemen. |
| 2012 |
CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing |
Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier |
American, French |
To act as a pair of molecular "scissors" capable of editing, removing, or adding highly specific sections of DNA in living organisms cheaply and easily. |
| 2012 |
Deep Learning AI (AlexNet breakthrough) |
Geoffrey Hinton, Alex Krizhevsky |
Canadian/British |
To create artificial neural networks capable of independently learning complex visual or language patterns, launching the modern explosion of Artificial Intelligence. |
| 2012 |
Higgs Boson Detection |
CERN Researchers |
International |
To finally confirm the existence of the particle responsible for giving all other matter in the universe its mass, using the Large Hadron Collider. |
| 2011 |
Ring Video Doorbell |
Jamie Siminoff |
American |
To allow homeowners to see and speak to visitors at their front door from anywhere in the world using a Wi-Fi-connected camera synced to a smartphone application. |
| 2011 |
Thunderbolt Interface |
Intel and Apple |
American |
To combine incredibly high-speed data transfer (PCIe) and high-definition video output (DisplayPort) into a single, blazing-fast computer cable. |
| 2011 |
Phablet (Large Smartphone) |
Samsung (Galaxy Note) |
South Korean |
To blur the line between a mobile phone and a tablet by providing a massive 5.3-inch screen and a stylus, initiating the global trend toward giant smartphones. |
| 2010 |
Instant Pot |
Robert Wang |
Canadian |
To cook meals incredibly quickly and safely by combining a digital pressure cooker, slow cooker, and rice cooker into a single automated, multi-use appliance. |
| 2010 |
Air Fryer |
Fred van der Weij |
Dutch |
To perfectly mimic the crispy texture of deep-fried food using almost no oil by violently circulating superheated air around the food at high speeds. |
| 2010 |
Cryptocurrency Exchange |
Jed McCaleb (Mt. Gox) |
American |
To allow users to buy, sell, and trade decentralized digital currencies (like Bitcoin) using traditional fiat currencies on an open digital market. |
| 2010 |
Solar Sail |
JAXA Engineers (IKAROS) |
Japanese |
To propel a spacecraft continuously through the vacuum of space without using rocket fuel by harnessing the microscopic radiation pressure of sunlight hitting a massive reflective sheet. |
| 2010 |
Consumer Drone (Quadcopter) |
Parrot SA |
French |
To provide civilians and filmmakers with an incredibly stable, easy-to-fly remote-controlled helicopter using four rotors managed by advanced onboard gyroscopes and smartphones. |
| 2010 |
Tablet Computer (Modern) |
Apple Engineers (iPad) |
American |
To bridge the gap between a smartphone and a laptop by providing a large, multi-touch slate screen designed specifically for media consumption and web browsing. |
| 2010 |
Synthetic Cell |
Craig Venter |
American |
To boot up a living bacterial cell using an entirely synthetic, computer-generated genome designed in a laboratory, marking a milestone in synthetic biology. |
| 2009 |
Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) |
Satoshi Nakamoto |
Unknown |
To create a decentralized, trustless digital currency entirely free from government banking control, utilizing a public cryptographic ledger known as the blockchain. |
| 2009 |
Perovskite Solar Cells |
Tsutomu Miyasaka |
Japanese |
To create incredibly cheap, lightweight, and flexible solar panels using unique crystal structures that can be literally painted or printed onto surfaces. |
| 2009 |
Wearable Fitness Tracker |
James Park, Eric Friedman (Fitbit) |
American |
To motivate individuals to exercise by using a wearable accelerometer to track daily steps, sleep quality, and calories burned, syncing the data to a smartphone. |
| 2008 |
Blockchain Technology |
Satoshi Nakamoto |
Unknown |
To create an unhackable, decentralized public ledger where digital records are cryptographically linked together in an ever-growing chain, forming the basis of all cryptocurrency and Web3. |
| 2008 |
Modern Electric Vehicle |
Tesla Motors Engineers |
American |
To prove electric cars could be fast, luxurious, and have a massive driving range by abandoning heavy lead-acid batteries for thousands of lightweight lithium-ion laptop cells. |
| 2007 |
Hashtag (#) |
Chris Messina |
American |
To easily group and search for specific topics and events on the chaotic early Twitter platform by prefixing keywords with the pound symbol. |
| 2007 |
Mobile Money (M-Pesa) |
Safaricom |
Kenyan |
To provide millions of unbanked citizens with a secure way to deposit, transfer, and withdraw money directly through standard SMS text messages on basic cell phones. |
| 2007 |
Neuroprosthetic Hand |
DARPA / DEKA R&D |
American |
To allow amputees to control a highly articulated robotic hand simply by flexing the remaining muscles in their residual limb (famously known as the "Luke Arm"). |
| 2007 |
Smart TV |
HP / Samsung |
International |
To allow televisions to connect directly to the internet, run apps, and stream video natively without needing an external cable box or video game console. |
| 2006 |
Bionic Arm (Targeted Muscle Reinnervation) |
Todd Kuiken |
American |
To allow amputees to control robotic prosthetic limbs purely with their thoughts by surgically rewiring severed motor nerves into healthy chest muscles. |
| 2006 |
Blu-ray Disc |
Sony Engineers |
Japanese |
To replace DVDs by using a much finer "blue" laser, allowing the disc to store massive, high-definition 1080p movies and complex PlayStation 3 video games. |
| 2006 |
Metamaterials (Invisibility) |
David Smith |
American |
To physically bend microwave radiation smoothly around an object so that it appears totally invisible to radar detectors. |
| 2006 |
Cloud Computing |
Amazon Web Services (AWS) |
American |
To allow startups to instantly rent immense server power, storage, and databases over the internet rather than purchasing and maintaining physical hardware. |
| 2005 |
Gorilla Glass |
Corning Inc. Engineers |
American |
To prevent smartphone screens from constantly shattering by chemically strengthening the glass in a molten potassium bath, making it incredibly thin, scratch-resistant, and tough. |
| 2005 |
E-ink Price Tags |
Pricer / Altierre |
International |
To drastically reduce supermarket labor costs by replacing paper price tags with digital screens that update prices and barcodes wirelessly in real-time. |
| 2005 |
Optogenetics |
Karl Deisseroth, Ed Boyden |
American |
To allow neuroscientists to turn specific, individual brain neurons on and off instantaneously using flashes of colored light, unraveling the mysteries of brain function. |
| 2004 |
Podcast |
Dave Winer, Adam Curry |
American |
To automate the downloading of decentralized, episodic audio radio shows to Apple iPods over the internet using RSS enclosures. |
| 2004 |
Laser Mouse |
Logitech Engineers |
Swiss |
To vastly improve the tracking accuracy of computer mice by replacing the standard red LED optical sensor with an infrared laser that tracks microscopic surface textures. |
| 2004 |
Graphene Isolation |
Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov |
Russian-British |
To successfully isolate a single, two-dimensional layer of carbon atoms using Scotch tape, resulting in the thinnest, strongest, and most conductive material known to science. |
| 2004 |
Action Camera (GoPro) |
Nick Woodman |
American |
To allow surfers and extreme athletes to film their own stunts using a tiny, rugged, waterproof digital camera strapped directly to their bodies or helmets. |
| 2003 |
Crowdfunding |
Brian Camelio (ArtistShare) |
American |
To bypass traditional banks and record labels by allowing thousands of internet fans to directly pool their money together to finance an artist's project. |
| 2003 |
Tourniquet (Modern Combat) |
US Army Institute of Surgical Research |
American |
To stop catastrophic limb bleeding on the battlefield immediately by using a highly durable nylon strap tightened by a windlass rod that soldiers can apply to themselves one-handed. |
| 2003 |
E-cigarette |
Hon Lik |
Chinese |
To provide a smoke-free alternative to deadly tobacco by using an ultrasonic or heating element to vaporize a liquid solution containing nicotine. |
| 2003 |
Bioprinting (3D Printed Organs) |
Thomas Boland |
American |
To eventually end the organ donor shortage by using modified 3D printers to perfectly layer living human cells into functional tissues and blood vessels. |
| 2003 |
Vape (Modern E-cigarette) |
Hon Lik |
Chinese |
To provide a smoke-free, tar-free nicotine delivery system using an ultrasonic element to vaporize a flavored liquid, invented by a pharmacist whose father died of lung cancer. |
| 2002 |
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) |
HDMI Founders Consortium |
International |
To instantly transmit massive amounts of uncompressed, high-definition digital video and multi-channel audio over a single, standardized cable for home theater systems. |
| 2002 |
Robot Vacuum (Roomba) |
iRobot Engineers |
American |
To automate household cleaning using a disc-shaped robot equipped with obstacle sensors and floor mapping algorithms that sweeps and vacuums entirely on its own. |
| 2001 |
BitTorrent |
Bram Cohen |
American |
To download massive computer files over slow internet connections by breaking the file into thousands of pieces and downloading them simultaneously from other users in a decentralized swarm. |
| 2001 |
Segway PT |
Dean Kamen |
American |
To revolutionize urban pedestrian travel using a two-wheeled, self-balancing electric scooter that moves forward simply by the rider leaning. |
| 2001 |
Human Genome Project |
International Consortium |
International |
To successfully identify, map, and sequence all 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, opening the door to personalized genetic medicine. |
| 2001 |
Wikipedia |
Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger |
American |
To provide humanity with a free, massively crowdsourced online encyclopedia that can be edited collaboratively in real-time by anyone with internet access. |
| 2001 |
Birth Control Patch |
Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical |
American |
To provide women with a highly convenient contraceptive that only needs to be changed once a week, delivering hormones transdermally rather than via a daily pill. |
| 2001 |
Telemedicine Robot |
Yulun Wang (InTouch Health) |
American |
To allow top medical specialists to remotely examine, diagnose, and talk to patients in rural hospitals using a mobile robot equipped with screens and stethoscopes. |
| 2001 |
Portable Oxygen Concentrator |
Various Engineers |
International |
To give patients with severe lung disease the freedom to travel by shrinking massive, highly pressurized oxygen tanks into a battery-powered device that extracts pure oxygen from room air. |
| 2000 |
Flash Drive (Thumb Drive) |
Trek 2000 International |
Singaporean |
To completely replace floppy disks and writable CDs by providing a tiny, durable, solid-state memory stick that plugged directly into a USB port. |
| 2000 |
USB Flash Drive |
Dov Moran |
Israeli |
To provide a highly durable, pocket-sized data storage device that plugs directly into a computer's USB port, making floppy disks obsolete. |
| 1999 |
Emoji |
Shigetaka Kurita |
Japanese |
To convey complex human emotions, weather, and actions in early, character-limited Japanese mobile phones using a standardized set of 12x12 pixel pictograms. |
| 1999 |
RSS Feed |
Ramanathan V. Guha |
Indian |
To allow internet users to easily subscribe to news websites and blogs, automatically pulling down new articles to their computer without having to manually check the site. |
| 1999 |
Capsule Endoscopy |
Gavriel Iddan |
Israeli |
To comfortably examine the human digestive tract by having the patient swallow a pill-sized, wireless video camera that transmits thousands of pictures to an external receiver. |
| 1999 |
Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) |
MiniMed Engineers |
American |
To constantly track a diabetic's blood sugar levels in real-time without finger-pricks by inserting a tiny, flexible sensor wire directly under the skin. |
| 1999 |
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) |
Nvidia Engineers |
American |
To relieve the main CPU of rendering complex 3D graphics by using a specialized, highly parallel processor, eventually becoming crucial for modern AI. |
| 1999 |
CubeSat |
Jordi Puig-Suari, Bob Twiggs |
American |
To drastically lower the cost of space exploration for universities and startups by standardizing tiny, 10-centimeter cubic satellites that can hitchhike on larger rocket launches. |
| 1999 |
Digital Video Recorder (TiVo) |
Jim Barton, Mike Ramsay |
American |
To allow television viewers to pause live TV and easily record entire seasons of shows onto an internal computer hard drive, rendering VCR tapes obsolete. |
| 1999 |
Broadband Router |
Linksys Engineers |
American |
To allow multiple home computers and devices to simultaneously share a single, high-speed internet connection securely through a local network firewall. |
| 1999 |
Multi-touch Screen |
Wayne Westerman, John Elias |
American |
To allow users to control computers using complex gestures (like pinching to zoom or two-finger scrolling) by sensing multiple points of contact simultaneously. |
| 1999 |
Wingsuit |
Jari Kuosma, Robert Pečnik |
Finnish, Croatian |
To allow skydivers and BASE jumpers to achieve sustained forward glide and maneuverability by turning their entire body into an airfoil using fabric webbing between the arms and legs. |
| 1998 |
Smartwatch |
Steve Mann |
Canadian |
To strap a fully functional, networked computer interface directly to the wrist, creating the modern era of wearable technology and biometric tracking. |
| 1998 |
Quantum Computer (First 2-Qubit) |
Isaac Chuang, Neil Gershenfeld |
American |
To perform previously impossible calculations by utilizing the bizarre quantum mechanics states of superposition and entanglement rather than binary 1s and 0s. |
| 1998 |
International Space Station (ISS) |
Multiple Space Agencies |
International |
To maintain a permanent, continuous human presence in low Earth orbit to conduct scientific research in astrobiology, physics, and meteorology. |
| 1998 |
Liquid Bandage |
Various Chemists |
International |
To seal minor cuts and prevent infection without using messy adhesive tape, utilizing a medical-grade cyanoacrylate polymer that dries into a waterproof, flexible skin. |
| 1998 |
Stem Cell Isolation |
James Thomson |
American |
To successfully isolate and grow human embryonic stem cells in a laboratory, providing a blank canvas capable of regenerating any damaged tissue in the human body. |
| 1997 |
E-Ink Display |
Joseph Jacobson |
American |
To create digital reading devices (like the Kindle) that perfectly replicate the look of physical paper without causing eye strain, using millions of microcapsules filled with black and white pigments. |
| 1997 |
Autotune |
Andy Hildebrand |
American |
To automatically correct a singer's off-key vocals in real-time by using an algorithm originally designed to interpret seismic data for the oil industry. |
| 1997 |
E-Reader (E-Ink) |
Joseph Jacobson |
American |
To create a digital display that perfectly mimics the look of ink on paper using electrically charged microcapsules, requiring almost no battery power to maintain an image. |
| 1997 |
Wi-Fi |
John O'Sullivan, Terrence Percival |
Australian |
To transmit high-speed computer data wirelessly over radio bands, derived originally from astronomical tools designed to detect exploding black holes. |
| 1997 |
CAPTCHA |
Mark D. Lillibridge, et al. |
American |
To prevent automated spam bots from flooding websites by forcing users to identify distorted text or objects that computers cannot easily read. |
| 1997 |
Contactless Payment (NFC) |
Mobil (Speedpass) |
American |
To allow consumers to pay for goods instantly by simply tapping a keychain or card against a reader, utilizing secure near-field communication radio waves. |
| 1997 |
Solid-State MP3 Player |
SaeHan Information Systems |
South Korean |
To store and play digital audio files using flash memory chips containing no moving parts, the direct predecessor to the iPod. |
| 1997 |
Lithium Polymer Battery (Li-Po) |
Bell Labs Researchers |
American |
To create an ultra-thin, lightweight, and moldable rechargeable battery using a solid polymer electrolyte, crucial for modern drones and ultra-thin laptops. |
| 1997 |
Electric Skateboard |
Louie Finkle |
American |
To allow skaters to commute uphill effortlessly by mounting a wireless, battery-powered electric motor to the trucks of a longboard. |
| 1997 |
Social Media Network |
Andrew Weinreich |
American |
To connect users across the internet by allowing them to create personal profiles and officially link to lists of their friends (first launched as SixDegrees.com). |
| 1997 |
Planetary Rover (Sojourner) |
NASA Engineers |
American |
To explore the surface of Mars autonomously using a small, solar-powered robotic vehicle equipped with cameras and chemical spectrometers. |
| 1996 |
Tamagotchi |
Aki Maita |
Japanese |
To create an interactive, digital "pet" contained inside an egg-shaped keychain that required the owner to feed, clean, and play with it to keep it alive. |
| 1996 |
3D Graphics Accelerator |
3dfx Interactive (Voodoo) |
American |
To completely revolutionize PC gaming by taking the intense mathematical burden of rendering 3D polygons away from the CPU, allowing for smooth, highly textured graphics. |
| 1996 |
USB (Universal Serial Bus) |
Ajay Bhatt (Intel) |
Indian-American |
To drastically simplify computing by establishing a single, standardized, plug-and-play cable interface for mice, keyboards, printers, and storage drives. |
| 1996 |
Mammal Cloning (Dolly the Sheep) |
Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell |
British |
To successfully clone a complex adult mammal using somatic cell nuclear transfer, proving that an adult cell could be reprogrammed to create a genetic duplicate. |
| 1996 |
Lithium-Iron Phosphate Battery (LiFePO4) |
John Goodenough, Akshaya Padhi |
American, Indian |
To provide a highly stable, non-combustible alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries, vastly improving the safety and lifespan of electric vehicles and solar power storage. |
| 1995 |
Wiki Software |
Ward Cunningham |
American |
To create the fastest possible way to generate and collaborate on internet databases by allowing any user to easily edit a webpage text directly from their browser (Wiki means "quick" in Hawaiian). |
| 1995 |
Java Programming Language |
James Gosling |
Canadian |
To create a universal programming language capable of running on any hardware or operating system without rewriting the code ("Write once, run anywhere"). |
| 1995 |
Streaming Media |
RealNetworks Engineers |
American |
To allow internet users to listen to audio (and later video) in real-time without having to wait for the entire massive file to download first. |
| 1995 |
DVD |
Sony, Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic |
International |
To replace bulky, degrading VHS tapes with a digital optical disc capable of storing highly compressed, pristine cinematic video and surround sound. |
| 1995 |
Micro-needling (Dermaroller) |
Desmond Fernandes |
South African |
To dramatically improve skin texture and reduce scars by rolling hundreds of microscopic needles over the skin, triggering the body's natural collagen production. |
| 1995 |
Voice over IP (VoIP) |
Alon Cohen, Lior Haramaty |
Israeli |
To bypass expensive long-distance telephone networks by routing live audio calls directly through the internet as packets of digital data. |
| 1994 |
Bluetooth |
Jaap Haartsen |
Dutch |
To eliminate the mess of tangled wires between devices by sending data over short-wavelength UHF radio waves (named after a 10th-century Viking king who united Denmark). |
| 1994 |
Bluetooth |
Jaap Haartsen |
Dutch |
To wirelessly connect nearby electronic devices (like headsets, computers, and phones) using short-wavelength UHF radio waves to eliminate tangled cables. |
| 1994 |
SSL/TLS Cryptography |
Taher Elgamal |
Egyptian-American |
To securely encrypt data (like credit card numbers and passwords) as it travels across the internet, enabling safe online banking and e-commerce. |
| 1994 |
EMV Smart Card (Chip Card) |
Europay, MasterCard, Visa |
International |
To drastically reduce credit card fraud by replacing the easily cloned magnetic stripe with an embedded microchip that generates a unique transaction code every time. |
| 1994 |
Iris Scanner |
John Daugman |
American |
To provide nearly flawless biometric security by using infrared cameras to map the highly complex, mathematically unique patterns in the colored part of a human eye. |
| 1994 |
Haptic Suit |
Aura Systems |
American |
To increase the immersion of video games and VR by allowing the user to physically "feel" punches, bullets, and wind through wearable vibrational motors. |
| 1994 |
QR Code |
Masahiro Hara |
Japanese |
To track automotive parts during manufacturing using a dense, square, two-dimensional barcode that could be scanned rapidly from any angle. |
| 1993 |
3D Mouse |
SpaceControl Engineers |
German |
To easily manipulate complex 3D CAD models on a screen by using a specialized, pressure-sensitive puck that can be pushed, pulled, twisted, and tilted in six degrees of freedom. |
| 1993 |
Web Browser (Mosaic) |
Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina |
American |
To make the World Wide Web accessible to everyday people by displaying text and graphics together in a simple, clickable graphical interface. |
| 1993 |
MP3 Audio Format |
Karlheinz Brandenburg |
German |
To shrink audio files to a fraction of their original size by deleting frequencies the human ear cannot easily hear, launching the digital music revolution. |
| 1993 |
PDF (Portable Document Format) |
John Warnock (Adobe) |
American |
To ensure that a digital document looks exactly the same—with identical fonts, layouts, and images—regardless of what computer or operating system opens it. |
| 1993 |
Blue LED |
Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, Shuji Nakamura |
Japanese |
To complete the primary color spectrum of LEDs, allowing for the creation of bright, energy-efficient white LED light bulbs and full-color digital screens. |
| 1992 |
Magnetic boat (Yamato 1) |
Yoshiro Saji |
Japanese |
To propel a naval vessel silently through the water using a magnetohydrodynamic drive, utilizing super-conducting electromagnets instead of traditional spinning propellers. |
| 1992 |
K-Cup (Single-serve coffee) |
John Sylvan |
American |
To provide office workers with a quick, fresh cup of coffee without brewing a whole pot by sealing the exact amount of grounds and a filter inside a small, puncture-ready plastic pod. |
| 1992 |
Smartphone |
Frank Canova (IBM) |
American |
To combine a mobile cellular phone, a touchscreen interface, a pager, and an address book into a single handheld device (the IBM Simon). |
| 1992 |
JPEG Image Format |
Joint Photographic Experts Group |
International |
To compress high-resolution digital photographs into small file sizes by mathematically averaging out tiny details, allowing images to load quickly on early internet connections. |
| 1992 |
Self-Checkout Machine |
David R. Humble |
American |
To reduce supermarket labor costs and checkout lines by allowing customers to scan, bag, and pay for their own groceries using an automated kiosk. |
| 1992 |
Text Messaging (SMS) |
Neil Papworth |
British |
To send short, 160-character digital text messages directly between mobile cellular phones, sparking a global shift in how humans communicate. |
| 1992 |
Active Noise Control (Automotive) |
Nissan Engineers |
Japanese |
To provide a whisper-quiet luxury car interior by using microphones to detect engine drone and firing opposite soundwaves through the stereo speakers to cancel it out. |
| 1992 |
Exoplanet Discovery |
Aleksander Wolszczan, Dale Frail |
Polish, Canadian |
To prove that our solar system is not unique by detecting the first confirmed planets orbiting a star other than our sun (a distant pulsar). |
| 1992 |
Brain-Computer Interface (Utah Array) |
Richard Normann |
American |
To allow paralyzed individuals to control computer cursors and robotic arms purely with their thoughts by implanting a microelectrode grid directly into the brain's cortex. |
| 1991 |
Webcam |
Quentin Stafford-Fraser, Paul Jardetzky |
British |
Invented by Cambridge scientists purely because they were too lazy to walk to the breakroom; they pointed a camera at the coffee pot and beamed the image to their computers to see if it was empty. |
| 1991 |
Linux Kernel |
Linus Torvalds |
Finnish |
To provide a completely free, open-source operating system kernel that now powers the majority of the world's internet servers and Android smartphones. |
| 1991 |
Python Programming Language |
Guido van Rossum |
Dutch |
To provide a highly readable, intuitive programming language that has since become the global standard for data science and artificial intelligence. |
| 1991 |
Carbon Nanotubes |
Sumio Iijima |
Japanese |
To utilize cylinders of carbon atoms that are the strongest and stiffest materials yet discovered, highly prized in modern nanotechnology and electronics. |
| 1990 |
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) |
Tim Berners-Lee |
British |
To structure text, images, and hyperlinks on a digital page so that web browsers can render them into readable internet websites. |
| 1990 |
Augmented Reality |
Tom Caudell |
American |
To overlay digital data and graphics directly onto the physical world, originally used to guide factory workers assembling complex airplane wiring. |
| 1990 |
Hubble Space Telescope |
NASA / ESA |
International |
To capture incredibly high-resolution, deep-space images unaffected by the distortion of Earth's atmosphere, fundamentally changing our understanding of the universe's age and expansion. |
| 1990 |
fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) |
Seiji Ogawa |
Japanese |
To safely map brain activity in real-time by detecting changes in blood flow, revolutionizing neuroscience and our understanding of human cognition. |
| 1990 |
Search Engine (Archie) |
Alan Emtage |
Barbadian-Canadian |
To easily find specific files hidden across the massive, sprawling servers of the early internet by indexing public FTP archives into a searchable database. |
| 1990 |
3D Scanner |
Various Engineers |
International |
To perfectly digitize real-world objects and human faces into manipulable CAD files by sweeping them with lasers or structured light patterns. |
| 1990 |
High-Pressure Processing (Pascalization) |
Various Scientists |
International |
To preserve guacamole, deli meats, and juices without using heat or chemicals by subjecting the food to immense water pressure (87,000 psi) to instantly crush bacteria. |
| 1989 |
E-ZPass (Electronic Toll Collection) |
Mario Cardullo |
American |
To eliminate traffic jams at toll booths by automatically deducting money from a driver's account using a windshield-mounted RFID transponder. |
| 1989 |
Game Boy |
Gunpei Yokoi |
Japanese |
To allow people to play deep, complex video games anywhere using a rugged, battery-powered handheld device with interchangeable game cartridges. |
| 1989 |
Noise-Canceling Headphones |
Amar Bose |
American |
To protect pilots' hearing and allow them to hear communications clearly by using microphones to actively generate anti-noise soundwaves that cancel out engine roar. |
| 1989 |
Super Soaker |
Lonnie Johnson |
American |
To shoot a massive, continuous stream of water at long distances by manually pumping air into a pressurized water reservoir, invented by a NASA aerospace engineer. |
| 1989 |
World Wide Web |
Tim Berners-Lee |
British |
To easily link and access documents stored on different computers across the Internet using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and a web browser. |
| 1989 |
mRNA Vaccine Technology |
Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman |
Hungarian, American |
To instruct human cells to produce a specific protein (like a virus spike) to trigger an immune response, famously used to halt the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| 1989 |
ZIP File Format |
Phil Katz |
American |
To bundle multiple computer files into a single, highly compressed archive folder, saving disk space and making internet file transfers much faster. |
| 1989 |
Solid State Drive (SSD) |
Sanjeev Arora (Grid Systems) |
American |
To drastically speed up computers by storing data on flash memory chips rather than slow, fragile, spinning magnetic disks. |
| 1989 |
Microarray (DNA Chip) |
Stephen Fodor |
American |
To allow scientists to simultaneously test thousands of different genes on a single microscopic glass slide, revolutionizing personalized medicine and cancer research. |
| 1989 |
LASIK Eye Surgery |
Ioannis Pallikaris |
Greek |
To permanently correct nearsightedness and farsightedness by using an incredibly precise ultraviolet laser to physically reshape the clear cornea of the eye. |
| 1989 |
Modern E-bike (Pedelec) |
Michael Kutter |
Swiss |
To assist a cyclist's natural pedaling with an integrated electric motor, drastically increasing speed and reducing fatigue on steep hills. |
| 1989 |
GPS Handheld Receiver |
Magellan Navigation |
American |
To allow hikers, boaters, and soldiers to tap into the military's satellite network using a portable, battery-powered device, preventing them from ever getting lost. |
| 1988 |
Network Firewall |
William Cheswick, Steven Bellovin |
American |
To protect internal computer networks from malicious hackers by analyzing and blocking unauthorized incoming internet traffic. |
| 1988 |
Doppler Weather Radar |
NSSL Researchers |
American |
To save lives by accurately detecting the rotation of severe storms and tornadoes inside clouds, drastically increasing emergency warning times. |
| 1987 |
OLED Display |
Ching W. Tang, Steven Van Slyke |
American |
To create displays with infinite contrast and perfect black levels by using organic compounds that emit their own light when electrified, eliminating the need for bulky LCD backlights. |
| 1987 |
OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) |
Ching W. Tang, Steven Van Slyke |
American |
To create ultra-thin, highly vibrant display screens that emit their own light without needing a backlight, used in modern premium TVs and smartphones. |
| 1987 |
Deep Brain Stimulation |
Alim Louis Benabid |
French |
To halt the debilitating tremors of Parkinson's disease by surgically planting electrodes deep inside the brain that deliver constant, high-frequency electrical pulses. |
| 1987 |
Antivirus Software |
Bernd Fix |
German |
To protect computers from digital destruction by scanning files for known malicious code signatures and deleting them before they can execute. |
| 1987 |
Statins |
Akira Endo |
Japanese |
To drastically lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes by chemically inhibiting the enzyme in the liver responsible for producing cholesterol. |
| 1987 |
AZT (Zidovudine) |
Jerome Horwitz |
American |
Originally a failed cancer drug; it became the world's first breakthrough treatment for HIV/AIDS by blocking the enzyme the virus uses to replicate its DNA. |
| 1987 |
Automated DNA Sequencer |
Leroy Hood, Michael Hunkapiller |
American |
To drastically speed up genetic research by using fluorescent dyes and lasers to automatically read the billions of base pairs in DNA without manual human labor. |
| 1986 |
High-temperature superconductors |
Johannes Georg Bednorz, Karl Alexander Müller |
German, Swiss |
To conduct electricity with absolute zero electrical resistance at temperatures much warmer (liquid nitrogen range) than previously thought possible. |
| 1986 |
Epilator |
Epilady Creators |
Israeli |
To remove body hair at the root for long-lasting smoothness by using a motorized, rotating coil spring that rapidly grabs and pulls out multiple hairs simultaneously. |
| 1986 |
Atomic Force Microscope |
Gerd Binnig, Calvin Quate, Christoph Gerber |
German, American, Swiss |
To map the surface of materials at the nanoscale by dragging a microscopic mechanical cantilever across atoms, rather than using light or electron beams. |
| 1986 |
Modular Space Station (Mir) |
Soviet Space Program |
Soviet |
To assemble a massive, long-term scientific laboratory in orbit by launching it piece-by-piece and docking the modules together in space over several years. |
| 1986 |
Coronary Stent |
Jacques Puel, Ulrich Sigwart |
French, Swiss |
To physically prop open blocked arteries in the heart using a tiny, expandable metal mesh tube, preventing heart attacks without open-heart surgery. |
| 1985 |
Lithium-ion Battery |
Akira Yoshino, John Goodenough |
Japanese, American |
To provide a highly rechargeable, lightweight battery capable of storing massive amounts of energy safely, powering the mobile electronics and EV revolution. |
| 1985 |
CD-ROM |
Sony and Philips Engineers |
Japanese, Dutch |
To store massive software programs, encyclopedias, and multimedia games on a cheap, read-only optical disc, greatly expanding the capabilities of early PCs. |
| 1984 |
DNA Fingerprinting |
Alec Jeffreys |
British |
To absolutely identify individuals (for criminal forensics or paternity testing) by analyzing the unique, highly variable repeating patterns within their DNA. |
| 1984 |
Nicotine Patch |
Jed Rose, Frank Rose, Murray Jarvik |
American |
To help heavy smokers overcome chemical withdrawals by safely delivering a steady, slow-release dose of nicotine directly through the skin. |
| 1984 |
Carbon Fiber Prosthetic (Cheetah Blade) |
Van Phillips |
American |
To allow amputee athletes to run and sprint competitively by mimicking the highly elastic, energy-storing tendons of a cheetah's hind leg using curved carbon fiber. |
| 1983 |
GNU Project (Free Software Movement) |
Richard Stallman |
American |
To launch a global ethical movement guaranteeing that computer users have the absolute freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, and change their software's source code without corporate restriction. |
| 1983 |
Scanning tunneling microscope |
Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer |
German, Swiss |
To image surfaces at the atomic level using quantum tunneling, allowing scientists to literally see and eventually manipulate individual atoms. |
| 1983 |
Mechanical Keyboard Switch (Cherry MX) |
Cherry GmbH |
German |
To provide an incredibly satisfying, tactile, and highly durable typing experience for programmers and gamers, rated to last for tens of millions of keystrokes. |
| 1983 |
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) |
Dave Smith, Ikutaro Kakehashi |
American, Japanese |
To create a universal digital language that allows completely different brands of synthesizers, drum machines, and computers to perfectly communicate and play together. |
| 1983 |
3D Printing (Stereolithography) |
Chuck Hull |
American |
To "print" physical, solid objects layer-by-layer directly from digital CAD files by using an ultraviolet laser to cure liquid photopolymer resin. |
| 1983 |
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) |
Kary Mullis |
American |
To rapidly copy and amplify tiny fragments of DNA into millions of copies, an essential technique for forensic science, medical diagnostics, and genetic research. |
| 1982 |
Artificial heart (Jarvik-7) |
Robert Jarvik |
American |
To serve as the first fully artificial, pneumatically driven heart permanently implanted into a human patient to completely replace their failing biological heart. |
| 1982 |
Emoticons |
Scott Fahlman |
American |
To help internet users indicate a joke or sarcasm in text-based messages by turning punctuation marks into sideways smiling faces :-) |
| 1982 |
CD Player |
Sony and Philips |
Japanese, Dutch |
To commercially launch the digital audio revolution with the "Sony CDP-101," using a laser diode to read digital audio from compact discs perfectly without physical wear. |
| 1981 |
Space Shuttle |
NASA |
American |
To provide a partially reusable, airplane-like spacecraft that could efficiently ferry astronauts and heavy satellite payloads into low Earth orbit and glide back to a runway. |
| 1981 |
Microwave Popcorn |
General Mills Scientists |
American |
To allow consumers to quickly pop corn kernels in their new microwave ovens by using a specialized paper bag containing a metallic "susceptor" to absorb the microwaves and generate intense heat. |
| 1981 |
Artificial Skin |
John F. Burke, Ioannis V. Yannas |
American |
To save patients with massive, life-threatening burns by covering their wounds with a synthetic matrix of collagen and shark cartilage that encourages their own skin cells to regenerate. |
| 1981 |
MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) |
US Department of Defense |
American |
To replace canned military rations with lightweight, highly durable plastic pouches containing nutritionally dense, fully cooked meals that last for years. |
| 1981 |
Stealth Aircraft (F-117 Nighthawk) |
Lockheed Skunk Works |
American |
To penetrate heavily defended enemy airspace undetected by using a highly faceted, angular chassis that deflects radar waves away from receivers. |
| 1981 |
Recombinant Human Growth Hormone |
Genentech Scientists |
American |
To safely treat children with severe growth disorders using pure, synthetic hormones produced by bacteria, completely replacing dangerous hormones harvested from human cadavers. |
| 1980 |
Membrane Keyboard |
Sinclair Research |
British |
To mass-produce incredibly cheap, spill-proof keyboards by replacing mechanical switches with a flat, flexible plastic membrane that completes an electrical circuit when pressed. |
| 1980 |
Flash Memory |
Fujio Masuoka |
Japanese |
To provide solid-state data storage that retains its information even without power, forming the basis of modern USB drives and smartphone memory. |
| 1980 |
Inline Skates (Rollerblades) |
Scott Olson, Brennan Olson |
American |
To train for ice hockey during the summer by arranging polyurethane wheels in a single straight line beneath a stiff plastic boot. |
| 1980 |
Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) |
Various Scientists |
International |
To safely generate highly detailed, 3D images of a patient's blood vessels and arteries to detect aneurysms without exposing them to X-ray radiation or invasive catheters. |
| 1980 |
Kevlar Helmet (PASGT) |
US Military |
American |
To replace the heavy steel "M1 Pot" helmets of WWII with a lightweight, synthetic composite helmet that offers vastly superior protection against shrapnel and ballistic impacts. |
| 1980 |
CPAP Machine |
Colin Sullivan |
Australian |
To treat sleep apnea by delivering a continuous stream of mild air pressure to keep a patient's airway open while they sleep. |
| 1979 |
Compact disc (CD) |
Joop Sinjou, Toshi Tada Doi |
Dutch, Japanese |
To store and play back highly pristine digital audio (and later computer data) by reading microscopic pits on a reflective plastic disc using a tiny laser beam. |
| 1979 |
Genetic flaw repair in mice |
W. French Anderson |
American |
To demonstrate the first successful instance of gene therapy by inserting a healthy gene into a defective mammalian cell to correct a genetic mutation. |
| 1979 |
Spreadsheet Software (VisiCalc) |
Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston |
American |
To instantly recalculate complex financial ledgers automatically whenever a single variable was changed, turning the Apple II from a hobbyist toy into a crucial business tool. |
| 1979 |
Portable Music Player (Walkman) |
Nobutoshi Kihara (Sony) |
Japanese |
To allow people to listen to their own customized music libraries anywhere using a lightweight, battery-powered cassette player and headphones. |
| 1979 |
Bungee Jumping |
Oxford Dangerous Sports Club |
British |
To experience the extreme thrill of free-fall by jumping off a massive bridge while tethered to a highly elastic rubber cord that recoils before hitting the ground. |
| 1979 |
Rotary Fabric Cutter |
Yoshio Okada |
Japanese |
To cut multiple layers of fabric perfectly straight without the jagged edges caused by scissors, utilizing a razor-sharp circular blade on a handle. |
| 1978 |
Human insulin synthesis |
Roberto Crea, Tadaaki Hirose, Adam Kraszewski, Keiichi Itakura |
American |
To chemically synthesize the DNA code for human insulin, allowing bacteria to be genetically programmed to mass-produce safe, synthetic insulin for diabetics. |
| 1978 |
Gene transplants |
Paul Berg, Richard Mulligan, Bruce Howard |
American |
To successfully transfer functional genes between different mammalian species, proving that genetic traits could be permanently altered across complex organisms. |
| 1978 |
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) |
Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe |
British |
To help infertile couples conceive by surgically extracting an egg, fertilizing it with sperm in a laboratory dish, and implanting the embryo back into the uterus. |
| 1978 |
LaserDisc |
David Paul Gregg |
American |
To store high-quality analog video and digital audio on massive, 12-inch reflective optical discs, paving the exact technological path for the later DVD. |
| 1978 |
Automated External Defibrillator (AED) |
Arch Diack, W. Stanley Welborn |
American |
To allow completely untrained bystanders to save a cardiac arrest victim using a portable device that verbally coaches them and automatically analyzes the heart rhythm before shocking. |
| 1977 |
Acyclovir |
Gertrude Elion |
American |
To successfully treat herpes and chickenpox by creating a highly selective antiviral drug that only activates when it comes into contact with the virus. |
| 1977 |
Artificial Pancreas |
John Pickup, Harry Keen |
British |
To perfectly regulate blood sugar for Type 1 Diabetics by linking a continuous glucose monitor directly to an insulin pump via a computer algorithm. |
| 1977 |
Cochlear Implant |
Graeme Clark |
Australian |
To restore a sense of sound to profoundly deaf patients by surgically implanting an electronic device that directly stimulates the auditory nerve, bypassing the damaged ear. |
| 1977 |
DNA Sequencing (Sanger Method) |
Frederick Sanger |
British |
To chemically "read" the exact order of nucleotide bases in a strand of DNA, a breakthrough that ultimately allowed scientists to map the human genome. |
| 1977 |
Home Pregnancy Test |
Margaret Crane |
American |
To allow women to privately and accurately detect early pregnancy at home by using a chemically treated stick that reacts to the hCG hormone in urine. |
| 1977 |
Touchscreen Kiosk |
Murray Lappe |
American |
To provide interactive wayfinding and information to the public; first used at the University of Illinois to help students navigate the campus. |
| 1977 |
Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster |
Morton Thiokol |
American |
To provide the massive 7 million pounds of thrust required to rip the Space Shuttle off the launch pad, using a highly explosive mixture of ammonium perchlorate and aluminum powder. |
| 1977 |
Balloon Angioplasty |
Andreas Grüntzig |
German |
To clear blocked arteries without major bypass surgery by threading a deflated microscopic balloon into the blood vessel and inflating it to crush the plaque. |
| 1976 |
Supercomputer |
Seymour Cray, James Van Tassel |
American |
To process millions of complex scientific and mathematical calculations per second by utilizing highly parallel processing architectures. |
| 1976 |
Word Processor (Software) |
Michael Shrayer (Electric Pencil) |
American |
To allow users to type, edit, backspace, and format documents digitally on a computer screen before committing them to a physical printer. |
| 1976 |
Inkjet Printer |
Hewlett-Packard / Canon |
American, Japanese |
To print incredibly high-resolution color images by precisely spraying microscopic droplets of liquid ink directly onto paper without touching it. |
| 1976 |
Flatbed Scanner |
Ray Kurzweil |
American |
To digitize physical documents and photos by laying them flat on a glass pane and passing a bright light and optical sensor beneath them. |
| 1976 |
Digital Signature |
Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman |
American |
To cryptographically prove the authenticity and integrity of a digital message or document, forming the backbone of secure internet commerce. |
| 1976 |
Public Key Cryptography |
Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman |
American |
To securely transmit private data across the public internet by using two mathematically linked keys: a public one to encrypt, and a private one to decrypt. |
| 1976 |
VHS (Video Home System) |
Victor Company of Japan (JVC) |
Japanese |
To provide an affordable, easy-to-use magnetic video cassette format that allowed consumers to record live television and watch full-length movies at home. |
| 1975 |
CAT scanner |
Godfrey Hounsfield |
British |
To create detailed cross-sectional "slice" images of the human body by feeding multiple X-ray measurements into a computer algorithm. |
| 1975 |
Fiber optics (communications) |
Bell Laboratories |
American |
To successfully transmit vast amounts of telephone and data signals over incredibly long distances using laser light pulsed through flexible glass cables. |
| 1975 |
Digital Camera |
Steven Sasson |
American |
To capture images without film by using a solid-state CCD sensor to record light as digital data onto a magnetic cassette tape. |
| 1975 |
Kevlar Bulletproof Vest |
Richard Davis |
American |
To save the lives of police officers and soldiers by weaving the ultra-strong Kevlar fiber into a lightweight, wearable vest that catches and stops bullets. |
| 1975 |
Monoclonal Antibodies |
Georges Köhler, César Milstein |
German, Argentine |
To create highly targeted drugs for cancer and autoimmune diseases by fusing immune cells with cancer cells in a lab to mass-produce identical, disease-hunting antibodies. |
| 1975 |
Betamax |
Sony Engineers |
Japanese |
To provide a high-quality video recording cassette; though it offered better resolution, it famously lost the "format war" to VHS due to its shorter recording time and higher cost. |
| 1975 |
Bicycle Helmet (EPS Foam) |
Bell Sports |
American |
To protect cyclists from fatal head trauma using an incredibly lightweight shell of crushable expanded polystyrene foam rather than heavy, ineffective leather straps. |
| 1974 |
Recombinant DNA |
Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer |
American |
To physically cut and paste genetic sequences from one organism into the DNA of another, fundamentally creating the modern biotechnology industry. |
| 1974 |
Sous-vide |
Georges Pralus |
French |
To cook meat perfectly evenly without ever overcooking it by vacuum-sealing the food in a plastic bag and submerging it in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath. |
| 1974 |
Rubik's Cube |
Ernő Rubik |
Hungarian |
To help university architecture students understand 3D geometry; it unexpectedly became the best-selling puzzle toy in human history. |
| 1974 |
Heimlich Maneuver |
Henry Heimlich |
American |
To save choking victims by applying sudden, forceful upward pressure to the abdomen, using the air in the lungs to forcefully expel the foreign object from the windpipe. |
| 1974 |
Insulin Pump |
Dean Kamen |
American |
To completely free Type 1 Diabetics from daily injections by inventing a wearable, battery-operated device that continuously infuses highly precise doses of insulin beneath the skin. |
| 1974 |
SQL (Structured Query Language) |
Donald Chamberlin, Raymond Boyce |
American |
To allow users to easily manipulate, search, and manage massive datasets stored in relational databases using simple, English-like syntax. |
| 1974 |
Taser |
Jack Cover |
American |
To immobilize violent suspects safely from a distance by firing two small dart electrodes that deliver a paralyzing, high-voltage electrical shock. |
| 1974 |
TENS Machine |
Clyde Norman Shealy |
American |
To safely block severe, chronic nerve and muscle pain without opioids by delivering small, massaging electrical impulses directly through the skin via adhesive electrode pads. |
| 1974 |
Retail Barcode Scanner |
George Laurer (IBM) |
American |
To read the newly invented Universal Product Code (UPC) using a laser scanner, drastically reducing supermarket checkout times and automating inventory. |
| 1974 |
Pulse Oximeter |
Takuo Aoyagi |
Japanese |
To painlessly and continuously measure the oxygen saturation level in a patient's blood by shining specific wavelengths of light through their fingertip. |
| 1973 |
Skylab space station |
NASA |
American |
To serve as the first United States space station, allowing astronauts to conduct long-term scientific, solar, and medical experiments in sustained microgravity. |
| 1973 |
Capacitive Touchscreen |
Frank Beck, Bent Stumpe |
British, Danish |
To control computers without a mouse by running a transparent electrical grid across a screen; when a conductive human finger touches it, it disrupts the grid, pinpointing the exact location. |
| 1973 |
Graphical User Interface (GUI) |
Xerox PARC Researchers |
American |
To make computers accessible to everyday people by replacing complex, typed command-line codes with clickable visual icons, windows, and menus. |
| 1973 |
Global Positioning System (GPS) |
Bradford Parkinson, Roger Easton, Ivan Getting |
American |
To allow military units (and eventually civilians) to pinpoint their exact global location by triangulating microwave signals emitted from a constellation of orbiting satellites. |
| 1973 |
Ethernet |
Robert Metcalfe |
American |
To quickly and reliably link multiple computers, printers, and servers together in a Local Area Network (LAN) using coaxial cables. |
| 1973 |
Catalytic Converter |
Carl D. Keith, John J. Mooney |
American |
To clean the highly toxic exhaust of internal combustion engines by using precious metals (like platinum) to chemically convert smog and carbon monoxide into safer gases. |
| 1973 |
Point of Sale Terminal (POS) |
William Brobeck |
American |
To replace mechanical cash registers with a computerized system that tracks inventory, processes credit cards, and prints receipts in real-time. |
| 1973 |
Pepper Spray |
Kamran Loghman |
American |
To provide police with a non-lethal weapon to subdue attackers by spraying concentrated capsaicin (the active chemical in chili peppers) into their eyes. |
| 1973 |
Cubic Zirconia |
Yuri Osipyan, Soviet Scientists |
Soviet |
To synthesize an incredibly cheap, flawless, and durable crystalline material that perfectly mimics the visual appearance and light refraction of real diamonds. |
| 1973 |
Mobile Phone |
Martin Cooper |
American |
To allow people to make wireless telephone calls from anywhere using a portable, handheld radio-frequency transceiver (the Motorola DynaTAC). |
| 1973 |
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) |
Charles Walton |
American |
To securely unlock doors and track retail inventory using tiny, batteryless microchips that broadcast digital data when energized by an external radio reader. |
| 1973 |
Epinephrine Autoinjector (EpiPen) |
Sheldon Kaplan |
American |
To save individuals experiencing severe anaphylactic shock (severe allergic reactions) by allowing them to instantly self-inject a pre-measured dose of adrenaline. |
| 1972 |
Electronic pocket calculator |
Jack St. Clair Kilby, Jerry D. Merryman |
American |
To allow individuals to easily carry a device that instantly performs complex mathematical calculations using integrated circuits instead of mechanical gears. |
| 1972 |
Magnetohydrodynamic generator |
Soviet Scientists |
Soviet |
To generate electricity directly from a moving stream of highly heated, electrically conductive gas (plasma) passing through a magnetic field without any moving turbine blades. |
| 1972 |
Arcade Cabinet (Pong) |
Nolan Bushnell, Allan Alcorn |
American |
To commercialize video games by putting a dedicated, coin-operated ping-pong simulation machine in bars and restaurants, launching the arcade industry. |
| 1972 |
Video Game Console |
Ralph Baer |
German-American |
To allow consumers to play interactive digital games (like table tennis) directly on their home television sets via a dedicated "Magnavox Odyssey" console. |
| 1972 |
Smoke Detector (Photoelectric) |
Walter Kidde Company |
American |
To quickly detect slow, smoldering fires by using a light beam and a sensor; when smoke enters the chamber, it scatters the light directly onto the sensor, triggering the alarm. |
| 1972 |
C Programming Language |
Dennis Ritchie |
American |
To provide a powerful, low-level programming language that allows developers to interact directly with hardware memory, fundamentally shaping all modern software. |
| 1972 |
Smart Grid Meter |
Theodore Paraskevakos |
Greek-American |
To automatically transmit a home's exact power consumption directly to the utility company over digital networks, eliminating the need for human meter-readers. |
| 1972 |
Jet Ski (Personal Watercraft) |
Clayton Jacobson II |
American |
To provide a fast, thrilling recreational watercraft driven by an internal water-jet pump rather than an exposed, dangerous propeller. |
| 1972 |
Active-Matrix LCD |
T. Peter Brody |
Hungarian-American |
To allow for fast-moving, high-resolution color displays on laptops and modern TVs by controlling each individual screen pixel with its own dedicated transistor. |
| 1971 |
Microprocessor |
Marcian Hoff |
American |
To combine all the essential central processing functions of a computer onto a single silicon microchip, drastically shrinking the size and cost of computing and birthing the PC era. |
| 1971 |
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) |
Raymond Damadian |
American |
To generate incredibly detailed, 3D medical images of the body's internal organs and soft tissues using powerful magnetic fields and radio waves, without harmful ionizing X-ray radiation. |
| 1971 |
Antilock Braking System (ABS) |
Mario Palazzetti |
Italian |
To prevent a vehicle's wheels from locking up and skidding during emergency stops by rapidly "pumping" the brakes electronically. |
| 1971 |
Induction Cooktop |
Westinghouse Electric |
American |
To boil water incredibly fast while keeping the stovetop completely cool to the touch by using electromagnets to generate heat directly inside the iron or steel cooking pot itself. |
| 1971 |
Floppy Disk |
Alan Shugart (IBM) |
American |
To provide a cheap, portable, and easily swappable magnetic storage medium to load software updates into mainframe computers and early PCs. |
| 1971 |
E-mail |
Ray Tomlinson |
American |
To instantly send digital text messages from one computer user to another across the ARPANET network, famously utilizing the '@' symbol to separate user and host. |
| 1970 |
Gene synthesis |
Har Gobind Khorana |
American |
To assemble the first artificial gene from basic chemical building blocks in a laboratory, paving the way for the entire field of synthetic biology and genetic engineering. |
| 1970 |
Surge Protector |
Various Engineers |
American |
To protect delicate computers and televisions from destructive voltage spikes caused by lightning or grid fluctuations using metal oxide varistors. |
| 1970 |
Digital Watch |
George Thiess, Willy Crabtree |
American |
To tell time using purely electronic microchips and an LED display, totally eliminating the complex mechanical gears and springs of traditional watches. |
| 1970 |
Relational Database |
Edgar F. Codd |
British |
To organize massive amounts of data into structured tables (rows and columns) that can be easily queried using SQL. |
| 1969 |
Gore-Tex |
Bob Gore |
American |
To create a waterproof yet breathable fabric membrane by rapidly stretching Teflon (PTFE), revolutionizing outdoor clothing and extreme weather gear. |
| 1969 |
Boombox |
Woelfel Brothers |
American |
To make loud, high-fidelity stereo music portable for urban youth culture by combining two large speakers, an amplifier, and a cassette player into a single battery-powered unit. |
| 1969 |
ARPANET (The Internet) |
Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf, ARPA Team |
American |
To create a decentralized computer network that could survive a nuclear strike, establishing the packet-switching protocols (TCP/IP) that became the modern Internet. |
| 1969 |
Laser Printer |
Gary Starkweather |
American |
To print high-quality digital documents incredibly fast by using a scanning laser beam to draw an image directly onto a xerographic copier drum. |
| 1969 |
Unix Operating System |
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie |
American |
To create a modular, multi-user, and highly stable computer operating system that became the underlying architecture for modern Linux and macOS. |
| 1969 |
Magnetic Stripe Card |
Forrest Parry (IBM) |
American |
To securely store digital account information on a credit card by ironing a strip of magnetic tape to the plastic, allegedly suggested by the inventor's wife. |
| 1969 |
Ionization Smoke Detector |
Thomas Howell, Duane Pearsall |
American |
To save sleeping families from house fires by using a tiny amount of radioactive Americium to detect microscopic smoke particles in the air and trigger an alarm. |
| 1969 |
Automated Fingerprint Scanner |
FBI Engineers |
American |
To digitize and instantly search millions of criminal fingerprint records by using optical scanners to map the unique ridges and bifurcations (minutiae) of a finger. |
| 1968 |
Computer Graphics (CGI) |
Ivan Sutherland |
American |
To represent 3D objects dynamically on a 2D screen, creating the foundation for modern video games, animated movies, and CAD software. |
| 1968 |
Post-it Note |
Spencer Silver, Arthur Fry |
American |
To temporarily attach notes to documents without damaging the paper, utilizing a uniquely weak, reusable adhesive accidentally invented during a failed experiment to make strong glue. |
| 1968 |
Virtual Reality Headset (The Sword of Damocles) |
Ivan Sutherland |
American |
To immerse a user in a 3D digital environment using a massive, ceiling-mounted stereoscopic display that tracked the movement of the user's head. |
| 1968 |
Ziploc Bag |
Steven Ausnit |
American |
To easily preserve sandwiches and snacks by sealing a plastic bag with a pressed, interlocking plastic track, completely eliminating the need for twist ties or tape. |
| 1968 |
Astronaut Ice Cream (Freeze-dried) |
Whirlpool Corporation |
American |
To provide Apollo astronauts with a lightweight, non-perishable, and crumble-free dessert by freeze-drying ice cream into a solid block (though it was rarely actually eaten in space). |
| 1968 |
Maglev Train |
James Powell, Gordon Danby |
American |
To eliminate the friction of steel wheels entirely by using powerful superconducting electromagnets to levitate and propel the train above the tracks. |
| 1967 |
Human heart transplant |
Christiaan Barnard |
South African |
To successfully replace a dying patient's failing heart with a healthy donor heart, marking one of the greatest surgical milestones in medical history. |
| 1967 |
Synthesizer (FM Synthesis) |
John Chowning |
American |
To generate highly complex, metallic, and bell-like digital sounds by rapidly modulating the frequency of one audio waveform with another, heavily used in 80s pop music. |
| 1967 |
Automated Teller Machine (ATM) |
John Shepherd-Barron |
British |
To allow bank customers to securely withdraw cash 24/7 without needing a human teller, initially using mildly radioactive paper vouchers instead of plastic cards. |
| 1967 |
Dynamic RAM (DRAM) |
Robert Dennard |
American |
To act as a computer's short-term memory by storing each bit of data in a microscopic capacitor, allowing for incredibly fast, high-density data retrieval. |
| 1966 |
Artificial heart (left ventricle) |
Michael DeBakey |
American |
To mechanically pump blood through a patient's body to keep them alive while their natural heart is being repaired or while they await a full heart transplant. |
| 1966 |
Tunable dye laser |
Mary L. Spaeth |
American |
To allow scientists and doctors to dynamically change the exact color (wavelength) of a laser beam by using organic dyes as the active lasing medium. |
| 1966 |
Electronic Fuel Injection |
Bendix Corporation |
American |
To dramatically improve engine fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by using computers to precisely spray fuel into an engine's cylinders, replacing mechanical carburetors. |
| 1966 |
Memory Foam |
Charles Yost (NASA) |
American |
To improve crash protection and comfort for astronauts during high-G launches using a viscoelastic polyurethane foam that molds to the body's heat and pressure. |
| 1966 |
Magnetic Security Tag (EAS) |
Arthur Minasy |
American |
To prevent retail shoplifting by attaching a specialized magnetic tag to clothing that triggers loud pedestal alarms at the store exit unless deactivated by a cashier. |
| 1966 |
Hand Sanitizer |
Lupe Hernandez |
American |
To allow doctors and nurses to rapidly kill bacteria on their hands without needing soap or a sink by using an alcohol-based gel that evaporates quickly. |
| 1966 |
Wah-Wah Pedal |
Bradley J. Plunkett |
American |
To create a crying, vocal-like expression for electric guitars by using a foot treadle to rapidly sweep the peak response of a frequency filter up and down. |
| 1965 |
Kevlar |
Stephanie Kwolek |
American |
To provide a synthetic polymer fiber five times stronger than steel by weight, heavily utilized in bulletproof vests, aerospace engineering, and racing tires. |
| 1965 |
Cordless Phone |
George Sweigert |
American |
To allow people to walk around their house while talking on the phone by replacing the curly handset wire with a short-range radio link to the base station. |
| 1965 |
Powered Exoskeleton |
General Electric Engineers |
American |
To amplify human strength using a massive, wearable robotic suit powered by hydraulics, originally designed to lift heavy bombs for the military. |
| 1965 |
Aerosol Deodorant |
Gillette Scientists |
American |
To provide a fast-drying, sanitary way to apply antiperspirant without a sticky roll-on applicator, using a pressurized mist (Right Guard). |
| 1965 |
Touchscreen |
E.A. Johnson |
British |
To allow users to interact with a computer display directly by touching the glass, utilizing capacitive technology that detects the electricity in human fingers. |
| 1965 |
Space Suit (Extravehicular) |
Zvezda Engineers |
Soviet |
To keep an astronaut alive in the deadly vacuum of space during a spacewalk by providing a wearable, pressurized, temperature-controlled life support capsule. |
| 1965 |
Space Pen |
Paul C. Fisher |
American |
To allow astronauts to write reliably in zero gravity, underwater, and in extreme temperatures by using a pressurized nitrogen cartridge to force ink toward a tungsten carbide ball. |
| 1965 |
Snowboard |
Sherman Poppen |
American |
To "surf the snow" by strapping both of a rider's boots to a single, wide wooden board, eventually becoming a massive winter Olympic sport. |
| 1965 |
Aspartame |
James M. Schlatter |
American |
To sweeten diet sodas without calories using an artificial chemical compound discovered entirely by accident when the chemist licked his finger in the lab. |
| 1965 |
Paraglider |
David Barish |
American |
To achieve incredibly long, unpowered soaring flights using a lightweight, foot-launched fabric wing shaped entirely by the air pressure entering its vents. |
| 1965 |
Astroturf (Artificial Turf) |
Donald L. Elbert, James M. Faria |
American |
To provide a durable, grass-like synthetic playing surface for indoor sports stadiums (like the Houston Astrodome) where real grass could not survive without sunlight. |
| 1965 |
Portable Defibrillator |
Frank Pantridge |
Irish |
To save heart attack victims outside of a hospital by miniaturizing the electrical shock equipment so it could be carried in ambulances. |
| 1964 |
Computer Mouse |
Douglas Engelbart |
American |
To navigate two-dimensional graphical computer screens naturally by rolling a small wooden block equipped with perpendicular wheels across a desktop. |
| 1964 |
Carbon Dioxide Laser |
Kumar Patel |
Indian-American |
To provide a highly efficient, continuous-wave infrared laser capable of cleanly cutting and welding industrial metals, becoming the standard for modern laser cutters. |
| 1964 |
Facial Recognition System |
Woodrow Wilson Bledsoe |
American |
To allow computers to identify a specific human face by mathematically mapping and matching the exact distances between the eyes, nose, and mouth. |
| 1964 |
Synthesizer |
Robert Moog |
American |
To generate entirely new, futuristic musical sounds and mimic traditional instruments by electronically manipulating audio waveforms through voltage-controlled oscillators. |
| 1964 |
Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) |
Robert Jaklevic, John Lambe |
American |
To measure incredibly subtle magnetic fields (like the magnetic activity of the human brain) with unimaginable precision using superconducting loops containing Josephson junctions. |
| 1964 |
Bullet Train (Shinkansen) |
Hideo Shima |
Japanese |
To provide incredibly fast, safe, and punctual mass transit between cities using streamlined electric trains traveling on dedicated high-speed rail lines. |
| 1964 |
Liquid-crystal display (LCD) |
George H. Heilmeier |
American |
To create flat, ultra-thin visual displays by using electrical currents to manipulate the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals instead of bulky cathode ray tubes. |
| 1963 |
Lava Lamp |
Edward Craven Walker |
British |
To provide mesmerizing, psychedelic mood lighting by heating a mixture of colored wax floating in a specialized clear liquid, causing it to rise and fall continuously. |
| 1963 |
Geosynchronous Satellite |
Harold Rosen |
American |
To provide unbroken 24/7 global communication by placing a satellite in an orbit that perfectly matches the Earth's rotation, keeping it stationary in the sky. |
| 1963 |
Holographic Storage |
Pieter J. van Heerden |
Dutch-American |
To store massive amounts of digital data in three dimensions throughout the entire volume of a crystal, rather than just on the 2D surface like a CD. |
| 1962 |
Video Game (Spacewar!) |
Steve Russell |
American |
To demonstrate the processing power of early mainframe computers by programming the first interactive digital game where two spaceships shoot at each other. |
| 1962 |
Audio Cassette Tape |
Lou Ottens (Philips) |
Dutch |
To make recorded music highly portable, durable, and easy to record at home by encasing a spool of magnetic tape inside a protective plastic shell. |
| 1962 |
Glow Stick |
Edwin A. Chandross |
American |
To provide a completely safe, heatless, and waterproof light source for emergency personnel and divers using a chemical reaction (chemiluminescence) triggered by cracking an internal vial. |
| 1962 |
Waterpik (Oral Irrigator) |
Gerald Moyer, John Mattingly |
American |
To blast plaque and trapped food out from between teeth and braces using a highly pressurized, pulsating stream of water. |
| 1962 |
Light-emitting diode (LED) |
Nick Holonyak Jr. |
American |
To produce visible light efficiently by passing an electrical current through a semiconductor, leading to incredibly long-lasting and energy-saving lighting and displays. |
| 1961 |
Soft Contact Lenses |
Otto Wichterle |
Czech |
To replace incredibly uncomfortable, rigid glass and plastic eye lenses with a flexible, water-absorbing hydrogel that conforms painlessly to the eye. |
| 1961 |
GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) |
Charles Dalziel |
American |
To prevent deadly electrocutions in bathrooms and kitchens by shutting off power in 1/40th of a second if it detects electrical current leaking through water or a human body. |
| 1961 |
Lidar |
Hughes Aircraft Engineers |
American |
To map terrain and measure precise distances by firing rapid laser pulses and measuring the exact time it takes for the light to bounce back. |
| 1961 |
Computer Animation |
Edward Zajac |
American |
To generate moving images digitally; the first was a simple 3D simulation of a satellite tumbling in orbit, paving the way for Pixar and modern CGI. |
| 1961 |
Oral Polio Vaccine |
Albert Sabin |
American-Polish |
To completely eradicate polio globally by providing a highly effective, cheap vaccine that could be administered as a single drop of liquid on a sugar cube. |
| 1961 |
Nomex |
Wilfred Sweeny |
Scottish-American |
To provide an incredibly heat-resistant and flame-retardant synthetic material, heavily used in firefighter gear and race car driver suits. |
| 1960 |
CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) |
Peter Safar, James Elam |
Austrian-American |
To keep oxygenated blood flowing to the brain during cardiac arrest by manually compressing the chest and administering mouth-to-mouth rescue breaths. |
| 1960 |
Riot Shield (Polycarbonate) |
Various Police Agencies |
International |
To protect riot police from thrown bricks, glass bottles, and blunt weapons while allowing them complete visibility through a lightweight, transparent plastic wall. |
| 1960 |
Solar Power Inverter |
Various Engineers |
International |
To convert the direct current (DC) power generated by rooftop solar panels into alternating current (AC) power that can be used by household appliances or fed into the grid. |
| 1960 |
Gas Laser |
Ali Javan, William Bennett, Donald Herriott |
Iranian-American |
To produce a continuous, reliable laser beam using a mixture of helium and neon gas, heavily utilized later in barcode scanners and holography. |
| 1960 |
Laser |
Charles Hard Townes, Arthur Schawlow, Gordon Gould |
American |
To emit a highly focused, coherent beam of monochromatic light by stimulating the emission of photons, widely used today in surgery, manufacturing, and data reading. |
| 1960 |
Chlorophyll synthesis |
Robert Burns Woodward |
American |
To artificially recreate the complex green pigment essential for plant photosynthesis, marking a monumental achievement in complex organic chemistry. |
| 1960 |
Birth-control pill |
Gregory Pincus, John Rock, Min Chueh Chang |
American |
To provide women with a reliable, oral hormonal method to prevent pregnancy, fundamentally changing global demographics and women's healthcare. |
| 1959 |
Three-Point Seat Belt |
Nils Bohlin (Volvo) |
Swedish |
To save millions of lives in car crashes by restraining both the chest and the pelvis with a single, easy-to-use continuous belt. |
| 1959 |
Etch A Sketch |
André Cassagnes |
French |
To draw temporary images using a mechanical stylus that scrapes aluminum powder off the inside of a glass screen, controlled by horizontal and vertical knobs. |
| 1959 |
Dimmer Switch |
Joel Spira |
American |
To easily control the brightness of a room's lighting and save energy by using a solid-state thyristor to rapidly chop the AC electrical wave, turning the light on and off 120 times a second. |
| 1959 |
Alkaline Battery |
Lewis Urry |
Canadian |
To provide a longer-lasting, more reliable disposable battery for portable electronics by using a highly conductive alkaline electrolyte. |
| 1959 |
Pop-Top Aluminum Can |
Ermal Fraze |
American |
To open a beverage can easily without a dedicated churchkey opener by attaching a scored aluminum pull-tab directly to the lid. |
| 1959 |
Ion Thruster |
Harold R. Kaufman |
American |
To highly efficiently propel deep-space probes over incredibly long distances by accelerating a beam of electrically charged ions out the back of the engine. |
| 1959 |
Integrated circuit (Microchip) |
Jack St. Clair Kilby, Robert Noyce |
American |
To carve entire complex electronic circuits (transistors, resistors, and capacitors) onto a single, microscopic sliver of silicon, making modern computers small and affordable. |
| 1958 |
Lego Bricks |
Godtfred Kirk Christiansen |
Danish |
To allow children to build infinite, stable structures using highly precise, interlocking plastic blocks with a patented "stud-and-tube" coupling system. |
| 1958 |
Carbon Fiber |
Roger Bacon |
American |
To produce a material composed of carbon atoms woven together that is incredibly stiff, highly chemically resistant, and significantly lighter than steel. |
| 1958 |
Implantable Pacemaker |
Rune Elmqvist |
Swedish |
To regulate an erratic human heartbeat internally by delivering small electrical impulses directly to the heart muscle via a surgically implanted battery pack. |
| 1958 |
Hula Hoop |
Arthur Melin, Richard Knerr |
American |
To create a massive, global fitness craze using a simple extruded plastic tube twirled around the waist, selling over 100 million units in its first two years. |
| 1958 |
Mascara Wand |
Helena Rubinstein |
Polish-American |
To eliminate the messy process of applying cake mascara with a wet brush by providing a pre-filled tube of liquid mascara with a built-in grooved wand. |
| 1958 |
Spandex (Lycra) |
Joseph Shivers |
American |
To provide a synthetic polyurethane fiber with exceptional elasticity, revolutionizing activewear, sports uniforms, and undergarments. |
| 1958 |
Phototherapy (Jaundice Treatment) |
Dr. Richard Cremer |
British |
To safely cure neonatal jaundice in newborns by placing them under blue fluorescent lights, breaking down the toxic bilirubin in their blood without a transfusion. |
| 1958 |
Communications satellite (SCORE) |
NASA |
American |
To instantly relay radio and telephone messages across the globe by bouncing signals off a satellite actively orbiting the Earth. |
| 1957 |
Bubble Wrap |
Alfred Fielding, Marc Chavannes |
American, Swiss |
Originally intended as textured 3D wallpaper, it became the world's premier protective packaging material by trapping air bubbles between plastic sheets. |
| 1957 |
Plasma Cutter |
Robert Gage |
American |
To slice through thick plates of steel and aluminum like butter by forcing an electric arc through a nozzle of compressed gas, generating a 40,000-degree plasma jet. |
| 1957 |
Laboratory Pipette |
Heinrich Schnitger |
German |
To quickly and accurately transfer microscopic, microliter volumes of liquid in chemistry and biology labs using a precise, spring-loaded piston mechanism. |
| 1957 |
Sodium-cooled nuclear reactor |
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission |
American |
To safely extract intense heat from a nuclear core to generate electricity using liquid sodium metal as a highly efficient coolant rather than water. |
| 1957 |
Artificial earth satellite (Sputnik 1) |
Sergei Korolev (Soviet Space Program) |
Soviet |
To launch the first human-made object into Earth's orbit, officially igniting the Space Race and the era of modern global telecommunications. |
| 1956 |
Shipping Container |
Malcolm McLean |
American |
To revolutionize global trade by standardizing cargo into massive steel boxes that can be seamlessly moved from ships to trains to trucks without unloading the contents. |
| 1956 |
Liquid Paper (White-Out) |
Bette Nesmith Graham |
American |
To fix typing errors without throwing away the entire page by painting over the mistake with a fast-drying, opaque white fluid. |
| 1956 |
Play-Doh |
Noah McVicker, Joseph McVicker |
American |
Originally invented in the 1930s to clean soot off of wallpaper, it was successfully rebranded and sold as a safe, non-toxic modeling clay for children. |
| 1956 |
C-4 Plastic Explosive |
US Military Chemists |
American |
To completely destroy bridges and bunkers using a highly stable, putty-like explosive that can be molded into any shape and detonated reliably with a blasting cap. |
| 1956 |
Claymore Mine |
Norman MacLeod |
American |
To decimate massed enemy infantry charges by detonating a curved, directional explosive that acts like an massive, remote-controlled shotgun firing 700 steel balls at once. |
| 1956 |
Hard Disk Drive |
Rey Johnson (IBM) |
American |
To store massive amounts of digital data on rapidly rotating, magnetically coated platters, fundamentally replacing magnetic tape for random data access. |
| 1956 |
Modern Surfboard (Polyurethane) |
Hobart Alter |
American |
To drastically improve the maneuverability and speed of surfers by replacing heavy, 100-pound wooden planks with ultra-light carved polyurethane foam coated in fiberglass. |
| 1956 |
UHT Milk (Ultra-High Temperature) |
Tetra Pak Engineers |
Swedish |
To allow milk to be stored safely on room-temperature supermarket shelves for months by flashing it at 275°F for two seconds to kill absolutely all spores. |
| 1956 |
Disposable Plastic Syringe |
Colin Murdoch |
New Zealander |
To prevent the spread of blood-borne diseases in hospitals by replacing expensive, hard-to-sterilize glass syringes with cheap plastic ones intended for a single use. |
| 1956 |
Ultrasound Imaging |
Ian Donald |
Scottish |
To safely monitor the health of fetuses in the womb by bouncing high-frequency sound waves off internal tissues to create a real-time sonogram image. |
| 1956 |
Snap-off Utility Knife |
Yoshio Okada |
Japanese |
To provide a perpetually sharp work knife inspired by chocolate bars; when the blade gets dull, the user simply snaps off the tip to reveal a fresh, razor-sharp edge. |
| 1956 |
Hovercraft |
Christopher Cockerell |
English |
To allow a vehicle to smoothly travel over land, water, and mud by floating it on a continuous, high-pressure cushion of downward-blasting air. |
| 1956 |
Rotary engine (Wankel engine) |
Felix Wankel |
German |
To power a vehicle using a smooth, spinning triangular rotor inside an oval housing, rather than using traditional heavy up-and-down pistons. |
| 1956 |
Videotape (VTR) |
Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby |
American |
To magnetically record and perfectly play back live television broadcasts and audio instantly, eliminating the need to wait for film to be chemically developed. |
| 1955 |
Check Sorting Machine (MICR) |
Stanford Research Institute |
American |
To automate the clearance of millions of paper bank checks by printing the routing numbers in a highly stylized, magnetic ink that machines could read instantly. |
| 1955 |
Synthetic diamonds |
H. Tracy Hall |
American |
To mass-produce hard diamonds for industrial drilling and cutting tools by subjecting carbon to unimaginable heat and pressure in a laboratory press. |
| 1955 |
Radiocarbon dating |
Willard Frank Libby |
American |
To accurately determine the exact age of ancient archaeological artifacts and fossils by measuring the decay of radioactive Carbon-14 isotopes inside them. |
| 1955 |
Optical fibers |
Narinder Singh Kapany |
Indian |
To transmit massive amounts of data at the speed of light by bouncing laser beams through thin, flexible strands of highly pure glass. |
| 1954 |
Automatic Sliding Doors |
Dee Horton, Lew Hewitt |
American |
To allow people with full hands to easily enter supermarkets without pushing a heavy door, initially utilizing pressure-sensitive floor mats to trigger a pneumatic actuator. |
| 1954 |
Teflon Pan |
Marc Grégoire |
French |
To prevent food from sticking and burning during cooking by bonding the incredibly slippery chemical PTFE (Teflon) to the surface of an aluminum frying pan. |
| 1954 |
Electric Drip Coffee Maker |
Gottlob Widmann |
German |
To automate the brewing process by using an electric element to heat water and pump it up over ground coffee sitting in a paper filter. |
| 1954 |
Electric Toothbrush |
Dr. Philippe-Guy Woog |
Swiss |
To vastly improve dental hygiene for people with limited motor skills by using a motorized brush head that oscillates thousands of times per minute. |
| 1954 |
Breathalyzer |
Robert Frank Borkenstein |
American |
To allow police officers to quickly and accurately determine a driver's blood alcohol content by analyzing the chemical change in their breath. |
| 1954 |
Nuclear Submarine (USS Nautilus) |
Hyman G. Rickover |
American |
To operate a naval vessel underwater for months at a time without ever needing to surface for air or fuel, powered by a localized nuclear reactor. |
| 1954 |
Solar cell |
Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller, Daryl Chapin |
American |
To provide the first practical silicon device capable of converting the sun's light directly into enough electrical power to run standard equipment. |
| 1954 |
Polio vaccine |
Jonas Salk |
American |
To safely inject a "killed" version of the poliomyelitis virus into children, teaching their immune systems to permanently defend against the paralyzing disease. |
| 1953 |
WD-40 |
Norm Larsen |
American |
To completely displace water and prevent rust on nuclear missiles; the "Water Displacement, 40th formula" became a universal household lubricant. |
| 1953 |
Flight Data Recorder (Black Box) |
David Warren |
Australian |
To record cockpit audio and precise instrument data in an indestructible, fireproof shell to help investigators determine the exact cause of plane crashes. |
| 1953 |
Polycarbonate (Lexan) |
Hermann Schnell, Daniel Fox |
German, American |
To provide an incredibly tough, highly transparent, and impact-resistant plastic used in modern fighter jet canopies, bulletproof windows, and CD-ROMs. |
| 1953 |
Rocket Belt (Jetpack) |
Wendell Moore (Bell Aerosystems) |
American |
To achieve personal, strap-on human flight using highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide forced over a silver catalyst to blast high-pressure steam downwards. |
| 1953 |
Heart-Lung Machine |
John Heysham Gibbon |
American |
To make open-heart surgery possible by temporarily taking over the functions of the patient's heart and lungs, pumping and oxygenating their blood mechanically. |
| 1953 |
Maser |
Charles Hard Townes |
American |
To generate incredibly intense, highly focused beams of microwave radiation, serving as the direct technological predecessor to the laser. |
| 1952 |
Permanent Marker |
Sidney Rosenthal |
American |
To write on almost any surface (glass, wood, plastic) using a thick felt tip and a fast-drying, waterproof ink originally stored in a glass bottle (the "Magic Marker"). |
| 1952 |
Tunnel Boring Machine |
James S. Robbins |
American |
To dig subway tunnels safely and rapidly by using a massive rotating cutter head that grinds through solid rock while simultaneously installing support walls. |
| 1952 |
Barcode |
Norman Joseph Woodland, Bernard Silver |
American |
To automate the grocery checkout process by optically scanning a series of varying-width parallel lines that encode an item's price and identity. |
| 1952 |
Float Glass Process |
Alastair Pilkington |
British |
To manufacture massive, perfectly flat, and blemish-free sheets of window glass by floating molten glass directly on top of a pool of molten tin. |
| 1952 |
Prosthetic Heart Valve |
Charles Hufnagel |
American |
To repair a failing human heart by implanting a mechanical "ball-in-cage" valve made of plastic and steel that mimics the natural one-way flow of blood. |
| 1952 |
Tetra Pak (Aseptic Carton) |
Ruben Rausing |
Swedish |
To safely package and store perishable liquids (like milk and juice) for months without refrigeration by using a sterilized tetrahedron carton made of paper, aluminum, and plastic. |
| 1952 |
Wetsuit |
Hugh Bradner |
American |
To prevent surfers and divers from freezing in cold oceans by trapping a thin, insulating layer of water against the skin using tight-fitting neoprene rubber. |
| 1952 |
Hydrogen bomb (Thermonuclear weapon) |
Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam |
American |
To create an apocalyptic weapon thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bomb by using nuclear fission to trigger nuclear fusion. |
| 1952 |
Bubble chamber |
Donald Arthur Glaser |
American |
To visibly track the paths of subatomic particles by passing them through superheated liquid hydrogen, leaving a trail of tiny boiling bubbles in their wake. |
| 1952 |
Computer Numerical Control (CNC) |
John T. Parsons |
American |
To automate complex machine tools (like lathes and mills) using programmed digital instructions, revolutionizing precision manufacturing. |
| 1952 |
Computer Compiler |
Grace Hopper |
American |
To automatically translate human-readable programming code (like English commands) into machine-level binary code that a computer processor can execute. |
| 1951 |
Automotive Airbag |
John W. Hetrick |
American |
To rapidly inflate a protective cushion of gas between a vehicle's occupants and the dashboard during a severe collision, drastically reducing fatal head trauma. |
| 1951 |
Electric Bass Guitar |
Leo Fender |
American |
To replace the massive, quiet, un-fretted upright bass with a loud, easily portable solid-body electric instrument that played exactly like a standard guitar. |
| 1950 |
Nail Gun |
Morris Pynoos |
American |
To vastly speed up housing construction (and initially to build Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose) by driving heavy nails into wood instantly using pneumatic pressure. |
| 1950 |
Water Jet Cutter |
Norman Franz |
American |
To cleanly cut through dense materials (like granite and metal) without warping them with heat, using a high-pressure stream of water mixed with abrasive garnets. |
| 1950 |
Water Balloon |
Edgar Ellington |
American |
Originally attempting to invent a waterproof sock, he angrily threw a defective, water-filled latex prototype against a wall, accidentally inventing a staple of summer combat. |
| 1950 |
Magic 8 Ball |
Albert Carter, Abe Bookman |
American |
To provide a novelty fortune-telling device containing a 20-sided die floating in dark blue alcohol that floats to a window to answer yes/no questions. |
| 1950 |
Motion Sensor Light (PIR) |
John L. Barker |
American |
To automatically turn on outdoor security floodlights by using passive infrared sensors to detect the moving body heat of humans or animals in the dark. |
| 1950 |
External Artificial Pacemaker |
John Hopps |
Canadian |
To keep a patient's heart beating at a regular rhythm using external electrical pulses, paving the way for later surgical implants. |
| 1950 |
Skateboard |
California Surfers |
American |
To allow surfers to "surf the pavement" when the ocean waves were flat by attaching roller skate wheels to a wooden plank. |
| 1950 |
Artificial Snow Machine |
Art Hunt, Dave Richey, Wayne Pierce |
American |
To allow ski resorts to stay open during dry winters by forcing highly pressurized water and compressed air through a nozzle to instantly freeze into snow. |
| 1950 |
Credit Card |
Frank McNamara, Ralph Schneider |
American |
To allow consumers to purchase goods at multiple different merchants using a single cardboard (later plastic) card, paying the bank back at the end of the month. |
| 1950 |
Color television |
Peter Carl Goldmark |
American |
To bring full-color broadcasting into human living rooms using a spinning color-wheel mechanism synchronized with the broadcast signal. |
| 1949 |
Aerosol Spray Paint |
Edward Seymour |
American |
To easily and smoothly apply paint to radiators by mixing the paint with a propellant inside a pressurized metal can. |
| 1949 |
Tower Crane |
Hans Liebherr |
German |
To build modern skyscrapers by providing a highly stable, modular lifting machine that can be assembled to immense heights and rotate a massive boom arm. |
| 1949 |
Crash Test Dummy |
Samuel Alderson |
American |
To scientifically test vehicle safety, seatbelts, and aviation helmets by using an anthropomorphic dummy loaded with sensors that mimic human physical reactions to impact. |
| 1949 |
Aerosol Valve |
Robert Abplanalp |
American |
To mass-produce a cheap, reliable, and clog-free plastic valve that allowed pressurized aerosol cans (for hairspray and paint) to become household staples. |
| 1949 |
Radio Pager (Beeper) |
Al Gross |
American |
To allow hospital doctors to be instantly alerted to emergencies remotely using a pocket-sized radio receiver that beeped when a specific frequency was broadcast. |
| 1949 |
Zamboni (Ice Resurfacer) |
Frank Zamboni |
American |
To restore a heavily skated ice rink to a flawless, glass-like finish in minutes by scraping the ice, washing it, and laying down a thin layer of hot water. |
| 1949 |
Atomic Clock |
Harold Lyons |
American |
To measure time with absolute, microscopic precision based on the incredibly consistent microwave resonance frequencies of atoms, essential for global GPS satellites. |
| 1949 |
Holter Monitor |
Norman Holter |
American |
To record a patient's heart activity (ECG) continuously for 24 hours while they go about their normal day, catching fleeting arrhythmias that a short hospital test would miss. |
| 1949 |
Ramjet airplane (Leduc 0.10) |
René Leduc |
French |
To successfully test a manned aircraft powered purely by a ramjet, proving that supersonic flight concepts were mechanically viable in the air. |
| 1949 |
Intraocular Lens |
Harold Ridley |
British |
To cure blindness caused by cataracts by surgically replacing the eye's cloudy natural lens with a permanent artificial plastic lens. |
| 1948 |
Vinyl Record (LP) |
Peter Goldmark (Columbia Records) |
American |
To allow listeners to hear a full 20 minutes of high-fidelity music per side by using ultra-fine "microgrooves" and slowing the rotation speed to 33 1/3 RPM. |
| 1948 |
Frisbee |
Walter Morrison |
American |
To throw a highly aerodynamic plastic disc long distances with great accuracy, capitalizing on the 1950s cultural obsession with UFOs and flying saucers. |
| 1948 |
Tetracycline |
Lloyd Conover |
American |
To provide a highly effective, broad-spectrum antibiotic to treat severe outbreaks of cholera, plague, and malaria by modifying the chemical structure of Aureomycin. |
| 1948 |
Cruise Control |
Ralph Teetor |
American |
To prevent jerky driving and improve fuel economy by automatically adjusting engine throttle to maintain a constant vehicle speed set by the driver. |
| 1948 |
Scintillation counter |
Hartmut Kallmann |
German |
To detect and accurately measure ionizing radiation by observing flashes of light (scintillations) produced when radiation strikes certain crystals. |
| 1948 |
Aureomycin |
Benjamin Minge Duggar, Yellapragada Subbarow |
American, Indian |
To act as the first "broad-spectrum" tetracycline antibiotic, highly effective against a wide variety of bacterial infections that penicillin could not cure. |
| 1948 |
Transistor |
John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, William Shockley |
American |
To replace bulky, hot, fragile vacuum tubes with a tiny piece of solid semiconductor material (like silicon) that can amplify and switch electrical signals, birthing modern computing. |
| 1947 |
Defibrillator |
Claude Beck |
American |
To save patients experiencing fatal ventricular fibrillation by delivering a massive, resetting electrical shock directly to the heart muscle. |
| 1947 |
Holography |
Dennis Gabor |
English |
To perfectly record and reconstruct three-dimensional images by capturing the interference pattern of split laser light. |
| 1947 |
Chloramphenicol |
Mildred Rebstock |
American |
To create the first fully synthetic, mass-produced antibiotic, offering a cheap and effective cure for typhoid fever and cholera. |
| 1947 |
Polaroid camera |
Edwin Herbert Land |
American |
To allow users to view their photographs immediately after taking them; the camera physically ejected a self-developing chemical photo packet. |
| 1947 |
Bathyscaphe |
Auguste Piccard |
Swiss |
To navigate freely at the very bottom of the deepest ocean trenches by hanging a heavy steel cabin beneath a massive float filled with buoyant gasoline. |
| 1947 |
Microwave oven |
Percy Spencer |
American |
To quickly heat and cook food from the inside out by exciting water molecules using high-frequency electromagnetic radio waves. |
| 1946 |
Radial Tire |
Michelin Engineers |
French |
To vastly improve vehicle handling, fuel economy, and tire lifespan by arranging the internal structural cords perpendicular to the direction of travel. |
| 1946 |
Tupperware |
Earl Tupper |
American |
To keep food fresh for unprecedented lengths of time by storing it in lightweight plastic containers with a patented, airtight, watertight "burping" seal. |
| 1946 |
Ejector Seat |
James Martin |
British |
To save the lives of military pilots by using explosive charges to instantly blast their seat out of a doomed aircraft before it crashes. |
| 1946 |
Disposable Diaper |
Marion Donovan |
American |
To save mothers from washing soiled linens by creating a waterproof diaper cover out of shower curtain material (later evolving into fully absorbent disposables). |
| 1946 |
Food Processor |
Pierre Verdun |
French |
To save restaurant chefs hours of manual prep work by using a motorized bowl and spinning blades to instantly chop, slice, and puree ingredients. |
| 1946 |
Electronic digital computer (ENIAC) |
John Presper Eckert Jr., John Mauchly |
American |
To perform complex mathematical calculations thousands of times faster than humans by using thousands of electronic vacuum tubes instead of mechanical gears. |
| 1945 |
Fluoridated Water |
Grand Rapids City Officials |
American |
To drastically reduce cavities and tooth decay across the entire public population by adding a safe, trace amount of fluoride to the municipal water supply. |
| 1945 |
Atomic bomb |
J. Robert Oppenheimer (Manhattan Project) |
American |
To harness the devastating, city-leveling energy of nuclear fission as the ultimate weapon of war, abruptly ending World War II. |
| 1945 |
Streptomycin |
Selman Waksman |
American |
To cure tuberculosis, a historically deadly lung disease, by isolating a new class of antibiotics from soil bacteria. |
| 1944 |
Electron Spin Resonance |
Yevgeny Zavoisky |
Soviet |
To study chemical species with unpaired electrons, becoming a crucial spectroscopic technique for modern chemistry and physics. |
| 1944 |
V-2 rocket |
Wernher von Braun |
German |
To serve as the world's first long-range ballistic missile, becoming the first human-made object to cross the boundary of space. |
| 1943 |
Multi-track Recording |
Les Paul |
American |
To allow a single musician to sound like an entire band by recording one instrument onto a magnetic tape, rewinding it, and recording another instrument completely in sync over the top. |
| 1943 |
Silly Putty |
James Wright |
American |
Invented accidentally while searching for a synthetic rubber substitute during WWII; it resulted in a bizarre viscoelastic polymer that bounces, stretches, and snaps. |
| 1943 |
Slinky |
Richard James |
American |
To entertain children using a simple helical tension spring that can dramatically "walk" down a flight of stairs end-over-end, discovered accidentally by a naval engineer. |
| 1943 |
Scuba Gear (Aqualung) |
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Émile Gagnan |
French |
To allow humans to swim freely deep underwater for extended periods by using a "demand valve" regulator to deliver compressed air precisely as the diver inhales. |
| 1943 |
Capnograph |
Karl Friedrich Luft |
German |
To ensure a patient under general anesthesia is breathing safely by continuously measuring the exact concentration of carbon dioxide in their exhaled breath. |
| 1943 |
Dialysis Machine |
Willem Johan Kolff |
Dutch |
To artificially replicate the function of human kidneys by filtering fatal toxins and excess water directly out of a patient's bloodstream. |
| 1942 |
Duct Tape |
Vesta Stoudt |
American |
To securely and quickly seal military ammunition boxes to keep out moisture; it used a strong cotton duck cloth backed with a highly sticky rubber adhesive. |
| 1942 |
Bazooka (Anti-Tank Weapon) |
Edward Uhl |
American |
To allow a single infantryman to destroy an armored tank using a shoulder-fired steel tube that launches a highly explosive, rocket-propelled shaped charge. |
| 1942 |
Cyanoacrylate (Superglue) |
Harry Coover |
American |
To instantly bond almost any two materials together permanently using a liquid acrylic resin that rapidly polymerizes in the presence of water. |
| 1942 |
Guided missile |
Wernher von Braun |
German |
To deliver explosive payloads accurately over long distances using internal gyroscopes to self-correct the rocket's flight path without human intervention. |
| 1942 |
Nuclear reactor (Chicago Pile-1) |
Enrico Fermi |
American |
To initiate and control the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, splitting uranium atoms to unlock atomic energy. |
| 1942 |
Xerography (Photocopier) |
Chester Carlson |
American |
To instantly copy documents by using static electricity to attract dry ink powder (toner) to the dark areas of an image, then fusing the powder to paper with heat. |
| 1942 |
Electric Piano |
Harold Rhodes |
American |
Originally built from scrapped airplane parts to teach bedridden WWII soldiers music; it generated a beautiful, bell-like tone by striking metal tines with rubber hammers over electromagnetic pickups. |
| 1941 |
Velcro |
George de Mestral |
Swiss |
To create a reusable, zipperless fastener inspired by the microscopic hooks of burr seeds clinging to his dog's fur after a hunting trip. |
| 1941 |
TIG Welding |
Russell Meredith |
American |
To create incredibly strong, clean welds on magnesium and aluminum aircraft parts by shielding the arc with inert tungsten and helium gas. |
| 1941 |
PET Plastic (Polyethylene Terephthalate) |
John Rex Whinfield |
British |
To create a highly durable, lightweight, and completely recyclable synthetic resin, which became the global standard for single-use beverage bottles and polyester clothing. |
| 1941 |
Velcro Hook-and-Loop |
George de Mestral |
Swiss |
To easily fasten clothing and astronaut suits using two opposing strips of nylon fabric—one with thousands of tiny hooks, and the other with thousands of tiny loops. |
| 1941 |
Sonobuoy |
Raymond H. Farnsworth |
American |
To hunt deeply submerged enemy submarines by dropping a floating, disposable sonar transmitter out of an airplane that broadcasts acoustic data back to the pilot. |
| 1941 |
Turbojet aircraft engine |
Frank Whittle |
British |
To actually install and fly the first operational jet-powered aircraft, revolutionizing modern commercial and military aerospace design. |
| 1941 |
Gas Chromatography |
Archer Martin, Richard Synge |
British |
To precisely identify the exact chemical compounds in a complex mixture by vaporizing it and pushing it through a long tube to measure how fast different molecules travel. |
| 1940 |
Slow Cooker (Crock-Pot) |
Irving Naxon |
American |
Originally invented to cook a traditional Jewish bean stew (Cholent) over 24 hours using a highly insulated, low-temperature electric heating element wrapped around a ceramic pot. |
| 1940 |
Rhesus (Rh) Factor |
Karl Landsteiner, Alexander S. Wiener |
Austrian, American |
To prevent deadly hemolytic disease in newborns by identifying a secondary protein on red blood cells (the positive/negative in blood types) and developing treatments for incompatible pregnancies. |
| 1940 |
Spectrophotometer |
Arnold Orville Beckman |
American |
To accurately determine the exact chemical makeup of a substance (and even test blood) by shining specific wavelengths of light through it and measuring how much light is absorbed. |
| 1940 |
Center-Pivot Irrigation |
Frank Zybach |
American |
To efficiently water massive circular fields of crops automatically using a long, wheeled pipe system that slowly rotates around a central water source. |
| 1940 |
HEPA Filter |
Manhattan Project Engineers |
American |
To capture microscopic, deadly radioactive particles in the air of nuclear laboratories using a highly dense mat of randomly arranged fiberglass fibers. |
| 1940 |
Betatron |
Donald William Kerst |
American |
To accelerate electrons to incredibly high speeds in a circular vacuum tube, used to generate high-energy X-rays for deep-tissue cancer therapy. |
| 1939 |
View-Master |
William Gruber |
American |
To view 3D, stereoscopic photographs in vivid color by inserting a cardboard disk containing seven pairs of small Kodachrome color film transparencies into a binocular viewer. |
| 1939 |
Night Vision (Active Infrared) |
AEG Engineers |
German |
To allow tank drivers to see in total darkness during World War II by shining an invisible infrared spotlight and viewing the reflection through a specialized scope. |
| 1939 |
DDT (insecticide) |
Paul Hermann Müller |
Swiss |
To eradicate malaria and typhus by lethally targeting the nervous system of mosquitoes and lice, though its severe environmental toxicity led to bans decades later. |
| 1939 |
Helicopter (single main rotor) |
Igor Sikorsky |
American |
To perfect vertical flight by using one massive main lifting rotor and a small, vertical tail rotor to counteract the torque, setting the standard for all modern helicopters. |
| 1938 |
Clothes Dryer (Electric) |
J. Ross Moore |
American |
To quickly dry laundry indoors by tossing clothes in a spinning drum while forcing hot air through them. |
| 1938 |
Nylon Toothbrush |
DuPont Engineers |
American |
To provide a sanitary, quick-drying dental brush, permanently replacing expensive and bacteria-harboring animal hair bristles with synthetic nylon. |
| 1938 |
Turn Signal (Flashing) |
Edgar Walz Jr. |
American |
To prevent accidents by allowing drivers to clearly indicate their turning intentions with flashing lights, rather than sticking their arm out the window. |
| 1938 |
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) |
Ugo Cerletti, Lucio Bini |
Italian |
To treat severe, medication-resistant depression and bipolar disorder by passing small electric currents through the brain to intentionally trigger a brief therapeutic seizure. |
| 1938 |
Teflon |
Roy Plunkett |
American |
Discovered accidentally; to provide an incredibly slippery, non-reactive synthetic coating used heavily in non-stick cookware and aerospace engineering. |
| 1938 |
Ballpoint pen |
László Bíró |
Hungarian |
To provide a leak-proof pen that never needs refilling or blotting by using a tiny rotating metal ball at the tip to dispense quick-drying paste ink. |
| 1937 |
Shopping Cart |
Sylvan Goldman |
American |
To encourage supermarket customers to buy more groceries than they could carry in a handheld basket by providing a rolling, folding metal carriage. |
| 1937 |
Wire Shopping Basket |
Sylvan Goldman |
American |
To encourage grocery shoppers to buy more items than they could carry in their arms by providing a lightweight, stackable, handheld metal wire basket. |
| 1937 |
Blood Bank |
Bernard Fantus |
American |
To save trauma victims by collecting, typing, and preserving donor blood in refrigerated glass bottles so it is immediately available for emergency transfusions. |
| 1937 |
Walkie-Talkie |
Donald Hings |
Canadian |
To provide a rugged, portable two-way radio transceiver for bush pilots and miners, becoming an absolute necessity for infantry squads during WWII. |
| 1937 |
Snowmobile |
Joseph-Armand Bombardier |
Canadian |
To traverse deep, snow-covered terrain reliably using a lightweight, engine-powered vehicle equipped with front skis and a continuous rear rubber track. |
| 1937 |
Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) |
Manfred von Ardenne |
German |
To produce breathtakingly detailed, 3D-like images of microscopic insects, cells, and materials by scanning the surface with a highly focused beam of electrons. |
| 1936 |
Turing Machine (Concept) |
Alan Turing |
British |
A mathematical model of computation that defined the fundamental limits of what can be calculated, laying the theoretical foundation for all modern software. |
| 1936 |
Ski Lift (Chairlift) |
James Curran |
American |
To drastically increase the popularity of downhill skiing by using an endless loop of steel cable to comfortably pull seated skiers up the mountain, inspired by banana-loading cargo systems. |
| 1936 |
Twin-rotor helicopter |
Heinrich Focke |
German |
To achieve highly stable vertical flight and hovering by placing two lifting rotors side-by-side to cancel out each other's rotational torque. |
| 1935 |
Parking Meter |
Carl Magee |
American |
To solve urban traffic congestion by legally enforcing turnover of street parking spaces using a coin-operated mechanical timer. |
| 1935 |
Buna (synthetic rubber) |
German Scientists |
German |
To completely break reliance on natural rubber imports by chemically synthesizing styrene-butadiene rubber, widely used in modern car tires. |
| 1935 |
Radar (Radiolocator) |
Robert Watson-Watt |
British |
To accurately detect the location, speed, and direction of incoming enemy aircraft by bouncing invisible radio pulses off their metal fuselages. |
| 1935 |
Cortisone |
Edward Calvin Kendall, Tadeus Reichstein |
American, Swiss |
To artificially synthesize an adrenal steroid hormone capable of miraculously reducing severe inflammation and pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. |
| 1935 |
Electron microscope |
Ernst Ruska, Max Knoll |
German |
To achieve magnifications thousands of times greater than light microscopes by using focused beams of electrons to observe atoms and viruses. |
| 1935 |
Sulfanilamide |
Gerhard Domagk |
German |
To invent the first class of commercially available synthetic antibacterial drugs (sulfa drugs), heavily utilized by soldiers during World War II. |
| 1935 |
Nylon |
Wallace Hume Carothers |
American |
To provide the world with the first totally synthetic, incredibly strong polymer fiber, initially used for women's stockings and later for parachutes and ropes. |
| 1934 |
pH Meter |
Arnold Orville Beckman |
American |
To instantly and accurately measure the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid (specifically, California lemon juice) using a sensitive electrical glass electrode. |
| 1934 |
Phillips Head Screw |
Henry F. Phillips |
American |
To speed up automotive assembly lines; the cross-shaped slot forced the screwdriver to naturally center itself and automatically slip out before over-tightening the screw. |
| 1933 |
Plastic Wrap (Saran Wrap) |
Ralph Wiley |
American |
To keep food fresh by clinging tightly to bowls and sealing out air, originally discovered as a chemical residue that stubbornly stuck to lab beakers. |
| 1933 |
Polyethylene |
Eric Fawcett, Reginald Gibson |
British |
To mass-produce the most common consumer plastic in the world, primarily utilized for packaging, grocery bags, and durable containers. |
| 1933 |
Frequency modulation (FM radio) |
Edwin Howard Armstrong |
American |
To provide crystal-clear, static-free radio broadcasting by varying the frequency of the radio wave rather than its amplitude (AM). |
| 1932 |
Fiberglass |
Games Slayter |
American |
To provide a cheap, lightweight, and highly moldable material by weaving ultra-fine fibers of glass into a flexible fabric mat. |
| 1932 |
Folding Wheelchair |
Harry Jennings |
American |
To allow paralyzed individuals to easily transport their wheelchairs in cars by building a sturdy, tubular steel frame that could fold flat. |
| 1932 |
Phase contrast microscope |
Frits Zernike |
Dutch |
To study living, transparent cells in brilliant detail without having to kill and stain them first by exploiting tiny differences in the refractive index of light. |
| 1932 |
Van de Graaff generator |
Robert Jemison Van de Graaff |
American |
To create immense, multi-million-volt static electrical discharges using a moving rubber belt, crucial for early nuclear particle acceleration. |
| 1931 |
Windshield Washer Fluid System |
Hector Maciet |
Uruguayan |
To allow drivers to clean mud and bugs off their windshields while driving by manually (and later electronically) pumping solvent through nozzles onto the glass. |
| 1931 |
Strobe Light |
Harold Edgerton |
American |
To freeze the motion of incredibly fast objects (like a bullet in mid-air or a hummingbird's wings) using a xenon flash lamp that emits intensely brief flashes of light. |
| 1931 |
Cyclotron |
Ernest Orlando Lawrence |
American |
To smash atomic particles together by accelerating them outward in a spiral path using incredibly powerful electromagnets, uncovering the secrets of nuclear physics. |
| 1931 |
Differential analyzer |
Vannevar Bush |
American |
To solve complex calculus problems and differential equations by using a massive, mechanical analog computer made of physically spinning wheel-and-disc mechanisms. |
| 1931 |
Electric Guitar |
George Beauchamp |
American |
To drastically amplify the sound of a plucked string using magnetic pickups so the guitar could be heard over loud jazz bands and orchestras. |
| 1931 |
Modern Tampon (with Applicator) |
Earle Haas |
American |
To provide comfortable, internal menstrual protection without the need to touch the cotton, utilizing a simple telescoping paper-tube applicator (later bought and branded as Tampax). |
| 1931 |
Drum Machine (Rhythmicon) |
Leon Theremin |
Russian |
To automatically play incredibly complex, unplayable, overlapping rhythmic loops using an electronic, keyboard-controlled sequencer. |
| 1930 |
Radiation Dosimeter |
Arthur Mutscheller |
American |
To protect nuclear scientists and X-ray technicians by providing a wearable badge that accurately measures their cumulative exposure to ionizing radiation over time. |
| 1930 |
Tufted Carpet |
Catherine Evans Whitener |
American |
To drastically speed up rug production by pushing thousands of yarn loops through a pre-woven fabric backing, completely replacing slow, hand-knotted carpet weaving. |
| 1930 |
Car Radio |
Paul Galvin |
American |
To entertain drivers on long road trips by building a rugged, shock-proof radio that could run off a car battery (later named Motorola). |
| 1930 |
Transparent Sticky Tape |
Richard Drew |
American |
To provide a clear, moisture-proof adhesive strip for sealing cellophane food packaging and repairing torn paper documents. |
| 1930 |
Bathysphere |
William Beebe |
American |
To safely observe deep-sea life by lowering humans into the incredibly high-pressure depths of the ocean inside a solid, unpowered steel sphere attached to a ship. |
| 1930 |
Freon (CFCs) |
Thomas Midgley Jr. |
American |
To replace highly toxic and explosive refrigerants with a supposedly safe, non-flammable gas, though it was later found to destroy the Earth's ozone layer. |
| 1930 |
Gas-turbine engine (Jet Engine) |
Frank Whittle |
British |
To propel aircraft to unprecedented speeds by compressing air, igniting fuel, and expelling the massive exhaust blast out the rear to generate forward thrust. |
| 1930 |
Neoprene |
Julius Arthur Nieuwland, Wallace Hume Carothers |
American |
To provide a tough, synthetic rubber resistant to degradation by oil and sunlight, widely used today in wet suits and automotive hoses. |
| 1929 |
Car Heater |
Margaret A. Wilcox |
American |
To keep passengers warm in the winter by safely channeling the excess heat generated by the car's engine block directly into the cabin. |
| 1929 |
Hypoallergenic Baby Formula |
Julius Hess |
American |
To save the lives of infants who were severely allergic to cow's milk and could not nurse, providing them with safe, synthetic nutritional milk. |
| 1929 |
Foley Catheter |
Frederic Foley |
American |
To continuously drain a patient's bladder without the tube falling out by incorporating a tiny, inflatable balloon at the tip of a flexible silicone tube. |
| 1929 |
Synthetic Lubricating Oil |
Standard Oil Chemists |
American |
To keep jet engines and high-performance car engines running flawlessly at extreme temperatures that would cause traditional crude oil to burn, freeze, or turn to sludge. |
| 1928 |
Magnetic Tape Recorder |
Fritz Pfleumer |
German |
To drastically improve the quality of audio recordings over wax cylinders by coating long strips of paper (later plastic) in microscopic, magnetizable iron oxide powder. |
| 1928 |
Geiger Counter |
Hans Geiger, Walther Müller |
German |
To detect and measure dangerous ionizing radiation (alpha, beta, and gamma rays) through the ionization of inert gas inside a sealed tube. |
| 1928 |
Geiger-Müller Tube |
Hans Geiger, Walther Müller |
German |
To precisely detect and quantify ionizing radiation (alpha, beta, and gamma) by measuring the electrical current generated when radiation hits inert gas. |
| 1928 |
Iron Lung |
Philip Drinker, Louis Agassiz Shaw |
American |
To keep polio victims alive when their chest muscles became paralyzed, using a sealed metal cylinder that physically expands and contracts their lungs using air pressure. |
| 1928 |
Penicillin |
Alexander Fleming |
British |
To kill bacterial infections in humans by isolating an antibiotic substance naturally secreted by Penicillium mold, ushering in the age of modern medicine. |
| 1927 |
Garbage Disposal Unit |
John W. Hammes |
American |
To shred leftover food waste into pieces small enough to pass safely through household plumbing by using a heavy centrifugal grinding ring hidden under the sink. |
| 1927 |
Quartz Clock |
Warren Marrison |
Canadian-American |
To keep highly accurate time by electronically counting the ultra-stable, high-frequency vibrations of a quartz crystal subjected to an electrical current. |
| 1927 |
Wave Pool |
Bavarian Engineers |
German |
To provide the thrill of ocean surfing in land-locked water parks by using massive mechanical paddles or compressed air chambers to generate massive, rhythmic artificial waves. |
| 1926 |
Power Steering |
Francis W. Davis |
American |
To allow drivers to easily steer heavy vehicles with minimal physical effort by using hydraulic pressure to assist the steering mechanism. |
| 1926 |
Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) |
Waldo Semon |
American |
To provide a cheap, flexible, and chemically resistant plastic that completely replaced expensive lead and iron in modern indoor plumbing pipes. |
| 1926 |
Aerosol can |
Erik Rotheim |
Norwegian |
To evenly dispense liquids (like paint or insecticide) as a fine mist by packing them in a sealed metal can alongside a highly pressurized propellant gas. |
| 1926 |
Liquid-fuel rocket |
Robert Hutchings Goddard |
American |
To vastly increase the range and power of rockets by burning a controlled mixture of liquid gasoline and liquid oxygen, the core technology of modern spaceflight. |
| 1925 |
Carbon Monoxide Detector |
Chester S. Gordon, James W. Hunter |
American |
To save lives by chemically or electronically detecting the presence of odorless, colorless, and highly toxic carbon monoxide gas in enclosed spaces. |
| 1925 |
Dot Matrix Printer |
Rudolf Hell |
German |
To print text and images by striking an ink ribbon with a precise grid of tiny metal pins, creating characters out of small dots. |
| 1925 |
Shipping Pallet |
Howard T. Hallowell |
American |
To standardize the storage of cargo by providing a cheap, flat wooden structure with slots underneath, perfectly sized for forklift prongs. |
| 1925 |
Television image dissector |
Philo Taylor Farnsworth |
American |
To capture moving images purely electronically, proving that a completely solid-state, non-mechanical television system was entirely possible. |
| 1924 |
Electroencephalography (EEG) |
Hans Berger |
German |
To physically record the hidden electrical activity (brainwaves) of the human brain by placing highly sensitive electrodes directly on the scalp. |
| 1924 |
Quick-frozen food |
Clarence Birdseye |
American |
To perfectly preserve the taste and texture of fresh meat and vegetables by freezing them almost instantaneously between intensely cold metal plates. |
| 1923 |
Bulldozer |
James Cummings, J. Earl McLeod |
American |
To clear land, push massive mounds of dirt, and level terrain quickly by attaching a large, heavy steel blade to the front of a continuous-track tractor. |
| 1923 |
Lipstick Tube (Swivel) |
James Bruce Mason Jr. |
American |
To easily protect and apply lip color using a specialized brass tube with an internal cam mechanism that pushes the delicate lipstick up when the base is twisted. |
| 1923 |
Autogiro |
Juan de la Cierva |
Spanish |
To create an un-stallable aircraft that uses an unpowered, freely spinning top rotor to generate lift as a forward engine pulls the craft through the air. |
| 1923 |
Television iconoscope |
Vladimir K. Zworykin |
American |
To act as the first practical electronic camera tube, scanning images using a beam of electrons instead of a clunky mechanical spinning disk. |
| 1923 |
Cotton Swab (Q-Tip) |
Leo Gerstenzang |
American |
To safely apply ointments to babies without using a dangerous toothpick wrapped in cotton; the original wooden sticks were later replaced with soft paper tubes. |
| 1922 |
Electric Blender |
Stephen Poplawski |
American |
To quickly and efficiently make malted milkshakes at soda fountains by placing a high-speed spinning blade at the bottom of a tall glass jar. |
| 1922 |
Geodesic Dome |
Walther Bauersfeld |
German |
To create an incredibly strong, self-supporting architectural structure using a network of intersecting lightweight triangles, popularized later by Buckminster Fuller. |
| 1922 |
Sound motion pictures |
Theodore Willard Case |
American |
To sync audio directly to film by recording the sound as a variable photographic track directly onto the celluloid strip, eliminating separate phonograph records. |
| 1922 |
Insulin (isolation) |
Frederick Banting |
Canadian |
To extract the hormone from animal pancreases to treat Type 1 Diabetes, transforming a formerly fatal disease into a manageable condition. |
| 1922 |
Bobby Pin |
Luis Marcus |
American |
To securely hold the wildly popular 1920s short "bobbed" hairstyles in place using a small, double-pronged metal hair clip with a zigzag grip. |
| 1921 |
Automatic Transmission |
Alfred Horner Munro |
Canadian |
To completely eliminate the need for a driver to manually shift gears or press a clutch pedal by using fluid dynamics to change gear ratios automatically. |
| 1921 |
Polygraph (Lie Detector) |
John Augustus Larson |
Canadian |
To measure an interrogation subject's blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration simultaneously to detect the physiological stress associated with deception. |
| 1920 |
Adhesive Bandage (Band-Aid) |
Earle Dickson |
American |
To allow his accident-prone wife to quickly dress small cuts and burns on her own using a pre-made strip of sterile gauze attached to sticky tape. |
| 1920 |
Multimeter |
Donald Macadie |
British |
To allow electricians to quickly diagnose faulty circuits using a single, portable device capable of measuring voltage, current, and resistance (an "AVO" meter). |
| 1920 |
Nail Polish (Modern) |
Michelle Menard |
French |
To paint fingernails with high-gloss, durable colors by adapting the highly durable, fast-drying nitrocellulose automobile paints recently invented for cars. |
| 1920 |
Snowplow (Truck Mounted) |
Carl Frink |
American |
To keep roads and highways safely open during intense winter blizzards by attaching a massive, hydraulically angled steel blade to the front of a heavy truck. |
| 1920 |
Theremin |
Leon Theremin |
Russian |
To create an eerie, electronic musical instrument that is played completely without physical contact, using the player's hands to disrupt electromagnetic fields surrounding two antennas. |
| 1919 |
Helium Airship (Blimp) |
US Navy Engineers |
American |
To provide safe, non-flammable lighter-than-air flight by abandoning explosive hydrogen gas in favor of safe, inert helium. |
| 1919 |
Pop-up Toaster |
Charles Strite |
American |
To prevent burnt bread by incorporating a mechanical timer and a spring that automatically pops the toast away from the heating elements when it is done. |
| 1919 |
Electric Hair Clipper |
Leo J. Wahl |
American |
To provide barbers with a fast, powerful, and corded cutting tool using an electromagnetic motor to rapidly slide a row of sharp teeth back and forth. |
| 1919 |
Mass spectrograph |
Francis William Aston, Arthur Jeffrey Dempster |
British, American |
To accurately measure the atomic weight of elements by ionizing them and sorting the particles using a powerful magnetic field, leading to the discovery of isotopes. |
| 1918 |
Aircraft Carrier |
Royal Navy Engineers (HMS Argus) |
British |
To project global air power across the oceans by constructing a naval vessel with a completely flat, full-length wooden flight deck for launching and landing planes. |
| 1917 |
Forklift |
Eugene Clark |
American |
To revolutionize warehouse logistics by allowing a single driver to easily lift, stack, and transport incredibly heavy wooden pallets of goods. |
| 1917 |
Phoropter |
Henry DeZeng |
American |
To quickly and accurately determine a patient's exact eyeglass prescription by using a massive, mask-like device to rapidly flip different lenses in front of the eyes. |
| 1917 |
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Drone) |
Archibald Low |
British |
To act as a radio-controlled flying bomb or surveillance tool, eliminating the risk of a human pilot being shot down behind enemy lines. |
| 1916 |
Concrete Transit Mixer |
Stephen Stepanian |
Armenian-American |
To deliver fresh, wet concrete directly to construction sites without it hardening in transit by slowly rotating the mixture inside a truck-mounted drum. |
| 1916 |
Depth Charge |
Herbert Taylor |
British |
To hunt and destroy submerged enemy submarines by dropping heavy drums of explosives set to detonate at specific water pressures (depths) using a hydrostatic valve. |
| 1916 |
Light Switch (Toggle) |
William J. Newton |
American |
To provide a safe, spring-loaded mechanism to snap electrical contacts open and closed instantly, preventing dangerous electrical arcing inside the wall. |
| 1916 |
Automatic rifle (Browning) |
John Moses Browning |
American |
To provide infantry with a lightweight, portable machine gun that harnesses the expanding gases of the fired bullet to automatically reload the next round. |
| 1916 |
Gas-filled incandescent lamp |
Irving Langmuir |
American |
To greatly extend the lifespan and brightness of lightbulbs by filling the glass envelope with inert gases (like argon) to prevent the tungsten filament from evaporating. |
| 1916 |
X-ray tube (Coolidge tube) |
William David Coolidge |
American |
To provide doctors with a reliable, controllable, and stable source of X-rays by using a heated tungsten filament in a high-vacuum tube. |
| 1915 |
Loudspeaker (Moving-Coil) |
Peter L. Jensen, Edwin Pridham |
Danish, American |
To project audio to massive crowds (first used for political speeches) by attaching a wire coil to a paper cone and vibrating it using electromagnets. |
| 1915 |
Fragmentation Hand Grenade |
William Mills |
British |
To lethalize trench warfare by allowing infantry to throw a small explosive device with a grooved cast-iron shell designed to shatter into deadly shrapnel upon detonation. |
| 1915 |
Automobile self-starter |
Charles Franklin Kettering |
American |
To eliminate the dangerous and exhausting task of manually hand-cranking a car engine by using an electric motor to start the vehicle safely with a key. |
| 1915 |
Armored Tank |
Ernest Swinton, William Tritton |
British |
To safely cross muddy trenches, crush barbed wire, and protect infantry from heavy machine-gun fire during the stalemate of World War I. |
| 1914 |
Gas Mask |
Garrett Morgan |
American |
To allow firefighters and soldiers to breathe safely in environments filled with smoke or deadly mustard gas by forcing inhaled air through a purifying charcoal filter. |
| 1914 |
Tear Gas (CS Gas) |
French Police |
French |
To disperse violent riots and force enemies out of bunkers using a chemical compound that causes severe, temporary burning in the eyes and lungs. |
| 1914 |
Swimfins (Flippers) |
Louis de Corlieu |
French |
To swim vastly faster and with greater power underwater by strapping broad, flexible rubber blades to the feet, mimicking the fins of a fish. |
| 1914 |
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) |
Emanuel Goldberg |
Israeli |
To allow machines to visually scan and read printed text, converting physical documents into editable, searchable digital data. |
| 1913 |
Crossword Puzzle |
Arthur Wynne |
British-American |
To entertain newspaper readers by giving them a diamond-shaped grid of blank squares to fill in by solving numbered vocabulary clues. |
| 1913 |
Ramjet engine |
René Lorin |
French |
To achieve supersonic aircraft speeds using an incredibly simple jet engine that uses the vehicle's forward motion to compress incoming air without rotary compressors. |
| 1913 |
Multigrid electron tube |
Irving Langmuir |
American |
To vastly improve upon the triode tube by adding extra wire grids, producing cleaner signal amplification for radio and early electronics. |
| 1913 |
Cracked gasoline |
William Meriam Burton |
American |
To double the yield of usable gasoline from crude oil by using high heat and pressure to "crack" heavy petroleum molecules into lighter fuel molecules. |
| 1913 |
Heterodyne radio receiver |
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden |
American |
To cleanly tune into specific radio stations by mixing the incoming radio frequency with a locally generated frequency to create an easily amplified intermediate frequency. |
| 1912 |
Autopilot |
Lawrence Sperry |
American |
To relieve pilots of the exhausting task of manually flying long distances by connecting gyroscopes directly to an aircraft's elevators and rudders. |
| 1912 |
Electric Traffic Light |
Lester Wire |
American |
To safely manage the chaotic intersection of horse-drawn carriages, pedestrians, and early automobiles using automated red and green electric lamps. |
| 1912 |
Straightener (Flat Iron) |
Ian Stuart |
Scottish |
To smooth out frizzy hair by pulling it between two heated iron plates, breaking down the hair's hydrogen bonds temporarily. |
| 1912 |
Mercury-vapor lamp |
Peter Cooper Hewitt |
American |
To provide incredibly energy-efficient, high-intensity artificial light by passing an electric arc through vaporized mercury, commonly used in factories and street lights. |
| 1912 |
Electric Blanket |
Sidney I. Russell |
American |
Originally invented as a bulky, heated pad for tuberculosis patients sleeping outdoors; it used insulated electrical wires woven into the fabric to generate safe heat. |
| 1911 |
Rear-View Mirror |
Ray Harroun |
American |
To allow a race car driver to see competitors behind him without needing a second human "riding mechanic" turning around to look for him. |
| 1911 |
Air conditioning |
Willis Haviland Carrier |
American |
To scientifically control both the temperature and humidity of indoor air, originally designed to keep printing presses functioning in the humid summer. |
| 1911 |
Vitamins (concept) |
Casimir Funk |
Polish |
To isolate the essential chemical compounds ("vital amines") that the human body cannot produce on its own, curing dietary deficiency diseases like scurvy. |
| 1911 |
Cellophane (patented machine) |
Jacques E. Brandenberger |
Swiss |
To mass-produce the transparent cellulose film continuously on an industrial scale rather than in small, experimental batches. |
| 1911 |
Neon lamp |
Georges Claude |
French |
To create bright, eye-catching, and colorful lighting for commercial signs by passing electrical current through a sealed glass tube filled with neon gas. |
| 1911 |
Electric Waffle Iron |
Thomas J. Stackhouse |
American |
To quickly cook breakfast batter on both sides simultaneously without a stove by pressing it between two electrically heated, grid-patterned metal plates. |
| 1911 |
Packed Knapsack Parachute |
Gleb Kotelnikov |
Russian |
To save pilots from falling to their deaths by packing a silk parachute into a wearable hard casing (or soft backpack) that opened manually with a ripcord. |
| 1911 |
Cloud Chamber |
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson |
Scottish |
To physically see the tracks of ionizing radiation and subatomic particles; they leave visible mist-trails as they pass through a sealed chamber of super-saturated alcohol vapor. |
| 1910 |
Neon Tube Signs |
Georges Claude |
French |
To create bright, highly visible commercial signs by sealing rare gases into custom-bent glass tubes and running high voltage through them. |
| 1910 |
Aluminum Foil |
Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie. |
Swiss |
To wrap and protect food and tobacco using an incredibly thin, flexible sheet of metal that does not leave a tin-like metallic taste. |
| 1910 |
Neon Sign |
Georges Claude |
French |
To create glowing, colorful outdoor advertisements by sealing electrified neon and argon gases into shaped glass tubes. |
| 1910 |
Hydrogenation of coal |
Friedrich Bergius |
German |
To synthetically produce liquid fuel (gasoline) by reacting solid coal dust with hydrogen gas under extremely high temperatures and pressures. |
| 1910 |
Gyroscopic stabilizer |
Elmer Ambrose Sperry |
American |
To automatically keep airplanes flying level and ships from rolling violently in rough seas by using the intense angular momentum of spinning gyroscopes. |
| 1909 |
Bulletproof Glass |
Édouard Bénédictus |
French |
To protect bank tellers and world leaders from assassination by laminating thick layers of glass with polycarbonate plastic, absorbing the kinetic energy of bullets. |
| 1909 |
Salvarsan |
Paul Ehrlich |
German |
To chemically target and cure syphilis without killing the human patient, launching the modern era of targeted antimicrobial chemotherapy. |
| 1909 |
Haber-Bosch Process |
Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch |
German |
To synthesize agricultural fertilizer from thin air by combining nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia, sustaining the massive growth of the global human population. |
| 1908 |
Tea Bag |
Thomas Sullivan |
American |
Originally intended as a cheap silk packaging sample, customers dropped them directly into hot water, accidentally inventing the modern steeped tea bag. |
| 1908 |
Cellophane |
Jacques E. Brandenberger |
Swiss |
To provide a transparent, waterproof, and flexible packaging material to protect food and consumer goods from moisture and dirt. |
| 1908 |
Two-color motion picture camera (Kinemacolor) |
George Albert Smith |
British |
To project movies in natural color by rapidly alternating between red and green filters in both the camera and the projector. |
| 1908 |
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) |
Kikunae Ikeda |
Japanese |
To isolate the savory, meaty "umami" flavor found in seaweed broth into a crystalline salt that could be added as a universal flavor enhancer to food. |
| 1908 |
Electric Washing Machine |
Alva J. Fisher |
American |
To mechanize the exhausting chore of doing laundry by using an electric motor to rotate a galvanized tub and automatically wring out clothes. |
| 1907 |
Thermosetting Plastic (Bakelite) |
Leo Baekeland |
American |
To provide the world's first fully synthetic plastic that, once molded and cooled, would never melt again, making it ideal for electrical insulators. |
| 1907 |
Bakelite |
Leo Baekeland |
American |
To provide the world's first totally synthetic plastic—a highly heat-resistant, electrically non-conductive resin used in early radios and telephones. |
| 1907 |
Triode amplifier tube (Audion) |
Lee De Forest |
American |
To dramatically amplify weak electrical signals and radio waves, making long-distance telephone networks and early computers possible. |
| 1907 |
Paper Cup (Dixie Cup) |
Lawrence Luellen |
American |
To stop the rampant spread of diseases (like tuberculosis) caused by people sharing communal metal drinking tin-cups at public water barrels. |
| 1906 |
Freeze-Drying (Lyophilization) |
Arsène d'Arsonval |
French |
To perfectly preserve vaccines, blood serum, and eventually food by freezing it and placing it in a vacuum, causing the ice to sublimate directly into vapor. |
| 1906 |
Sonar |
Lewis Nixon |
American |
To navigate underwater and detect enemy submarines or icebergs by bouncing sound waves off objects and measuring the echo. |
| 1906 |
Gyrocompass |
Hermann Anschütz-Kämpfe |
German |
To find true geographic north accurately regardless of the Earth's magnetic interference or the motion of steel-hulled ships and submarines. |
| 1905 |
Decaffeination |
Ludwig Roselius |
German |
To allow people to enjoy the taste of coffee without the stimulating jitters by using chemical solvents to extract the caffeine from raw coffee beans. |
| 1905 |
Novocain |
Alfred Einhorn |
German |
To replace highly addictive cocaine as a local anesthetic, allowing dentists to safely numb a patient's mouth during painful tooth extractions. |
| 1905 |
Diode rectifier tube |
John Ambrose Fleming |
British |
To convert alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) and detect radio waves using a specialized glass vacuum tube. |
| 1905 |
Derailleur Gears |
Paul de Vivie |
French |
To allow cyclists to change gears and tackle steep mountains by using a cable mechanism to physically derail the chain from one sprocket to another. |
| 1904 |
Diesel-Electric Submarine |
Maxime Laubeuf |
French |
To power a submarine efficiently by using air-breathing diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors while submerged. |
| 1904 |
Electrical Wall Outlet |
Harvey Hubbell |
American |
To allow homeowners to safely and easily plug in portable appliances without having to wire them directly into the dangerous, high-voltage ceiling light sockets. |
| 1904 |
Geothermal Power Plant |
Piero Ginori Conti |
Italian |
To generate continuous, clean electricity by tapping directly into the natural, intense steam heat of the Earth's crust. |
| 1904 |
Windshield (Automotive) |
George Hulett |
American |
To protect drivers from wind, debris, and insects, initially offered as an expensive luxury fold-down glass pane before becoming a standard safety feature. |
| 1903 |
SodaStream |
Guy Hugh Gilbey |
British |
Originally popular with the British royal family, this machine allowed individuals to carbonate plain water at home by injecting it with compressed carbon dioxide gas from a cylinder. |
| 1903 |
Safety Glass (Laminated) |
Édouard Bénédictus |
French |
To prevent severe lacerations during car crashes by sandwiching a layer of clear cellulose plastic between two sheets of glass, keeping it from shattering. |
| 1903 |
Monopoly (Board Game) |
Lizzie Magie |
American |
Originally designed as "The Landlord's Game" to teach the economic dangers of land monopolies, it became the world's most popular property trading board game. |
| 1903 |
Blacklight (Wood's Lamp) |
Robert Williams Wood |
American |
To emit almost completely invisible ultraviolet light, causing certain fluorescent paints, minerals, and bodily fluids to glow brilliantly in the dark. |
| 1903 |
Flint Spark Lighter |
Carl Auer von Welsbach |
Austrian |
To safely ignite gas stoves and lanterns using a metallic alloy (ferrocerium) that produces incredibly hot sparks when scraped against rough steel. |
| 1903 |
Airplane |
Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright |
American |
To achieve the world's first successful sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight with a human pilot aboard. |
| 1903 |
Windshield wipers |
Mary Anderson |
American |
To manually clear rain, snow, and sleet from a vehicle's front window via a lever inside the cabin, significantly improving driving safety. |
| 1903 |
Electrocardiograph (ECG) |
Willem Einthoven |
Dutch |
To graphically record the electrical activity of the human heart over time, enabling doctors to diagnose cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks. |
| 1903 |
Wire Coat Hanger |
Albert J. Parkhouse |
American |
Invented out of frustration when the coat hooks at his factory were full; he bent a piece of heavy wire into two ovals and twisted a hook in the center. |
| 1902 |
Spark Plug |
Gottlob Honold |
German |
To precisely and reliably ignite the compressed fuel-air mixture inside an internal combustion engine using a high-voltage electrical spark. |
| 1902 |
Electric Typewriter |
George C. Blickensderfer |
American |
To drastically reduce the finger strength required to type by using an electric motor to strike the typebars against the paper. |
| 1902 |
Radiotelephone |
Valdemar Poulsen, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden |
Danish, American |
To transmit continuous human speech and music over radio waves (AM broadcasting) rather than just the staccato pulses of Morse code. |
| 1901 |
Silicone |
Frederic Kipping |
British |
To synthesize polymers containing silicon and oxygen, creating highly temperature-resistant lubricants, sealants, and medical implants. |
| 1901 |
Powered Vacuum Cleaner |
Hubert Cecil Booth |
British |
To suck dirt out of carpets using a powerful, motorized air pump pulled by a horse-drawn carriage (with hoses running through house windows). |
| 1901 |
Blood Typing (ABO System) |
Karl Landsteiner |
Austrian |
To safely perform blood transfusions without causing fatal clotting by discovering that human blood is divided into distinct, incompatible antigen groups (A, B, AB, and O). |
| 1901 |
Modern Flamethrower |
Richard Fiedler |
German |
To clear out deeply entrenched enemy bunkers and pillboxes by projecting a long, burning stream of thickened, pressurized liquid fuel. |
| 1901 |
Safety Razor |
King Camp Gillette |
American |
To provide a safe, convenient shave using cheap, disposable stamped-steel blades, eliminating the need to constantly sharpen a dangerous straight razor. |
| 1900 |
Plywood Hollow-Core Door |
Various Builders |
International |
To provide incredibly cheap, lightweight interior doors by sandwiching a honeycomb of cardboard between two thin sheets of wood veneer, replacing expensive solid wood doors. |
| 1900 |
Self-Heating Can |
Russian Military |
Russian |
To provide soldiers with hot soup in freezing trenches without needing a fire, using a double-walled can that triggers an exothermic chemical reaction (quicklime and water). |
| 1900 |
Rigid dirigible airship (Zeppelin) |
Ferdinand von Zeppelin |
German |
To enable controlled, long-range aerial transport using massive, steerable airships constructed with rigid metal frameworks filled with lifting gas. |
| 1899 |
Homogenization |
Auguste Gaulin |
French |
To prevent the cream in milk from floating to the top by forcing the liquid through tiny nozzles under immense pressure, breaking the fat down into microscopic particles. |
| 1899 |
Nickel-Cadmium Battery (NiCd) |
Waldemar Jungner |
Swedish |
To create a tough, rechargeable battery capable of delivering high currents, widely used in early cordless power tools and portable radios. |
| 1899 |
Paperclip |
Johan Vaaler |
Norwegian |
To bind stacks of paper together temporarily without permanently puncturing them like a staple or straight pin. |
| 1898 |
Answering Machine |
Valdemar Poulsen |
Danish |
To automatically record telephone messages when the user was not home by using a magnetic telegraphone that recorded the caller's voice onto a steel wire. |
| 1898 |
Electric Hearing Aid |
Miller Reese Hutchison |
American |
To amplify surrounding sounds for the hearing-impaired using early carbon transmitter technology derived from the telephone. |
| 1898 |
Sensitized photographic paper (Velox) |
Leo Baekeland |
American |
To allow photographers to quickly print photographs under artificial light rather than relying on unreliable sunlight for chemical development. |
| 1897 |
Escalator (Step-type) |
Charles Seeberger |
American |
To create the modern escalator by utilizing flat, moving horizontal steps rather than a smooth, inclined moving walkway. |
| 1897 |
Oscilloscope |
Karl Ferdinand Braun |
German |
To visually observe highly rapid changes in electrical voltage over time by plotting the signal as a visible wave on a cathode-ray tube screen. |
| 1897 |
Cotton Candy Machine |
William Morrison, John C. Wharton |
American |
To create a fluffy, cloud-like confection for fairs and carnivals by melting colored sugar and rapidly spinning it out through microscopic holes using centrifugal force. |
| 1897 |
Surgical Mask |
Jan Mikulicz-Radecki |
Polish-Austrian |
To prevent deadly post-operative infections by catching the microscopic droplets of bacteria exhaled by surgeons as they talk and breathe over open wounds. |
| 1897 |
Aspirin |
Felix Hoffmann |
German |
To safely relieve pain, reduce fever, and lower inflammation by synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid, creating the most widely used medication in history. |
| 1896 |
Electric Soldering Iron |
Richard W. G. Illig |
German |
To permanently join delicate electrical wires and circuit board components together by melting a soft metal alloy (solder) using a continuously heated metal tip. |
| 1896 |
Experimental airplane (Aerodrome) |
Samuel Pierpont Langley |
American |
To study aerodynamics and test steam-powered, heavier-than-air flight using large, unpiloted aircraft models launched from catapults. |
| 1896 |
Dental X-Ray |
Otto Walkhoff |
German |
To inspect the hidden roots of teeth and jawbones for decay by wrapping a small photographic glass plate in rubber and holding it inside the patient's mouth during an X-ray exposure. |
| 1895 |
X-ray |
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen |
German |
To safely peer inside the human body without surgery by utilizing high-energy electromagnetic radiation that passes through soft tissue but is absorbed by bone. |
| 1895 |
Rayon (acetate) |
Charles Frederick Cross |
British |
To invent a semi-synthetic fiber derived from cellulose that resists shrinking and wrinkles, vastly expanding the textile industry. |
| 1895 |
Wireless telegraph |
Guglielmo Marconi |
Italian |
To transmit Morse code messages across long distances using invisible radio waves rather than physical electrical cables. |
| 1894 |
Drywall (Plasterboard) |
Augustine Sackett |
American |
To quickly build smooth interior walls without needing a skilled plasterer by pressing wet gypsum plaster between two heavy sheets of paper. |
| 1894 |
Motion picture projection |
Auguste Lumière, Louis Lumière, Charles Francis Jenkins |
French, American |
To project a sequence of moving images onto a large screen for a mass audience, birthing the modern cinematic experience. |
| 1893 |
Electric Toaster |
Alan MacMasters |
Scottish |
To quickly brown sliced bread using high-resistance iron wiring that radiates intense heat when electrical current is applied. |
| 1893 |
Moving Walkway |
Columbian Exposition Engineers |
American |
To transport pedestrians effortlessly across long horizontal distances (like airport terminals) using a slow-moving conveyor belt surface. |
| 1893 |
Ferris Wheel |
George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. |
American |
To rival the Eiffel Tower at the Chicago World's Fair by building a massive, rotating, vertical steel wheel carrying enclosed passenger cars. |
| 1893 |
Photoelectric cell |
Julius Elster, Hans Friedrich Geitel |
German |
To convert light directly into electrical energy by utilizing the photoelectric effect, a foundational technology for solar panels and light sensors. |
| 1893 |
Diesel engine |
Rudolf Diesel |
German |
To provide a highly fuel-efficient internal combustion engine that relies on the intense heat of heavily compressed air to ignite the fuel, rather than a spark plug. |
| 1893 |
Gasoline automobile |
Charles Edgar Duryea, J. Frank Duryea |
American |
To create the first commercially successful, gas-powered motor vehicle in the United States, paving the way for the modern automotive industry. |
| 1893 |
Zipper |
Whitcomb L. Judson |
American |
To quickly and securely fasten boots and clothing by sliding a metal tab to interlock two rows of tiny metal teeth. |
| 1892 |
Lightning Arrester |
Nikola Tesla |
American |
To protect massive electrical substations and telecommunication lines from catastrophic lightning strikes by instantly diverting extreme voltage surges directly into the earth. |
| 1892 |
Escalator |
Jesse W. Reno |
American |
To transport large crowds of people between floors of a building continuously without the wait times required by enclosed elevator cabs. |
| 1892 |
Crown Cork (Bottle Cap) |
William Painter |
American |
To perfectly seal pressurized carbonated beverages inside glass bottles using a crimped metal cap lined with a cork (later plastic) disc. |
| 1892 |
Toothpaste Tube |
Washington Sheffield |
American |
To safely and cleanly dispense dental cream without dipping a brush into a communal jar, inspired by oil paint tubes used by artists. |
| 1892 |
Gasoline Tractor |
John Froelich |
American |
To haul heavy farming plows reliably without the immense weight, fire hazards, and constant water needs of earlier steam-powered traction engines. |
| 1892 |
AC induction motor |
Nikola Tesla |
American |
To provide an incredibly durable and highly efficient electric motor powered by alternating current, utilizing rotating magnetic fields without physical electrical contacts (brushes). |
| 1892 |
Three-color camera |
Frederic Eugene Ives |
American |
To capture full-color photographs by taking three simultaneous exposures through red, green, and blue color filters, mimicking human vision. |
| 1892 |
Viscose rayon |
Charles Frederick Cross |
British |
To invent the most commercially successful and cheapest method of manufacturing rayon fabric by treating cellulose with sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide. |
| 1892 |
Vacuum flask (Dewar flask) |
Sir James Dewar |
British |
To store ultra-cold liquefied gases (and later, hot coffee) by utilizing a double-walled glass container with a vacuum between the walls to completely halt thermal conduction. |
| 1891 |
Glider (controlled) |
Otto Lilienthal |
German |
To prove that heavier-than-air, unpowered human flight was possible by executing repeated, controlled glider flights from a high hill. |
| 1891 |
Kinetograph (Motion picture camera) |
Thomas Alva Edison, William Kennedy Dickson |
American, British |
To capture moving images by rapidly advancing a strip of flexible celluloid photographic film past a camera lens using a stop-and-go mechanism. |
| 1891 |
Kinetoscope (Motion picture viewer) |
Thomas Alva Edison, William Kennedy Dickson |
American, British |
To allow an individual to watch short motion pictures by peering through a peephole at a continuously moving strip of film illuminated by a light bulb. |
| 1891 |
Synthetic rubber (Isoprene) |
William Augustus Tilden |
British |
To provide an artificial, lab-grown alternative to natural tree-tapped rubber, though it wouldn't become commercially viable until World War II. |
| 1891 |
Adjustable Spanner (Crescent Wrench) |
Johan Petter Johansson |
Swedish |
To allow a mechanic to carry a single tool instead of a massive set of wrenches; a thumb-screw seamlessly adjusts the jaw width to fit any nut or bolt. |
| 1890 |
Jackhammer |
Charles Brady King |
American |
To break up pavement and hard rock incredibly fast by combining a heavy chisel with a rapid, compressed-air-driven pneumatic piston. |
| 1890 |
Instant Coffee |
David Strang |
New Zealander |
To allow soldiers and busy workers to quickly make a cup of coffee simply by adding hot water to soluble, dehydrated coffee powder. |
| 1890 |
Hair Dryer |
Alexander F. Godefroy |
French |
To speed up salon appointments by attaching a hood to the exhaust pipe of a gas stove to blow hot air over a client's wet hair. |
| 1890 |
Curling Iron |
Marcel Grateau |
French |
To allow women to create long-lasting, uniform waves in their hair by clamping it against a heated metal rod (originally heated over an open gas burner). |
| 1890 |
Toilet Paper (Roll) |
Seth Wheeler |
American |
To commercialize bathroom hygiene by patenting the modern, perforated roll of soft tissue paper suspended on a central cardboard tube. |
| 1890 |
Rayon (cuprammonium) |
Louis Henri Despeissis |
French |
To create a fine, silky synthetic fiber by dissolving cellulose in a chemical bath of copper and ammonia, later used heavily in sheer garments. |
| 1890 |
Cardboard Box (Pre-Cut & Folded) |
Robert Gair |
Scottish-American |
Invented by accident when a metal press malfunctioned and cut paper bags instead of creasing them, creating the world's first mass-produced folding carton. |
| 1889 |
Impulse steam turbine |
Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval |
Swedish |
To create incredibly high-speed rotational energy by directing jets of steam directly against cup-shaped blades on a spinning rotor. |
| 1889 |
Surgical Rubber Gloves |
William Stewart Halsted |
American |
To prevent a nurse's hands from breaking out in severe rashes from harsh operating room chemicals; they inadvertently became crucial for maintaining sterile surgical environments. |
| 1889 |
Electric Power Drill |
Arthur James Arnot, William Blanch Brain |
Australian |
Originally patented to drill through rock in coal mines, this heavy, two-handed tool used a massive electric motor to spin a drill bit continuously. |
| 1888 |
Revolving Door |
Theophilus Van Kannel |
American |
To drastically reduce the loss of heating and air conditioning in large skyscrapers by creating a continuous airlock that prevents drafts from rushing into the lobby. |
| 1888 |
Paper Drinking Straw |
Marvin Stone |
American |
To drink cold beverages without the grassy taste of natural rye straws by winding paper around a pencil and gluing it together. |
| 1888 |
Recording adding machine |
William Seward Burroughs |
American |
To mechanize business accounting by calculating sums and simultaneously printing the numerical transaction record onto a paper receipt roll. |
| 1888 |
Kodak box camera |
George Eastman |
American |
To bring photography to the masses with a simple, pre-loaded roll-film camera marketed with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest." |
| 1888 |
Glass Contact Lenses |
Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick |
German |
To correct vision without spectacles by placing heavy, blown-glass shells directly over the entire eyeball (though they could only be worn for a few hours due to pain). |
| 1888 |
Disposable Menstrual Pad |
Southall Brothers & Barclay |
British |
To provide women with a sanitary, disposable alternative to washing cloth rags by using highly absorbent cellulose bandages originally developed for wounded soldiers. |
| 1887 |
Elevator Doors (Automatic) |
Alexander Miles |
American |
To prevent horrific accidental deaths in elevator shafts by designing a mechanism that automatically closed the shaft doors when the elevator cab moved away. |
| 1887 |
Pyrex (Borosilicate Glass) |
Otto Schott |
German |
To prevent glass from shattering when exposed to extreme thermal shock (like being pulled from a hot oven) by adding boron oxide to the glass mixture. |
| 1887 |
Pneumatic rubber tire |
John Boyd Dunlop |
Scottish |
To provide a highly comfortable and fast ride for bicycles (and later cars) by inflating a tough rubber tube with compressed air to absorb road shocks. |
| 1887 |
Gramophone |
Emile Berliner |
American |
To play back recorded audio from flat, easily mass-produced vinyl or shellac discs rather than cumbersome cylinders, establishing the modern record industry. |
| 1887 |
Gas mantle |
Carl Auer von Welsbach |
Austrian |
To vastly increase the brightness of gas streetlights and home lamps by placing a fabric mesh infused with reactive metal oxides over the gas flame. |
| 1887 |
Mimeograph |
Albert Blake Dick |
American |
To cheaply and quickly duplicate documents in a typical office setting by forcing ink through a custom-cut wax stencil onto blank paper. |
| 1887 |
Monotype machine |
Tolbert Lanston |
American |
To typeset books and complex layouts by mechanically casting individual lead letters one at a time, allowing for easier corrections than the Linotype. |
| 1887 |
Folding Bicycle |
Emmit G. Latta |
American |
To allow urban commuters and paratroopers to easily carry their bicycles onto trains or airplanes by incorporating heavily reinforced hinges into the frame. |
| 1887 |
Wind Turbine (Electricity) |
Charles F. Brush |
American |
To automatically generate and store electrical power in batteries by harnessing the wind using a massive, multi-bladed wooden rotor. |
| 1887 |
Petri Dish |
Julius Richard Petri |
German |
To safely culture and observe bacteria in a laboratory using a shallow, transparent glass dish with an overlapping lid that prevents airborne contamination. |
| 1886 |
Dishwasher (Mechanical) |
Josephine Cochrane |
American |
To quickly and safely wash fine china dishes using high-pressure jets of hot, soapy water rather than relying on hand-washing. |
| 1885 |
Graphophone |
Chichester Bell, Charles Sumner Tainter |
American |
To significantly improve the sound quality and durability of Edison's phonograph by etching the audio grooves into wax cylinders instead of tinfoil. |
| 1885 |
AC transformer |
William Stanley |
American |
To efficiently "step up" or "step down" the voltage of alternating current, allowing electricity to be transmitted over massive distances with minimal power loss. |
| 1885 |
Gasoline Motorcycle |
Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach |
German |
To test their newly invented internal combustion engine by strapping it to a reinforced wooden bicycle frame, creating the first motorized bike. |
| 1885 |
Rabies Vaccine |
Louis Pasteur |
French |
To save patients bitten by rabid animals; it was the first vaccine created using a virus attenuated (weakened) by drying the infected spinal cords of rabbits. |
| 1884 |
Espresso Machine |
Angelo Moriondo |
Italian |
To drastically reduce the time it takes to brew coffee by forcing near-boiling water through tightly packed, finely ground coffee beans using immense steam pressure. |
| 1884 |
Roller Coaster |
LaMarcus Adna Thompson |
American |
To provide terrifying, gravity-powered thrills for amusement park guests by sending passenger cars speeding down steep, undulating wooden tracks. |
| 1884 |
Steam turbine (modern) |
Charles Algernon Parsons |
English |
To directly convert high-pressure steam into rapid rotary motion, becoming the standard engine for massive electrical power plants and large naval ships. |
| 1884 |
Rayon (nitrocellulose) |
Hilaire de Chardonnet |
French |
To provide a cheaper, synthetic alternative to natural silk ("Chardonnet silk") by chemically treating cellulose extracted from wood pulp. |
| 1884 |
Multiple-wheel steam turbine |
Charles Algernon Parsons |
British |
To extract maximum energy from expanding steam by passing it through successive stages of rotating bladed wheels, greatly increasing engine efficiency. |
| 1884 |
Nipkow disk |
Paul Gottlieb Nipkow |
German |
To mechanically scan images into a sequence of electrical signals; this rotating disk with a spiral of holes was the core technology of early mechanical television. |
| 1884 |
Fountain pen |
Lewis Edson Waterman |
American |
To provide a reliable, portable writing instrument that used capillary action to draw ink from an internal reservoir to the nib without spilling. |
| 1884 |
Local Anesthesia |
Karl Koller |
Austrian |
To numb specific, localized areas of the human body (originally using cocaine drops in the eye) so patients could remain awake during delicate surgeries. |
| 1883 |
Thermostat |
Warren Johnson |
American |
To automatically regulate indoor room temperatures by using a bi-metal coil that expands and contracts to mechanically turn furnaces on and off. |
| 1883 |
Hang Glider |
John Joseph Montgomery |
American |
To achieve unpowered human flight by suspending a pilot in a harness beneath a flexible, wing-shaped fabric sail controlled by shifting body weight. |
| 1882 |
Hydroelectric Power Plant |
H.F. Rogers |
American |
To generate massive amounts of electricity by using the kinetic force of falling river water to spin large turbine generators. |
| 1882 |
Electric Iron |
Henry W. Seely |
American |
To easily press wrinkles out of clothing without constantly reheating a heavy block of cast iron over a dangerous coal stove. |
| 1882 |
Electric Fan |
Schuyler Wheeler |
American |
To provide indoor cooling without manually fanning by attaching a two-bladed propeller to an early direct-current electric motor. |
| 1881 |
Arc Welding |
Nikolai Benardos |
Russian |
To melt and permanently fuse heavy pieces of steel together using the incredibly intense heat generated by a continuous electrical arc. |
| 1881 |
Blow Molding |
Enoch Ferngren, William Kopitke |
American |
To mass-produce cheap, hollow plastic items (like modern water bottles) by inflating a hot tube of plastic against the inside of a cold metal mold. |
| 1881 |
Anthrax Vaccine |
Louis Pasteur |
French |
To save livestock (and later humans) from a highly lethal bacterial disease by publicly injecting sheep with a weakened strain of the bacteria to prove immune response. |
| 1881 |
Sphygmomanometer (Blood Pressure Cuff) |
Samuel Siegfried Karl von Basch |
Austrian |
To non-invasively measure a patient's blood pressure by inflating a rubber cuff around the arm to temporarily stop blood flow, reading the pressure on a gauge. |
| 1881 |
Agar Plate |
Walther Hesse, Fanny Hesse |
German |
To grow bacterial cultures on a solid surface that wouldn't melt at incubator temperatures (unlike gelatin) by using agar extracted from seaweed. |
| 1880 |
Seismograph |
John Milne |
British |
To continuously record the exact duration and intensity of earthquakes using a heavy, stationary pendulum equipped with a pen that writes on a vibrating roll of paper. |
| 1880 |
Linotype machine |
Ottmar Mergenthaler |
American |
To revolutionize typesetting for newspapers by allowing an operator using a keyboard to mechanically cast an entire solid "line of type" out of molten lead. |
| 1880 |
Medical Incubator |
Stéphane Tarnier |
French |
To save the lives of premature infants by keeping them in a highly controlled, enclosed glass box that regulates their body temperature and oxygen. |
| 1879 |
Saccharin (Artificial Sweetener) |
Constantin Fahlberg |
Russian-German |
Discovered accidentally after forgetting to wash his hands; it provided the world with the first zero-calorie, synthetic sugar substitute. |
| 1879 |
Circuit Breaker |
Thomas Edison |
American |
To prevent house fires by automatically cutting off the electrical flow when a circuit becomes overloaded, allowing it to be easily reset unlike a blown fuse. |
| 1879 |
Cash register |
James Ritty |
American |
To prevent employee theft and accurately track retail sales by mechanically recording transactions and securing money in a locking drawer with a bell. |
| 1879 |
Incandescent light bulb |
Thomas Alva Edison, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan |
American, British |
To provide safe, reliable, and long-lasting indoor illumination by passing electricity through a high-resistance carbon filament inside a vacuum glass bulb. |
| 1879 |
Automobile engine (two-cycle) |
Karl Benz |
German |
To provide a simpler, lighter, and more compact internal combustion engine that completes its power cycle in only two strokes of the piston. |
| 1879 |
Arc lamp (commercial) |
Charles Francis Brush |
American |
To brilliantly illuminate city streets and large factories by generating a bright, sustained electrical spark (arc) between two carbon electrodes. |
| 1879 |
Autoclave |
Charles Chamberland |
French |
To flawlessly sterilize surgical instruments and laboratory equipment by subjecting them to highly pressurized, superheated steam, killing all bacteria and spores. |
| 1878 |
Centrifugal cream separator |
Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval |
Swedish |
To rapidly separate milk fat (cream) from skim milk using high-speed rotational centrifugal force, drastically accelerating dairy production. |
| 1878 |
Cathode ray tube |
Sir William Crookes |
British |
To study the behavior of electrons in a vacuum; this technology eventually became the foundational visual display mechanism for early televisions and computer monitors. |
| 1878 |
Endotracheal Tube |
William Macewen |
Scottish |
To secure a patient's airway during major surgery or trauma by passing a flexible plastic tube through the mouth and directly into the windpipe (trachea). |
| 1877 |
Internal-combustion engine (four-cycle) |
Nikolaus August Otto |
German |
To efficiently generate mechanical power by compressing and igniting fuel inside a cylinder in four distinct strokes (intake, compression, power, exhaust). |
| 1877 |
Phonograph |
Thomas Alva Edison |
American |
To record and mechanically reproduce sound waves by etching a physical groove into a rotating tinfoil cylinder using a vibrating stylus. |
| 1877 |
Carbon microphone |
Emile Berliner |
American |
To vastly improve telephone audio quality by translating sound waves into clear electrical signals using compressed carbon granules. |
| 1877 |
Electric welding |
Elihu Thomson |
American |
To permanently fuse two pieces of metal together by applying immense electrical current and pressure, melting them at their junction points. |
| 1877 |
Refrigerator car |
Gustavus Franklin Swift |
American |
To safely transport perishable foods (especially dressed meat) over vast railway networks by circulating air over blocks of ice stored in the railcar ceiling. |
| 1876 |
Airbrush |
Francis Edgar Stanley |
American |
To paint highly smooth, gradient colors on photographs and models by atomizing liquid paint with compressed air. |
| 1876 |
Telephone |
Alexander Graham Bell, Antonio Meucci |
American, Italian |
To convert human voice and sound waves into fluctuating electrical currents, transmitting them over wires to instantly communicate over long distances. |
| 1875 |
Electric Dental Drill |
George F. Green |
American |
To efficiently grind away tooth decay before placing a filling, replacing the exhausting and agonizingly slow foot-pedal operated drills of the past. |
| 1874 |
Barbed Wire |
Joseph Glidden |
American |
To easily and cheaply fence in vast expanses of livestock on the American frontier by twisting sharp wire points onto a main wire strand. |
| 1874 |
Tempered Glass |
François Barthélemy Alfred Royer de la Bastie |
French |
To create structural glass incredibly resistant to impacts by rapidly cooling the outer surfaces of hot glass, trapping the inner layer in a state of high tension. |
| 1874 |
Sprinkler System |
Henry Parmalee |
American |
To automatically put out factory fires without human intervention by using a network of ceiling pipes sealed with a metal alloy that melts instantly when exposed to intense heat. |
| 1874 |
Quadruplex telegraph |
Thomas Alva Edison |
American |
To vastly increase the efficiency of telegraph networks by allowing four separate electrical signals to be transmitted over a single wire simultaneously. |
| 1874 |
Plunger |
John Hawley |
American |
To quickly clear blockages in plumbing pipes and toilets by creating a tight vacuum seal and using air pressure to dislodge the clog. |
| 1874 |
Teleprinter (Teletype) |
Émile Baudot |
French |
To allow operators to type telegraph messages on a standard keyboard, which were then transmitted and automatically printed as text on a paper strip at the other end. |
| 1872 |
Injection Molding |
John Wesley Hyatt |
American |
To mass-produce identical plastic parts incredibly cheaply by forcing molten plastic under high pressure into a hollow metal mold. |
| 1871 |
Gramme machine (Dynamo) |
Zénobe Gramme |
Belgian |
To generate much smoother and higher continuous voltages of direct current than previous dynamos, making commercial electrical power practical. |
| 1871 |
Corrugated Cardboard |
Albert Jones |
American |
To safely ship fragile glass bottles by sandwiching a fluted layer of stiff paper between two flat layers, absorbing heavy impacts. |
| 1871 |
Wind Tunnel |
Francis Herbert Wenham |
British |
To scientifically test the lift and drag of airplane wing shapes safely on the ground by blowing a massive, high-speed stream of air over stationary models. |
| 1870 |
Sandblasting |
Benjamin Chew Tilghman |
American |
To strip paint and rust off of metal ships and buildings quickly by blasting highly abrasive sand particles out of a nozzle using high-pressure air. |
| 1870 |
Celluloid |
John Wesley Hyatt, Isaiah Hyatt |
American |
To serve as the first commercially successful synthetic plastic, originally invented as a substitute for ivory in billiard balls and later used for photographic film. |
| 1869 |
Margarine |
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès |
French |
To provide the French navy with a cheap, long-lasting substitute for butter by mixing beef tallow with skim milk (later switching to vegetable oils). |
| 1869 |
Modern Chewing Gum |
Thomas Adams |
American |
To provide a long-lasting, flavorful candy by boiling down chicle (natural tree rubber from Mexico) and mixing it with sugar and peppermint. |
| 1868 |
Spring Tape Measure |
Alvin J. Fellows |
American |
To provide carpenters with a long, rigid measuring ruler that conveniently coils up inside a pocket-sized housing using a spring-loaded recoil mechanism. |
| 1868 |
Dry cell battery |
Georges Leclanché |
French |
To provide a spill-proof, portable electrical power source by replacing the liquid electrolyte of early batteries with a moist chemical paste. |
| 1868 |
Typewriter (QWERTY) |
Carlos Glidden, Christopher Latham Sholes |
American |
To efficiently mass-produce legible text; it introduced the famous QWERTY keyboard layout to prevent commonly used mechanical typebars from jamming. |
| 1868 |
Railway air brake |
George Westinghouse |
American |
To drastically improve train safety by allowing the engineer to apply brakes to all railcars simultaneously using continuous compressed air. |
| 1866 |
Modern Stapler |
George McGill |
American |
To quickly and permanently bind stacks of paper together by driving a thin, bendable metal wire through the pages and crimping it on the other side. |
| 1866 |
Paper (sulfite process) |
Benjamin Chew Tilghman |
American |
To manufacture cheap, high-quality paper by extracting cellulose from wood pulp using sulfurous acid, replacing expensive cotton and linen rags. |
| 1866 |
Dynamite |
Alfred Nobel |
Swedish |
To safely transport and detonate the highly volatile explosive nitroglycerin by absorbing it into a stable, inert substance like diatomaceous earth. |
| 1866 |
Self-Propelled Torpedo |
Robert Whitehead |
British |
To devastatingly sink armored battleships below the waterline using an underwater missile propelled autonomously by compressed air and guided by internal hydrostatic valves. |
| 1865 |
Antiseptic surgery |
Joseph Lister |
English |
To prevent fatal post-operative infections by sterilizing surgical instruments, wounds, and the operating room atmosphere using carbolic acid. |
| 1865 |
Double-Pane Window (Insulated Glass) |
Thomas Stetson |
American |
To drastically improve the thermal insulation of houses by trapping a pocket of dead air (or argon gas) between two sealed panes of glass, preventing heat transfer. |
| 1865 |
Plywood (Modern) |
Immanuel Nobel |
Swedish |
To create cheap, incredibly strong construction boards by gluing thin layers of wood veneer together with their grains running at right angles. |
| 1864 |
Pasteurization |
Louis Pasteur |
French |
To prevent milk, wine, and beer from souring by gently heating them to a specific temperature to kill pathogenic bacteria without destroying the food's flavor. |
| 1864 |
Laboratory Centrifuge |
Antonin Prandtl |
German |
To rapidly separate fluids of different densities (like isolating red blood cells from plasma) by spinning them in a circle at extreme G-forces. |
| 1863 |
TNT (Trinitrotoluene) |
Julius Wilbrand |
German |
Originally synthesized as a yellow dye; it was later weaponized because it is highly stable, insensitive to shock, and can be safely melted and poured into artillery shells. |
| 1862 |
Milking Machine |
L.O. Colvin |
American |
To extract milk from dairy cows mechanically using rubber cups and vacuum suction, saving farmers hours of manual hand-milking. |
| 1861 |
Web-fed printing press |
Richard March Hoe |
American |
To print massive quantities of newspapers quickly by feeding a continuous roll of paper through a rotary press, automatically cutting it into sheets afterward. |
| 1861 |
Electric furnace |
Carl Wilhelm Siemens |
British |
To generate extremely high temperatures using an electric arc, crucial for melting down metals and creating high-quality alloys like steel. |
| 1861 |
Gatling gun |
Richard Jordan Gatling |
American |
To provide devastating rapid-fire capabilities on the battlefield using a hand-cranked, multi-barrel rotary mechanism that automatically loaded and fired cartridges. |
| 1861 |
Kinematoscope |
Coleman Sellers |
American |
To create the illusion of continuous motion by rapidly displaying a sequence of stereoscopic photographs mounted on a rotating paddle wheel. |
| 1860 |
Internal combustion gas engine |
Étienne Lenoir |
French |
To provide mechanical power without a massive boiler by safely burning illuminating gas inside a cylinder to drive a piston. |
| 1860 |
Linoleum Flooring |
Frederick Walton |
British |
To provide highly durable, water-resistant, and cheap flooring by pressing oxidized linseed oil mixed with cork dust onto a canvas backing. |
| 1859 |
Spectroscope |
Gustav Kirchhoff, Robert Bunsen |
German |
To identify the chemical composition of substances—including distant stars—by splitting their emitted light into unique color spectrums. |
| 1859 |
Lead-Acid Battery |
Gaston Planté |
French |
To provide the world with the first rechargeable battery, which is still used today to start the engines of almost all conventional automobiles. |
| 1858 |
Mechanical Harvester |
Charles Marsh, William Marsh |
American |
To further automate farming by not only cutting the grain but also gathering and mechanically binding it into sheaves. |
| 1858 |
Can Opener |
Ezra Warner |
American |
To easily open tin cans using a bayonet-style blade, as early cans were so thick soldiers previously had to open them with hammers and chisels. |
| 1856 |
Bessemer converter |
Sir Henry Bessemer |
British |
To mass-produce strong, cheap steel by blowing oxygen through molten pig iron to rapidly remove its impurities. |
| 1856 |
Synthetic Dye (Mauveine) |
William Henry Perkin |
British |
Discovered accidentally while trying to cure malaria; it became the world's first synthetic chemical dye, making the vivid color purple affordable for the masses. |
| 1855 |
Hypodermic syringe |
Alexander Wood |
Scottish |
To safely and effectively inject medications directly into the bloodstream using a hollow needle and a plunger mechanism. |
| 1855 |
Safety matches |
Johan Edvard Lundström |
Swedish |
To prevent accidental fires by keeping the reactive chemical (red phosphorus) on a striking surface separate from the match head itself. |
| 1855 |
Bunsen Burner |
Robert Bunsen, Peter Desaga |
German |
To provide a safe, smokeless, and easily adjustable open flame for laboratory experiments by mixing flammable gas with air before ignition. |
| 1854 |
Epidemiological Contact Tracing |
John Snow |
British |
To stop a deadly Cholera outbreak in London by mapping the exact locations of the sick, tracing the disease back to a single contaminated public water pump. |
| 1854 |
Submarine Periscope |
Marie-Davey |
French |
To allow a submerged submarine crew to safely observe surface ships and aim torpedoes without exposing the vessel, using a vertical tube of prisms and lenses. |
| 1853 |
Potato Chips |
George Crum (Attributed) |
American |
Invented allegedly to spite a complaining restaurant patron; potatoes were sliced paper-thin, fried in oil until completely crisp, and heavily salted. |
| 1852 |
Nonrigid airship (Blimp) |
Henri Giffard |
French |
To achieve navigable, powered flight by attaching a small steam engine and propeller to an aerodynamic, hydrogen-filled balloon. |
| 1852 |
Elevator (with safety brake) |
Elisha Graves Otis |
American |
To safely transport people and goods between building floors; the brake system prevented the cab from plummeting if the hoisting cable snapped, making skyscrapers possible. |
| 1852 |
Gyroscope |
Léon Foucault |
French |
To demonstrate the rotation of the Earth; later adapted to provide stable directional orientation for compasses, ships, and aircraft navigation. |
| 1851 |
Breech-loading rifle |
Edward Maynard |
American |
To allow soldiers to load ammunition into the rear of a rifle barrel quickly, rendering muzzle-loading muskets obsolete. |
| 1851 |
Ophthalmoscope |
Hermann von Helmholtz |
German |
To allow doctors to look directly into the back of a patient's eye (the retina) to diagnose ocular diseases. |
| 1851 |
Binaural Stethoscope |
Arthur Leared |
Irish |
To significantly improve acoustic diagnostics by channeling the sounds of a patient's heart and lungs into both of the doctor's ears simultaneously. |
| 1850 |
Mercerized cotton |
John Mercer |
British |
To treat cotton threads with sodium hydroxide, greatly increasing their strength, ability to hold dye, and giving them a silk-like luster. |
| 1850 |
Metal Ice Skates |
Edward Bushnell |
American |
To gracefully glide and spin on ice rinks using strong, rigid steel blades strapped to boots, completely replacing ancient skates made of animal bone. |
| 1850 |
Submarine Telegraph Cable |
John Watkins Brett, Jacob Brett |
British |
To transmit electrical telegraph signals directly across the ocean floor (initially the English Channel) using copper wires heavily insulated with gutta-percha sap. |
| 1849 |
Reinforced concrete |
Joseph Monier |
French |
To combine the high compressive strength of concrete with the high tensile strength of embedded iron grids, revolutionizing modern architecture. |
| 1849 |
Safety pin |
Walter Hunt |
American |
To provide a secure clasping pin with a guarded clasp to hold fabrics together without the point inadvertently sticking the user. |
| 1849 |
Water turbine (Francis Turbine) |
James Bicheno Francis |
American |
To highly efficiently capture the energy of falling water, becoming the most widely used water turbine for hydroelectric power generation today. |
| 1849 |
Steel I-Beam |
Alphonse Halbou |
Belgian |
To support the massive weight of modern skyscrapers; the unique "I" shape puts the majority of the steel at the outer edges, providing maximum bending resistance with minimal weight. |
| 1849 |
Safety Pin (Modern) |
Walter Hunt |
American |
To provide a simple, secure clasping mechanism using a coiled wire spring and a guard that covers the sharp point, invented in 3 hours to pay off a $15 debt. |
| 1846 |
Rotary printing press |
Richard March Hoe |
American |
To print thousands of pages per hour by wrapping the printing type around a revolving cylinder rather than a flat bed. |
| 1846 |
Nitroglycerin |
Ascanio Sobrero |
Italian |
Synthesized as a highly unstable, immensely powerful explosive liquid; it later became the active ingredient in dynamite and a medication for angina. |
| 1846 |
Guncotton |
Christian Friedrich Schönbein |
German |
To create a smokeless alternative to black powder for firearms by treating cotton with nitric and sulfuric acids. |
| 1846 |
Ether (surgical anesthesia) |
Crawford Williamson Long |
American |
To temporarily eliminate pain and render a patient unconscious, allowing surgeons to perform invasive procedures without causing suffering. |
| 1846 |
Saxophone |
Adolphe Sax |
Belgian |
To combine the powerful, loud projection of a brass instrument (like a trumpet) with the agile, expressive fingering of a woodwind instrument (like a clarinet). |
| 1845 |
Rubber Band |
Stephen Perry |
British |
To provide a simple, cheap, and highly elastic loop of vulcanized rubber to hold papers and envelopes together. |
| 1845 |
Pneumatic tire |
Robert William Thomson |
American |
To provide a smoother ride for carriages and early bicycles by wrapping wheels in a hollow tube of rubber inflated with compressed air. |
| 1844 |
Hypodermic Needle (Hollow) |
Francis Rynd |
Irish |
To treat localized nerve pain by creating a tiny, hollow steel tube that could deliver liquid medication directly beneath the skin. |
| 1843 |
Hand-Cranked Ice Cream Maker |
Nancy Johnson |
American |
To easily churn perfectly smooth ice cream at home using a wooden bucket packed with salt and ice, turning a central paddle with a hand crank. |
| 1843 |
Fax Machine (Pantelegraph) |
Alexander Bain |
Scottish |
To scan a two-dimensional document line by line and transmit the image over telegraph wires, effectively acting as an early mechanical precursor to digital scanning. |
| 1839 |
Vulcanization |
Charles Goodyear |
American |
To prevent natural rubber from melting in the summer and shattering in the winter by baking it with sulfur, stabilizing its chemical structure. |
| 1839 |
Photography (Daguerreotype & Calotype) |
Louis Daguerre, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, William Fox Talbot |
French, British |
To accurately capture and permanently fix visual images using light-sensitive chemicals on metal plates or paper. |
| 1839 |
Vulcanized rubber |
Charles Goodyear |
American |
To chemically treat natural rubber with sulfur and heat, making it highly durable, elastic, and resistant to extreme hot and cold temperatures. |
| 1839 |
Steam hammer |
James Nasmyth |
Scottish |
To use high-pressure steam to repeatedly drop a massive iron hammer, allowing blacksmiths to forge enormous metal components for ships and trains. |
| 1839 |
Bicycle (with pedals) |
Kirkpatrick Macmillan |
British |
To improve the "dandy horse" by adding a mechanical treadle linkage to the rear wheel, allowing the rider to propel the vehicle without touching the ground. |
| 1839 |
Fuel Cell |
William Robert Grove |
Welsh |
To generate clean electricity continuously by combining hydrogen and oxygen, producing only water and heat as byproducts (later used to power Apollo spacecraft). |
| 1838 |
Morse code |
Samuel Morse |
American |
To encode the alphabet into a series of long and short electrical signals (dots and dashes) that could be easily transmitted via telegraph. |
| 1837 |
Electrical telegraph |
Samuel Morse, Sir Charles Wheatstone |
American, British |
To transmit text messages almost instantly across vast distances over a wire using electrical pulses, revolutionizing global communication. |
| 1836 |
Galvanization |
Stanislas Sorel |
French |
To protect iron and steel from catastrophic rusting by hot-dipping the metal into a bath of molten zinc, which acts as a sacrificial anode. |
| 1836 |
Faraday Cage |
Michael Faraday |
English |
To perfectly shield sensitive electronics from massive lightning strikes and electromagnetic interference by encasing them in a continuous mesh of conductive metal. |
| 1835 |
Revolver pistol |
Samuel Colt |
American |
To provide a personal firearm capable of firing multiple shots rapidly without needing to manually reload powder and ball after every trigger pull. |
| 1835 |
Electromagnetic Relay |
Joseph Henry |
American |
To allow a low-power electrical circuit to switch on a high-power circuit from a distance, acting as the fundamental logic gate for early telegraphs and computers. |
| 1834 |
Electric streetcar |
Thomas Davenport |
American |
To provide an electrically powered alternative to horse-drawn rail cars for urban public transportation. |
| 1834 |
Combine Harvester |
Hiram Moore |
American |
To vastly increase farming efficiency by combining the previously separate operations of reaping, binding, and threshing grain into one massive machine. |
| 1834 |
Mechanical Refrigerator |
Jacob Perkins |
American |
To continuously cool an insulated space by utilizing a closed-cycle vapor-compression system, replacing the need to harvest natural winter ice. |
| 1831 |
Phosphorus match |
Charles Sauria |
French |
To create a more reliable and easily ignitable friction match by incorporating white phosphorus (though later found to be highly toxic). |
| 1831 |
Mechanical reaper |
Cyrus Hall McCormick |
American |
To mechanize the harvesting of crops like wheat, allowing farmers to harvest much larger fields with a fraction of the manual labor. |
| 1831 |
Dynamo |
Michael Faraday |
British |
To continuously convert mechanical rotation into direct electrical current, enabling the widespread generation of electricity for industrial use. |
| 1830 |
Chainsaw |
Bernard Heine |
German |
Originally invented as a medical tool (the osteotome) to cut human bone during surgery, later adapted with a gasoline engine to cut heavy timber. |
| 1830 |
Lawn Mower |
Edwin Budding |
English |
To perfectly trim grass on sports fields and large estates by using a pushed cylinder of spinning blades, replacing the slow scythe. |
| 1830 |
Platform scales |
Thaddeus Fairbanks |
American |
To accurately weigh very large objects, like wagons and heavy agricultural produce, without having to hoist them into the air. |
| 1830 |
Sewing machine |
Barthélemy Thimonnier |
French |
To automate the stitching of fabrics, drastically reducing the time required to manufacture clothing and textiles. |
| 1829 |
Typewriter (Typographer) |
William Austin Burt |
American |
To mechanize writing, allowing for text to be printed onto paper more quickly and legibly than writing by hand with a pen. |
| 1829 |
Braille printing |
Louis Braille |
French |
To enable visually impaired individuals to read and write using a tactile system of raised dots representing letters and numbers. |
| 1827 |
Friction match |
John Walker |
British |
To provide an easy, portable way to instantly generate a flame by dragging a chemically coated stick across a rough surface. |
| 1824 |
Portland cement |
Joseph Aspdin |
British |
To provide a strong, reliable, and water-resistant binding agent for construction, becoming the fundamental ingredient of modern concrete. |
| 1823 |
Silicon |
Jöns Jacob Berzelius |
Swedish |
Discovered and isolated as a pure element; it would later become the foundational semiconductor material used in almost all modern electronics. |
| 1823 |
Electromagnet |
William Sturgeon |
British |
To create a strong, temporary magnetic field by passing an electric current through a coil of wire wrapped around an iron core. |
| 1821 |
Electric motor |
Michael Faraday |
British |
To convert electrical energy into mechanical energy through electromagnetic induction, laying the groundwork for modern electric machinery. |
| 1820 |
Hygrometer |
John Frederic Daniell |
English |
To measure the exact amount of humidity or moisture present in the atmosphere, essential for meteorology and weather forecasting. |
| 1820 |
Galvanometer |
Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger |
German |
To detect and measure small electrical currents by observing the deflection of a magnetic needle in response to an electromagnetic field. |
| 1819 |
Stethoscope |
René Laennec |
French |
To safely and clearly listen to the internal sounds of an animal or human body, particularly the heart and lungs, without placing an ear directly on the chest. |
| 1818 |
Fire Extinguisher (Pressurized Water) |
George William Manby |
British |
To quickly extinguish sudden fires using a portable copper cylinder containing 3 gallons of water forced out by pressurized compressed air. |
| 1816 |
Bicycle (no pedals) |
Karl Drais |
German |
To provide a faster human-powered alternative to walking (the "dandy horse"), functioning as the earliest two-wheeled predecessor to the bicycle. |
| 1816 |
Kaleidoscope |
David Brewster |
Scottish |
To observe beautiful, infinitely changing symmetrical patterns caused by the reflection of loose, colored glass beads inside a tube of angled mirrors. |
| 1815 |
Safety lamp |
Sir Humphry Davy |
British |
To provide illumination in deep coal mines without igniting highly flammable "firedamp" (methane) gas, saving countless miners' lives. |
| 1815 |
Dental Floss |
Levi Spear Parmly |
American |
To drastically reduce cavities and gum disease by using a piece of waxed silk thread to dislodge rotting food particles trapped tightly between teeth. |
| 1814 |
Railroad locomotive |
George Stephenson |
British |
To provide reliable, commercially viable steam transport for coal mines, leading to the creation of the first public inter-city railway line. |
| 1814 |
Metronome |
Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel |
Dutch |
To provide musicians with a perfect, steady, audible tempo to practice along with, utilizing a swinging inverted pendulum with an adjustable sliding weight. |
| 1813 |
Circular Saw |
Tabitha Babbitt |
American |
To cut timber much faster and more efficiently than a push-pull pit saw by attaching a large, toothed steel disk to a water-powered spinning wheel. |
| 1810 |
Food preservation |
Nicolas Appert |
French |
To safely store food for long periods by boiling it in sealed glass jars, preventing spoilage by killing bacteria and excluding air. |
| 1810 |
Steam-powered printing press |
Friedrich Koenig |
German |
To dramatically speed up the printing process by replacing hand-operated flatbeds with steam-driven cylinders, making daily newspapers viable. |
| 1810 |
Tin Can |
Peter Durand |
British |
To preserve army rations for months by sealing food inside an airtight iron can coated in rust-proof tin, replacing fragile glass jars. |
| 1808 |
Band Saw |
William Newberry |
British |
To cut complex, curved shapes in wood and metal continuously using a long, sharp, toothed steel band stretching between two rotating wheels. |
| 1806 |
Endoscope |
Philipp Bozzini |
German |
To examine the internal cavities of the human body without surgery by inserting a rigid tube equipped with mirrors and a candlelight source (later fiber optics). |
| 1805 |
Electroplating |
Luigi Gasparo Brugnatelli |
Italian |
To coat an object in a thin layer of metal using an electrical current, commonly used to prevent corrosion or for decorative gilding. |
| 1804 |
Screw propeller |
John Stevens |
American |
To efficiently drive ships forward through the water by replacing bulky paddle wheels with rotating, angled blades. |
| 1804 |
Solid-fuel rocket |
William Congreve |
British |
To serve as a long-range artillery weapon for the military by packing an iron casing with a solid chemical propellant. |
| 1804 |
Steam locomotive |
Richard Trevithick |
British |
To haul heavy loads along railway tracks using high-pressure steam power, forming the foundation of the modern railway network. |
| 1801 |
Pattern loom |
Joseph Marie Jacquard |
French |
To automate the intricate process of lifting warp threads, allowing unskilled operators to weave complex tapestries rapidly. |
| 1801 |
Fire Hydrant |
Frederick Graff Sr. |
American |
To replace the slow method of digging up wooden water mains during a fire by providing above-ground, cast-iron connection points for firefighter hoses. |
| 1801 |
Protractor |
Joseph Huddart |
English |
To easily measure and draw precise geometric angles for maritime navigation and architectural drafting using a transparent, semi-circular tool marked with degrees. |
| 1800 |
Jacquard loom |
Joseph Marie Jacquard |
French |
To simplify the manufacturing of textiles with complex patterns by controlling the weaving process with interchangeable punched cards. |
| 1800 |
Electric battery |
Alessandro Volta |
Italian |
To provide a continuous, stable source of direct electrical current by alternating discs of zinc and copper separated by saltwater-soaked cloth. |
| 1799 |
Fourdrinier machine |
Louis-Nicolas Robert |
French |
To produce paper in a continuous, uninterrupted roll rather than as single, slow-drying sheets, lowering the cost of books and newspapers. |
| 1798 |
Dynamometer |
Edme Régnier |
French |
To accurately measure the physical force, torque, and power output of an engine or motor. |
| 1797 |
Extrusion Process |
Joseph Bramah |
English |
To create long, continuous objects with a fixed cross-sectional profile (like pipes and electrical wiring) by forcing molten metal or plastic through a shaped die. |
| 1796 |
Lithography |
Alois Senefelder |
German |
To print text or artwork using the chemical repulsion of oil and water on a flat stone or metal plate, rather than relying on carved reliefs. |
| 1796 |
Smallpox vaccination |
Edward Jenner |
British |
To safely immunize humans against the deadly smallpox virus by exposing them to the milder, related cowpox virus. |
| 1795 |
Hydraulic press |
Joseph Bramah |
English |
To generate massive compressive force for manufacturing and forging by utilizing the physical properties of incompressible fluids. |
| 1795 |
Modern Graphite Pencil |
Nicolas-Jacques Conté |
French |
To create a high-quality, mass-producible writing instrument by mixing powdered graphite with clay and firing it in a kiln, encasing it in wood. |
| 1793 |
Cotton gin |
Eli Whitney |
American |
To quickly and easily separate cotton fibers from their seeds, drastically increasing the profitability and scale of cotton farming. |
| 1792 |
Illuminating gas |
William Murdock |
Scottish |
To provide a bright, consistent source of light for homes and factories by burning gas captured from roasting coal. |
| 1792 |
Semaphore Telegraph |
Claude Chappe |
French |
To instantly transmit military orders across the country by using a chain of tall towers equipped with pivoting wooden arms to visually signal letters. |
| 1791 |
Gas turbine |
John Barber |
British |
To extract continuous mechanical energy from the flow of combustion gases, a foundational concept for modern jet engines and power plants. |
| 1790 |
Shoelace Aglet |
Harvey Kennedy |
English |
To stop shoelaces from fraying into an unusable mess by crimping a small sheath of plastic or metal around the very end of the string, making it easy to thread through eyelets. |
| 1788 |
Flyball governor |
James Watt |
British |
To automatically regulate the speed of a steam engine by utilizing centrifugal force to control the throttle valve. |
| 1786 |
Steamboat |
John Fitch |
American |
To navigate rivers and oceans independently of wind currents by propelling the vessel using an onboard steam engine. |
| 1785 |
Power loom |
Edmund Cartwright |
British |
To automate the weaving process, allowing textiles to be manufactured at an unprecedented industrial scale. |
| 1784 |
Threshing machine |
Andrew Meikle |
British |
To mechanize the separation of grain seeds from stalks and husks, vastly reducing the manual labor required for the harvest. |
| 1783 |
Balloon |
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier |
French |
To achieve human flight by capturing heated air, which is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, inside a large fabric envelope. |
| 1783 |
Accelerometer |
George Atwood |
English |
To accurately measure the rate of acceleration of a moving body; today, microscopic versions of this device tell your smartphone which way is up. |
| 1780 |
Steel pen |
Samuel Harrison |
English |
To replace delicate quill pens with a durable, mass-produced writing instrument that offered a consistent ink flow. |
| 1780 |
Bifocal lens |
Benjamin Franklin |
American |
To allow people with both nearsightedness and farsightedness to see clearly at multiple distances using a single pair of glasses. |
| 1777 |
Naval Mine |
David Bushnell |
American |
To protect harbors by deploying floating or tethered explosive kegs that detonate autonomously when a heavy enemy ship collides with their contact horns. |
| 1775 |
Submarine |
David Bushnell |
American |
To approach enemy naval vessels undetected underwater to attach explosive charges (first used during the American Revolution). |
| 1769 |
Spinning frame |
Richard Arkwright |
English |
To produce stronger yarn than the spinning jenny, powered initially by horses and later by water wheels, paving the way for the factory system. |
| 1769 |
Steam engine (separate condenser) |
James Watt |
British |
To drastically improve the fuel efficiency of steam engines by preventing the constant cooling and reheating of the main cylinder. |
| 1769 |
Automobile |
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot |
French |
To transport heavy artillery for the French army using a self-propelled, steam-powered mechanical vehicle. |
| 1769 |
Venetian Blinds |
Edward Bevan |
English |
To easily control the amount of sunlight entering a window by linking a series of horizontal wooden (and later plastic) slats with cords that allow them to tilt in unison. |
| 1764 |
Spinning jenny |
James Hargreaves |
British |
To dramatically speed up cloth production by allowing a single worker to spin multiple spools of yarn simultaneously. |
| 1760 |
Jigsaw Puzzle |
John Spilsbury |
British |
To teach geography to students by pasting a map onto wood and cutting it into small, interlocking pieces along the national borders. |
| 1760 |
Roller Skates |
John Joseph Merlin |
Belgian |
To allow humans to glide across hard floors by attaching small wooden wheels to the bottom of heavy boots. |
| 1759 |
Marine chronometer |
John Harrison |
British |
To accurately determine a ship's longitude at sea by keeping highly precise time despite temperature changes and the motion of the ocean. |
| 1758 |
Achromatic lens |
John Dollond |
British |
To correct color distortion (chromatic aberration) in telescopes and microscopes by combining lenses made of different types of glass. |
| 1752 |
Lightning rod |
Benjamin Franklin |
American |
To protect buildings from lightning strikes by providing a safe, conductive path for the electrical energy to reach the ground. |
| 1745 |
Leyden jar |
Ewald Georg von Kleist |
German |
To store high-voltage electrical charge between two electrical conductors separated by a glass insulator (an early capacitor). |
| 1733 |
Flying Shuttle |
John Kay |
English |
To allow a single weaver to weave fabrics much wider than their arm's reach, doubling the speed of cloth production and kicking off the Industrial Revolution. |
| 1731 |
Sextant |
John Hadley, Thomas Godfrey |
British, American |
To accurately determine a ship's latitude at sea by measuring the precise angle between the horizon and a celestial body like the sun or a star. |
| 1728 |
Modern Orthodontic Braces |
Pierre Fauchard |
French |
To correct crooked teeth and bad bites using a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron ("Bandeau") fastened to the teeth with silk threads to pull them into alignment. |
| 1725 |
Stereotyping |
William Ged |
Scottish |
To create a solid metal printing plate cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mold of movable type, making large print runs cheaper. |
| 1717 |
Diving bell |
Edmond Halley |
English |
To allow divers to remain underwater for extended periods by trapping a pocket of breathable air in a heavy, inverted bell. |
| 1714 |
Mercury thermometer |
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit |
German |
To provide highly accurate temperature readings by utilizing the predictable thermal expansion of mercury in a standardized glass tube. |
| 1712 |
Steam engine |
Thomas Newcomen |
British |
To harness steam pressure to drive a piston, primarily used to pump water out of increasingly deep mines. |
| 1711 |
Tuning Fork |
John Shore |
English |
To provide an absolute standard of musical pitch (usually A440) for tuning instruments by emitting a pure, constant tone when struck. |
| 1710 |
Piano |
Bartolomeo Cristofori |
Italian |
To allow musicians to play a keyboard instrument with varying dynamics (softness and loudness) by using felt-covered hammers that strike strings. |
| 1701 |
Seed drill |
Jethro Tull |
English |
To sow seeds at uniform distances and proper depths in rows, significantly increasing crop yields and reducing seed waste. |
| 1698 |
Steam pump |
Thomas Savery |
English |
To pump water out of deep coal mines using the suction created by condensing steam. |
| 1671 |
Calculating machine |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz |
German |
To perform all four basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) mechanically via a stepped drum. |
| 1668 |
Reflecting telescope |
Sir Isaac Newton |
English |
To observe distant objects without chromatic aberration by using curved mirrors instead of glass lenses to gather light. |
| 1661 |
Methanol |
Robert Boyle |
Irish |
To serve as a simple alcohol solvent, antifreeze, or fuel, initially discovered through the destructive distillation of wood. |
| 1661 |
Spirit Level |
Melchisédech Thévenot |
French |
To guarantee that a surface is perfectly horizontal or vertical by observing the exact position of an air bubble trapped inside a slightly curved, liquid-filled vial. |
| 1656 |
Pendulum clock |
Christiaan Huygens |
Dutch |
To drastically improve the accuracy of timekeeping by using a swinging weight as a precise harmonic oscillator. |
| 1650 |
Air pump |
Otto von Guericke |
German |
To create a partial vacuum by removing air molecules from a sealed volume, essential for physics experiments. |
| 1643 |
Barometer |
Evangelista Torricelli |
Italian |
To measure atmospheric pressure, primarily used to forecast short-term changes in the weather. |
| 1642 |
Adding machine |
Blaise Pascal |
French |
To automate basic arithmetic operations, specifically addition and subtraction, using a mechanical gear system. |
| 1638 |
Micrometer |
William Gascoigne |
English |
To measure incredibly tiny distances (originally the diameters of planets through a telescope) using a finely threaded screw that advances a precise distance with every turn. |
| 1631 |
Vernier Caliper |
Pierre Vernier |
French |
To measure the exact dimensions of pipes and mechanical parts down to fractions of a millimeter using a sliding secondary scale that aligns with a primary ruler. |
| 1629 |
Steam turbine |
Giovanni Branca |
Italian |
To convert the thermal energy from pressurized steam into mechanical rotary motion. |
| 1625 |
Blood transfusion |
Jean-Baptiste Denys |
French |
To transfer blood into a patient's circulation to replace lost blood or treat severe medical conditions. |
| 1622 |
Slide Rule |
William Oughtred |
English |
To allow scientists and engineers (including the NASA engineers who went to the moon) to rapidly calculate multiplication, division, and logarithms by physically sliding two scaled rulers together. |
| 1608 |
Telescope |
Hans Lippershey |
Dutch |
To observe distant objects, particularly celestial bodies in astronomy, by magnifying them through a series of lenses. |
| 1603 |
Pantograph |
Christoph Scheiner |
German |
To perfectly copy, enlarge, or scale down a drawing or map using a mechanical linkage of wooden arms shaped like a parallelogram. |
| 1596 |
Flush Toilet |
Sir John Harington |
English |
To improve indoor sanitation by washing human waste out of a bowl and into a cesspool using a rush of water from an elevated tank. |
| 1593 |
Water thermometer |
Galileo Galilei |
Italian |
To measure variations in temperature based on the expansion and contraction of water in a glass tube. |
| 1590 |
Compound microscope |
Zacharias Janssen |
Dutch |
To magnify microscopic objects using multiple lenses, allowing scientists to study cells and microorganisms. |
| 1571 |
Theodolite |
Leonard Digges |
English |
To perfectly survey land, build roads, and map terrain by measuring precise horizontal and vertical angles using a pivoting optical telescope mounted on a tripod. |
| 1564 |
Graphite Pencil |
Unknown (Borrowdale Miners) |
English |
To mark wood and paper easily using pure solid graphite encased in a wooden holder, replacing messy liquid ink and fragile charcoal. |
| 1504 |
Pocket watch |
Peter Henlein |
German |
To provide a portable, personal timekeeping device that could be carried in a pocket rather than relying on large stationary clocks. |
| 1498 |
Bristle Toothbrush |
Ming Dynasty Artisans |
Chinese |
To clean teeth effectively by attaching stiff, coarse hairs taken from the back of a Siberian pig's neck to a bamboo or bone handle. |
| 1490 |
Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT) |
Leonardo da Vinci (Concept) |
Italian |
To provide a perfectly smooth driving experience and maximum fuel efficiency by replacing fixed gears with a belt and two variable-width pulleys that offer infinite gear ratios. |
| 1450 |
Printing press |
Johannes Gutenberg |
German |
To mechanically mass-produce text and images on paper using movable type, revolutionizing the spread of information. |
| 1450 |
Anemometer |
Leon Battista Alberti |
Italian |
To accurately measure the speed of the wind for meteorology and aviation by using a series of rotating cups mounted to a central spinning shaft. |
| 1290 |
Eyeglasses |
Salvino D'Armate (Attributed) |
Italian |
To correct hyperopia (farsightedness) using convex glass lenses set into frames that balance on the nose, allowing scholars and monks to read in their old age. |
| 1250 |
Magnifying glass |
Roger Bacon |
English |
To enlarge the appearance of small objects or text, making them easier to read or observe in detail. |
| 1044 |
Magnetic Compass |
Shen Kuo (First recorded description) |
Chinese |
To allow sailors and travelers to determine true directional orientation using a magnetized needle suspended in a bowl of water, revolutionizing global maritime exploration. |
| 1040 |
Movable Type (Ceramic) |
Bi Sheng |
Chinese |
To speed up the printing process over 400 years before Gutenberg by assembling individual, reusable ceramic characters in an iron frame. |
| 1023 |
Paper Money |
Song Dynasty Government |
Chinese |
To replace incredibly heavy and cumbersome strings of metal coins with lightweight, government-backed promissory notes for easier trade. |
| 1000 |
Spinning Wheel |
Unknown Artisans |
Indian |
To drastically speed up the process of spinning natural fibers into thread or yarn compared to the ancient hand-held spindle method. |
| 900 |
Gunpowder |
Chinese Alchemists |
Chinese |
Originally formulated in a search for an elixir of immortality, it became the first chemical explosive, revolutionizing global warfare and mining. |
| 852 |
Parachute (First Concept) |
Abbas ibn Firnas |
Andalusian |
To break a deadly fall from a high tower using a rudimentary, umbrella-like canvas cloak stiffened with wooden struts. |
| 850 |
Windmill |
Persian Engineers |
Persian |
To automate the grinding of grain and pumping of water using large sails that capture the kinetic energy of the wind. |
| 820 |
Algebra |
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi |
Persian |
To provide a systematic method for solving linear and quadratic equations, establishing the foundational rules of modern abstract mathematics. |
| 800 |
Fireworks |
Tang Dynasty Alchemists |
Chinese |
To ward off evil spirits and celebrate major events by packing gunpowder and various mineral salts into bamboo or paper tubes to create explosions of colored light. |
| 725 |
Mechanical Clock (Escapement) |
Yi Xing |
Chinese |
To regulate the continuous, ticking motion of a water-powered astronomical clock using the world's first mechanical escapement mechanism. |
| 672 |
Greek Fire |
Callinicus of Heliopolis |
Byzantine |
To destroy enemy naval fleets using a highly secret, gelatinous incendiary weapon that could not be extinguished by water. |
| 577 |
Matches (Sulfur) |
Northern Qi Women |
Chinese |
To quickly start cooking fires during military sieges using small sticks of pine wood impregnated with highly flammable sulfur. |
| 458 |
The Concept of Zero |
Aryabhata |
Indian |
To serve as both a placeholder in positional number systems and an actual mathematical value, revolutionizing algebra, calculus, and computing. |
| 300 |
Stirrup |
Jin Dynasty Military |
Chinese |
To stabilize a rider on horseback, allowing cavalry to effectively use heavy weapons (like lances) without being knocked out of the saddle. |
| 250 |
Crank and Connecting Rod |
Hierapolis Sawmill Engineers |
Roman |
To convert continuous circular motion (from a water wheel) into alternating straight-line motion to power heavy industrial stone saws. |
| 200 |
Wheelbarrow |
Zhuge Liang (Attributed) |
Chinese |
To allow a single worker to easily transport massive loads of crops, dirt, or military supplies over rough terrain by shifting the weight to a central wheel. |
| 200 |
Porcelain |
Han Dynasty Artisans |
Chinese |
To create incredibly tough, translucent, and beautiful ceramics by heating specialized kaolin clay to extremely high temperatures in a kiln. |
| 200 |
Woodblock Printing |
Han Dynasty Artisans |
Chinese |
To mass-produce text and religious images by carving an entire page of characters into a block of wood, inking it, and pressing paper against it. |
| 150 |
Quadrant |
Ptolemy |
Greek-Egyptian |
To measure angles up to 90 degrees, heavily used by ancient astronomers and later by sailors to calculate latitude based on the North Star. |
| 132 |
Seismoscope |
Zhang Heng |
Chinese |
To detect the exact directional origin of distant earthquakes by dropping a bronze ball from a dragon-shaped pendulum mechanism into a toad receiver. |
| 100 |
Blast Furnace |
Han Dynasty Engineers |
Chinese |
To produce immense amounts of cast iron continuously by forcing hot air into a towering furnace filled with iron ore and charcoal. |
| 50 |
Vending Machine |
Hero of Alexandria |
Greek-Egyptian |
To automatically dispense a precise amount of holy water in temples after a worshipper deposits a heavy coin onto a balanced internal lever. |
| 50 |
Aeolipile (Steam Engine) |
Hero of Alexandria |
Greek-Egyptian |
To demonstrate the kinetic power of steam by spinning a hollow metal sphere using opposing jets of escaping pressurized vapor. |
| -27 |
Odometer |
Vitruvius (Attributed) |
Roman |
To accurately measure the distance traveled by a vehicle by dropping a small pebble into a box after a wheel completes a specific number of rotations. |
| -50 |
Glassblowing |
Ancient Syrian Artisans |
Syrian |
To rapidly produce hollow, highly transparent glass vessels by inflating molten glass gathered at the end of a long metal tube. |
| -100 |
Antikythera Mechanism |
Ancient Greek Scientists |
Greek |
To serve as the world's first analog computer, using complex interlocking bronze gears to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. |
| -150 |
Astrolabe |
Hipparchus |
Greek |
To calculate the time of day, determine latitude, and identify stars by measuring the altitude of celestial bodies above the horizon. |
| -234 |
Archimedes Screw |
Archimedes of Syracuse |
Greek |
To easily pump water upwards against gravity out of ship bilges and irrigation canals using a massive rotating helical blade inside a hollow cylinder. |
| -300 |
Roman Concrete |
Roman Engineers |
Roman |
To build massive, incredibly durable structures (like the Pantheon) using a mixture of volcanic ash and lime that could set even underwater. |
| -300 |
Suspension Bridge |
Ancient Chinese |
Chinese |
To span massive, un-bridgeable rivers and canyons by suspending the roadway from heavy iron chains (and later high-tensile steel cables) draped over tall towers. |
| -300 |
Moldboard Plough |
Han Dynasty Farmers |
Chinese |
To drastically increase crop yields by using a curved iron blade that not only cuts the soil but completely turns it over, bringing nutrients to the surface. |
| -312 |
Aqueduct |
Roman Engineers |
Roman |
To transport fresh water over massive distances from natural springs directly into public baths, fountains, and private villas in urban centers. |
| -400 |
Trebuchet |
Ancient Chinese Military |
Chinese |
To devastate enemy fortifications during a siege by using a heavy counterweight to sling massive stones over castle walls. |
| -500 |
Yo-Yo |
Ancient Greeks |
Greek |
To entertain children (and historically to hunt) using an axle connected to two disks, winding and unwinding on a string attached to the user's finger. |
| -600 |
Crossbow |
Ancient Chinese Military |
Chinese |
To allow infantry to accurately fire highly lethal armor-piercing projectiles with minimal training, utilizing a horizontal bow mounted on a stock. |
| -600 |
Coin Currency |
Lydian Government |
Lydian |
To standardize trade and taxation by minting small, portable pieces of electrum (gold and silver) stamped with an official seal guaranteeing their exact weight and value. |
| -1400 |
Water Clock (Clepsydra) |
Ancient Egyptians |
Egyptian |
To measure time continuously, even at night or on cloudy days, by tracking the regulated flow of water into or out of a marked vessel. |
| -1500 |
Sundial |
Ancient Egyptians |
Egyptian |
To measure the time of day using the position of the sun and the shadow cast by a stationary pointer (gnomon). |
| -1500 |
The Alphabet |
Ancient Phoenicians |
Phoenician |
To simplify written language by using a small set of symbols to represent individual phonetic sounds rather than memorizing thousands of complex pictograms. |
| -2000 |
The Arch |
Mesopotamians |
Mesopotamian |
To span large openings and support immense weight by distributing structural compression outward and downward to heavy abutments. |
| -2000 |
The Chariot |
Sintashta Culture |
Eurasian |
To provide a terrifyingly fast, lightweight, horse-drawn mobile firing platform for archers during ancient warfare. |
| -2600 |
Plumb Bob |
Ancient Egyptians |
Egyptian |
To establish a perfectly straight vertical line for building pyramids and walls by suspending a heavy, pointed weight from a simple string. |
| -2700 |
Abacus |
Sumerians |
Mesopotamian |
To perform rapid mathematical calculations by sliding beads along rods, serving as the world's first mechanical calculating tool. |
| -2700 |
Silk |
Lei Zu (Attributed) |
Chinese |
To create incredibly soft, durable, and luxurious textiles by harvesting and weaving the natural protein fibers spun by silkworm larvae. |
| -3000 |
Papyrus |
Ancient Egyptians |
Egyptian |
To provide a thick, paper-like writing surface made from the pith of the papyrus plant, replacing heavy clay tablets for record-keeping. |
| -3500 |
The Wheel |
Ancient Mesopotamians |
Mesopotamian |
To dramatically reduce friction when transporting heavy loads overland, eventually becoming the fundamental basis for all vehicular transport and complex machinery. |
| -4000 |
Loom |
Ancient Mesopotamians |
Mesopotamian |
To securely hold warp threads under tension, allowing artisans to easily weave cross-threads (weft) to create large sheets of fabric. |
| -7000 |
Plaster of Paris |
Anatolian Builders |
Anatolian |
To create smooth casts, wall coatings, and medical splints by heating gypsum to remove its water; when remixed with water, it sets into a hard, solid mass. |
