46 Fun Facts About Inventions

Who is widely credited with developing the movable type printing press in Europe during the 15th century?

Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible, but his financier Johann Fust sued him over the loans and the court handed Fust the workshop.

Which inventor is most associated with the practical incandescent light bulb of the late 19th century?

Thomas Edison's bulb had a British rival in Joseph Swan's, and in 1883 their competing companies merged into one, nicknamed 'Ediswan'.

Who was granted the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876?

Alexander Graham Bell's patent was granted on March 7, 1876, before his telephone had carried clear speech; that came three days later.

Who is credited with inventing the first successful gasoline-powered automobile in 1886?

Karl Benz's Motorwagen got its big break in 1888, when his wife Bertha drove it 106 km to Pforzheim without telling him, winning the firm its first sales.

Which aviation pioneers made the first controlled powered airplane flight?

The Wright brothers tossed a coin to pick the pilot; Wilbur won but stalled on his try, so Orville made the historic 120-foot flight in December 1903.

Who developed the first successful polio vaccine in the 1950s?

Jonas Salk's vaccine was declared safe and effective in April 1955, and he never patented it or earned money from it, wanting it spread as widely as possible.

Who is credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928?

Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin's antibacterial properties from a mold contamination in his lab in 1928, ushering in the age of antibiotics.

Who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989?

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN, developed the World Wide Web in 1989 to facilitate information sharing among scientists.

Which 1946 machine was the first general-purpose electronic computer?

ENIAC was built because the U.S. Army needed its artillery firing tables computed faster.

Which 1947 invention revolutionized electronics by enabling the miniaturization of circuits?

The transistor was built in 1947 by a team hunting a solid-state replacement for vacuum tubes.

Who sent the first transatlantic radio signal, from Cornwall to Newfoundland, in 1901?

Guglielmo Marconi said he heard the letter S through an earpiece on a kite-held antenna, but historians still question whether he really caught the signal.

Which broadcaster launched the world's first regular 'high-definition' television service in 1936?

The BBC alternated two rival television systems, John Logie Baird's 240-line one and an electronic 405-line one, then dropped Baird's in early 1937.

Whose 1839 photographic process produced one-off images on silvered copper plates?

Louis Daguerre's process was bought by the French state and given 'free to the world' on 19 August 1839, yet his agent had patented it in England days earlier.

What 1793 Eli Whitney invention transformed crop production in the American South?

The cotton gin made cotton so profitable that demand for land and enslaved workers soared, spreading slavery rather than shrinking it.

Which toy did engineer Richard James invent after knocking a spring off a shelf?

Slinky: the spring 'walked' down instead of just falling, and his wife Betty chose the name after leafing through a dictionary.

Whitcomb Judson's 1893 'clasp locker' for shoes was an early form of which fastener?

Zipper: Judson's clasp locker was unreliable and drew little notice, and only Gideon Sundback's later redesign made the fastener catch on.

Who is widely recognized for inventing the modern ballpoint pen, patented in 1938?

László Bíró saw that newspaper ink dried fast without smudging, but it was too thick for a fountain pen, so he gave his pen a rolling ball tip.

The Post-it Note was invented in the 1970s by scientists at which company?

3M chemist Spencer Silver was trying to make a very strong adhesive in 1968 and got a weak, reusable one; in 1974 Art Fry used it to anchor bookmarks in his hymn book.

What kitchen appliance did radar engineer Percy Spencer invent in the 1940s?

Microwave oven: Spencer found by chance in 1945 that radar microwaves could heat food, yet Raytheon paid him just a $2 token for the patent.

Who discovered X-rays in 1895?

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen called them X-rays because the rays were unknown, and he refused to patent the discovery so everyone could benefit.

Which explosive did the man whose will created the Nobel Prizes patent in 1867?

Dynamite made nitroglycerin safer by mixing it with kieselguhr earth, three years after a nitroglycerin blast in Stockholm killed Alfred Nobel's younger brother Emil.

Who invented the first true electric battery, a stack of zinc and copper discs, in 1800?

Alessandro Volta built his pile to prove Luigi Galvani wrong: the current came from different metals in contact, not from 'animal electricity' in living tissue.

Elisha Otis showed off his safety brake for which machine by having its hoisting rope cut while he stood aboard?

Elevator: at New York's Crystal Palace in 1854 the platform held after the cable was cut, and trust in safe elevators made skyscrapers practical.

Which company did microchip pioneer Robert Noyce co-found with Gordon Moore in 1968?

Intel: Noyce and Moore left Fairchild Semiconductor to start it, and because Noyce died in 1990, he could not share Jack Kilby's 2000 Nobel Prize for the chip.

Which insulin pioneer gave half his 1923 Nobel Prize money to Charles Best, who had been left out?

Frederick Banting shared the prize with lab head John Macleod, and Macleod answered by splitting his own share with James Collip, who had purified the extract.

Who is credited with inventing the first practical mercury thermometer in 1714?

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's mercury thermometers beat the alcohol ones of his day, and he fixed 0 °F with a freezing mix of ice, water and salt.

Which execution method did a Buffalo dentist dream up in 1881, hoping it would be more humane than hanging?

Electric chair: its first use, on William Kemmler in 1890, left him alive after the first jolt, and the New York Times called it 'far worse than hanging.'

Which fibre did DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek discover while seeking a light, strong material for tyres?

Kevlar: her solution was thin and cloudy, unlike normal polymer solutions, but she got a technician to spin it, and the fibre now goes into bulletproof vests.

Which invention, patented by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952, revolutionized checkout?

Barcode: Bernard Silver overheard a supermarket boss asking a Drexel dean for a faster way to check out groceries, and he and Woodland set out to build one.

Which machine did Barthélemy Thimonnier see destroyed when a mob stormed his Paris uniform factory?

Sewing machine: the rioters feared his machines would cost them their jobs, and Thimonnier later died in poverty in 1857.

Which gunmaker agreed in 1873 to manufacture Christopher Latham Sholes' typewriter?

Remington: the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer went on sale in 1874 with an early QWERTY layout, said to have been arranged to stop typebars jamming.

Which American inventor largely developed the electric telegraph in the 1830s and 1840s?

Samuel Morse got the idea for his telegraph from a shipboard conversation about electromagnetism on his 1832 voyage home from Europe.

Which physicist and engineer is often credited with co-inventing radar in 1930s Britain?

Robert Watson-Watt was asked whether radio waves could make a 'death ray' against aircraft; his team showed that was impossible but that radio could detect planes.

Which famous sinking prompted Reginald Fessenden to build an early sonar device?

Titanic: Fessenden's oscillator could pick up an iceberg's echo about two miles away, a forerunner of the sonar navies later aimed at submarines.

Which invention did physicist Theodore Maiman first get working in 1960 by flashing light into a ruby crystal?

Laser: Physical Review Letters rejected Maiman's report, so his breakthrough appeared in Nature instead, in August 1960.

Which satellite's radio signal, tracked in 1957, gave physicists the idea for satellite navigation?

Sputnik 1: physicists used its Doppler shift to work out its orbit, then turned the math around to locate a receiver on Earth, the idea behind Transit, a forerunner of GPS.

Which medical device did Swedish surgeons first implant fully inside a patient in 1958?

Pacemaker: the first one failed within hours, yet patient Arne Larsson went on to receive 26 pacemakers and died in 2001, outliving both the inventor and the surgeon.

Which anesthetic did dentist William Morton first demonstrate publicly at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846?

Ether: Morton tried to disguise it as 'Letheon' and patented it, but doctors soon learned it was plain ether, and he spent years fighting for credit.

Which chemist invented the first fully synthetic plastic, a phenol-formaldehyde resin, in 1907?

Leo Baekeland had already sold his Velox photo paper to George Eastman's Kodak, and the sale let him set up the home lab where he made Bakelite.

Which DuPont material did chemist Roy Plunkett find when a gas cylinder seemed empty but still weighed the same?

Teflon: the gas had turned into a slippery white solid inside, and the new plastic's first big job was coating valves and seals for the Manhattan Project.

Which toy company began selling 'Automatic Binding Bricks' in 1949?

Lego: its Automatic Binding Bricks were based on Hilary Page's British Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, and in 1981 Lego paid for the rights to that design.

The Rubik's Cube, a popular puzzle toy, was invented by an architect from which country?

Hungary: Ernő Rubik built the first cube in 1974, twisted it, and then needed long trial and error to solve the puzzle he had invented.

Burrs stuck to his dog's fur after a hunting trip inspired George de Mestral to invent which fastener?

Velcro: under a microscope de Mestral saw the burrs' tiny hooks catching loops of fabric, and he named his copy from the French velours and crochet.

Which adhesive did Harry Coover's team first reject in 1942 because it stuck to everything it touched?

Super Glue: Coover saw its value when he returned to it in 1951, and in the Vietnam War a spray version slowed bleeding in wounded soldiers.

Which instrument did Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli invent by standing a mercury-filled glass tube upside down in a dish?

Barometer: pumps couldn't lift water higher than about 10 metres, and mercury, far denser than water, let Torricelli show air pressure in a short tube.

Who invented the first practical safety razor with disposable blades in the early 20th century?

King C. Gillette took his cue from William Painter's throwaway bottle caps: a cheap, thin blade that customers would discard when dull and keep buying.