English inventions and discoveries

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (March 2009)

This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (October 2009)

English inventions and discoveries are objects, processes or techniques which owe their existence either partially or entirely to a person born in England; in some cases, their Englishness is determined by the fact that they were born in England, of non-English people working in the country. Often, things which are discovered for the first time, are also called "inventions", and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two.

The following is a list of inventions or discoveries often held to be in some way English:

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Contents 1 Agriculture 2 Astronomy 3 Chemistry 4 Communications 5 Computing 6 Clock making 7 Clothing manufacturing 8 Criminology 9 Cryptography 10 Engineering 11 Food 12 Household appliances 13 Industrial processes 14 Medical 15 Military 16 Mining 17 Musical instruments 18 Photography 19 Science 20 Transport 20.1 Railways 20.1.1 Locomotives 20.1.2 Other railway developments 20.2 Roads 20.3 Sea 20.4 Air 21 Sport 22 Miscellaneous 23 See also 24 References

Agriculture

• Seed drill - Jethro Tull ^[1]
• Steam-driven ploughing engine - John Fowler^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of selective breeding and artificial selection - Robert Bakewell^{[citation needed]}
• superphosphate or chemical fertilizer - John Bennet Lawes^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of the development in dairy farming systems - Rex Paterson^{[citation needed]}
• The first commercially successful light farm tractor - Dan Albone^{[citation needed]}

Astronomy

• Discovery of the planet Uranus^[2] and the moons Titania, Oberon, Enceladus, Mimas ^[3] by Sir William Herschel
• Discovery of Triton and the moons Hyperion, Ariel and Umbriel - William Lassell^{[citation needed]}
• planetarium - John Theophilus Desaguliers^{[citation needed]}
• Predicts the existence and location of Neptune from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus - John Couch Adams^{[citation needed]}
• Bernard Lovell - Important contributions to the development of radio astronomy^{[citation needed]}
• Newtonian telescope - Sir Isaac Newton^{[citation needed]}
• Stephen Hawking - World-renowned theoretical physicist made many important contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes^{[citation needed]}
• Spiral galaxies - William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of Halley's Comet - Edmond Halley^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of pulsars - Antony Hewish^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of Sunspots and was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope - Thomas Harriot^{[citation needed]}
• The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object - Arthur Stanley Eddington^{[citation needed]}
• Aperture synthesis, used for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources in the field of Radio astronomy - Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish^{[citation needed]}

Chemistry

• Marsh test for Arsenic - James Marsh^{[citation needed]}
• Dalton's law and Law of multiple proportions - John Dalton^{[citation needed]}
• The structure of DNA and pioneering the field of molecular biology - co-developed by Francis Crick and the American James Watson^{[citation needed]}
• DNA sequencing by chain termination - Frederick Sanger^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing - Richard J. Roberts^{[citation needed]}
• Discovey of Buckminsterfullerene - Sir Harry Kroto^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered the structure of ferrocene - Geoffrey Wilkinson & others^{[citation needed]}
• Discovers hydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air - Henry Cavendish^{[citation needed]}
• Proposes the law of octaves, a precursor to the Periodic Law - John Newlands^{[citation needed]}
• Bragg's law and establish the field of X-ray crystallography, an important tool for elucidating the crystal structure of substances - William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg^{[citation needed]}
• Introduces concept of atomic number to fix inadequacies of Mendeleev's periodic table, which had been based on atomic weight - Henry Moseley^{[citation needed]}
• First isolation of Sodium - Humphry Davy^{[citation needed]}
• First isolation of benzene, the first known aromatic hydrocarbon - Michael Faraday^{[citation needed]}
• Publishes Opus Maius, which among other things, proposes an early form of the scientific method, and contains results of his experiments with gunpowder - Roger Bacon^{[citation needed]}
• Publishes several Aristotelian commentaries, an early framework for the scientific method - Robert Grosseteste^{[citation needed]}
• Publishes The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, what would later be known as the scientific method - Sir Francis Bacon^{[citation needed]}
• The first discovery of aluminium - Sir Humphry Davy^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer in early Solar Power - Weston cell - Edward Weston (chemist)^{[citation needed]}
• Proposes the concept of isotopes, elements with the same chemical properties may have differing atomic weights - Frederick Soddy^{[citation needed]}
• The synthesising of xenon hexafluoroplatinate the first time to show that noble gases can form chemical compounds - Neil Bartlett^{[citation needed]}
• Callendar effect the theory that linked rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature (Global warming) - Guy Stewart Callendar^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of the fuel cell - Francis Thomas Bacon^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of Meteorology by developing a nomenclature system for clouds which was proposed in an 1802 - Luke Howard^{[citation needed]}
• Rayleigh scattering explains why the sky is blue, and predicted the existence of the surface waves - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh^{[citation needed]}

Communications

• Uniform Penny Post - Rowland Hill et al.^{[citation needed]}
• Pencil - Cumbria, England^{[citation needed]}
• Clockwork radio ^[4] - Trevor Baylis

• The first Radio transmission using a Spark Transmitter, achieving a range of approximately 500 metres. - David E. Hughes^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered electromagnetic induction & Faraday's law of induction, experiments that discovered that light was some kind of wave connected with electricity or magnetism, which would become some of the first experiments in the discovery of radiowaves and the development of radio - Michael Faraday^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer in the development of radio communication - William Eccles^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first radio station on the Isle of Wight^{[citation needed]}
• On December 2, 1922, in Sorbonne, France, Edwin Belin, an Englishman demonstrated a mechanical scanning device that was an early precursor to modern television^{[citation needed]}
• The first pocket sized handheld television, the MTV-1 - Sir Clive Sinclair^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneering work on the development of the long-lasting materials that made today's liquid crystal displays possible - Developed by Scotsman George Gray and Englishman Ken Harrison In conjunction with the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern, Worcestershire and at the University of Hull^{[citation needed]}
• 405-line television system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting - Alan Blumlein^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first public broadcasts of high-definition television were made from Alexandra Palace, North London in 1936 - BBC Television Service^{[citation needed]}
• The first commercially successful electric telegraph - Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke in 1837^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of stereo - Alan Blumlein^{[citation needed]}
• Microphone - Charles Wheatstone^{[citation needed]}
• Pitman Shorthand - Isaac Pitman^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium. This discovery led to the invention of photoelectric cells (solar panels), including those used in the earliest television systems - Willoughby Smith in 1873^{[citation needed]}
• Proposed the existence of the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, a layer of ionised gas that reflects radio waves around the Earth's curvature - Oliver Heaviside^{[citation needed]}
• Important improvements of the facsimile machine (Fax Machine) - Frederick Bakewell^{[citation needed]}
• The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in 1992 - Neil Papworth^{[citation needed]}
• Typewriter - Henry Mill^{[citation needed]}
• the world's first automatic totalisator - George Julius^{[citation needed]}
• pioneer in the use of fiber optics in telecommunications - Charles K. Kao and George Hockham^{[citation needed]}
• The originator of the concept of geostationary satellites for the use of telecommunications relays - Arthur C Clarke
• Teletext Information Service - The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)^{[citation needed]}

Computing

• Analytical engine ^[5] - Sir Charles Babbage
• ACE and Pilot ACE ^[6] - Alan Turing
• Bombe ^[6] - Alan Turing
• Colossus computer ^[7] Colossus computers were the first electronic digital programmable computers. They used vacuum tubes and binary representation of numbers - Tommy Flowers
• Difference engine ^[5] - Sir Charles Babbage
• First programmer - Ada Lovelace^{[citation needed]}
• First Programming Language Analytical Engine ordercode - Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace^{[citation needed]}
• Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic - George Boole^{[citation needed]}
• World Wide Web ^[8] - Sir Tim Berners-Lee
• Developed HTTP and HTML - Tim Berners-Lee^{[citation needed]}
• Sumlock ANITA calculator the world's first all-electronic desktop calculator - Bell Punch Co^{[citation needed]}
• Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator - Sir Clive Sinclair^{[citation needed]}
• Osborne 1 The first commercially successful portable computer, the precursor to the Laptop computer - Adam Osborne^{[citation needed]}
• Designed what was the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass in 1979 - Bill Moggridge^{[citation needed]}
• heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel - Andrew Morton & Alan Cox^{[citation needed]}
• Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum - Sir Clive Sinclair^{[citation needed]}
• Flip-flop (electronics) circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory (Random-access memory) in computers - William Eccles and F. W. Jordan^{[citation needed]}
• Universal Turing machine - The UTM model is considered to be the origin of the "stored program computer" used by John von Neumann in 1946 for his "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears von Neumann's name: the von Neumann architecture, also UTM is considered to be the conception of the operating system - Alan Turing^{[citation needed]}
• The development of packet switching co-invented by Welshman Donald Davies and American Paul Baran - National Physical Laboratory, London England^{[citation needed]}
• The first person to conceptualise the Integrated Circuit - Geoffrey W.A. Dummer^{[citation needed]}
• The first modern computer Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine - (SSEM), nicknamed Baby. Was the world's first stored-program computer. Developed by Frederic Calland Williams & Tom Kilburn^{[citation needed]}
• Williams tube - a cathode ray tube used to electronically store binary data (Can store roughly 500 to 1,000 bits of data) - Freddie Williams & Tom Kilburn^{[citation needed]}
• Manchester Mark 1 Historically significant computer because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers - Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn^{[citation needed]}
• Autocode regarded as the first ever computer compiler in 1952 for the Manchester Mark 1 computer - Alick Glennie^{[citation needed]}
• Developed the concept of microprogramming from the realisation that the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialised computer program in high-speed ROM - Maurice Wilkes in 1951^{[citation needed]}
• Ferranti Mark 1 - Also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer was the first computer to use the principles of early CPU design (Central processing unit) - Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn - Also the world's first successful commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.^{[citation needed]}
• The oldest known recordings of computer generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer - Christopher Strachey^{[citation needed]}
• EDSAC was the first complete, fully functional computer to use the von Neumann architecture, the basis of every modern computer - Maurice Wilkes^{[citation needed]}
• EDSAC 2 the successor to the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator or EDSAC. It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed (Microcode)control unit and a bit slice hardware architecture - Team headed by Maurice Wilkes^{[citation needed]}
• The first graphical computer game OXO on the EDSAC at Cambridge University - A.S. Douglas^{[citation needed]}
• The worlds first computer game with 3D graphics - Elite (video game) Developed by David Braben and Ian Bell in 1984^{[citation needed]}
• Metrovick 950 was the first commercial transistor computer built in 1959 - Metropolitan-Vickers company^{[citation needed][citation needed]}
• LEO (computer) Made history by running the first business application (payroll system) on an electronic computer in 1951 for J. Lyons and Co - Maurice Wilkes^{[citation needed]}
• Atlas Computer, it was arguably the world's first supercomputer and was the fastest computer in the world until the release of the American CDC 6600 Also This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory and paging - Team headed by Tom Kilburn^{[citation needed]}
• The worlds first web browser called WorldWideWeb that ran on the NeXTSTEP platform. It was later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web - Sir Tim Berners-Lee^{[citation needed]}
• digital audio player (MP3 Player) - Kane Kramer^{[citation needed]}
• Touchpad Pointing device - First developed for Psion PLC's Psion MC 200/400/600/WORD Series in 1989^{[citation needed]}
• Co-Inventer of the world's first trackball device - developed by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first handheld computer (Psion Organiser) - Psion PLC^{[citation needed]}
• The first rugged computer - Husky (computer)^{[citation needed]}
• First PC-compatible palmtop computer (Atari Portfolio) - Ian Cullimore^{[citation needed]}
• Denotational semantics - Christopher Strachey pioneer in programming language design^{[citation needed]}
• Wolfram's 2-state 3-symbol Turing machine - Stephen Wolfram^{[citation needed]}

Clock making

• Anchor escapement ^[9] - Robert Hooke
• Atomic clock with improved accuracy - Louis Essen^{[citation needed]}
• Balance spring ^[10] - Robert Hooke
• Balance wheel - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Co-axial escapement - George Daniels^{[citation needed]}
• Grasshopper escapement, Gridiron pendulum, H1, H2, H3 and H4 watches (a watch built to solve the longitude measurement problem)^[11] - John Harrison
• Gridiron pendulum - John Harrison^{[citation needed]}
• Lever escapement The greatest single improvement ever applied to pocket watches - Thomas Mudge^{[citation needed]}
• Marine chronometer - John Harrison^{[citation needed]}

Clothing manufacturing

• Derby Rib (stocking manufacture) - Jedediah Strutt^{[citation needed]}
• Flying shuttle - John Kay^{[citation needed]}
• Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye - William Henry Perkin^{[citation needed]}
• Power loom - Edmund Cartwright^{[citation needed]}
• Spinning frame - John Kay^{[citation needed]}
• Spinning jenny - James Hargreaves^{[citation needed]}
• Spinning mule - Samuel Crompton^{[citation needed]}
• Polyester - John Rex Whinfield^{[citation needed]}
• Sewing Machine - Thomas Saint^{[citation needed]}
• Water frame - Richard Arkwright^{[citation needed]}
• Stocking frame - William Lee^{[citation needed]}
• Warp-loom and Bobbinet - John Heathcoat^{[citation needed]}

Criminology

• Police - Robert Peel^{[citation needed]}
• DNA fingerprinting - Sir Alec Jeffreys^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first national DNA database developed in 1995^{[citation needed]}
• Devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science - Francis Galton^{[citation needed]}
• Iris recognition - John Daugman^{[citation needed]}
• Chemist who developed the Marsh test for detecting arsenic poisoning - James Marsh^{[citation needed]}

Cryptography

• Playfair cipher - Charles Wheatstone^{[citation needed]}

Engineering

• Adjustable spanner - Edwin Beard Budding^{[citation needed]}
• Cavity Magnetron - Dr Harry Boot^{[citation needed]}
• Electric Transformer - Michael Faraday^{[citation needed]}
• First coke-consuming blast furnace - Abraham Darby I^{[citation needed]}
• First working universal joint - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Produced the first commercial steel alloy in 1868 - Robert Forester Mushet^{[citation needed]}
• Crookes tube the first Cathode ray tubes - William Crookes^{[citation needed]}
• First Compression ignition engine aka the Diesel Engine - Herbert Akroyd Stuart^{[citation needed]}
• Steam Engine - Thomas Savery^{[citation needed]}
• Newcomen steam engine - Thomas Newcomen^{[citation needed]}
• Modified version of the Newcomen steam engine (Pickard engine) - James Pickard^{[citation needed]}
• Steam turbine - Charles Algernon Parsons^{[citation needed]}
• Pendulum Governor - Frederick Lanchester^{[citation needed]}
• High strength carbon fiber - Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1963 - Also on January 14, 1969 Carr Reinforcements (Stockport, England) wove the first carbon fiber fabric in the world^{[citation needed]}
• The first screw-cutting lathe - Henry Maudslay^{[citation needed]}
• Disc Brakes - Frederick Williams^{[citation needed]}
• Internal combustion engine - Samuel Brown^{[citation needed]}
• Fourdrinier machine - Henry Fourdrinier^{[citation needed]}
• Microchip - Geoffrey W.A. Dummer^{[citation needed]}
• light-emitting diode (did not invent the first visible light, only theorised)- H. J. Round^{[citation needed]}
• Turbo Jet engine - Sir Frank Whittle^{[citation needed]}
• Francis turbine - James B. Francis^{[citation needed]}
• Gas turbine - John Barber (engineer)^{[citation needed]}
• Two-stroke engine - Dugald Clerk and Joseph Day^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of radio guidance systems - Archibald Low^{[citation needed]}
• Screw-cutting lathe - Henry Hindley^{[citation needed]}
• The first electrical measuring instrument, the electroscope - William Gilbert^{[citation needed]}
• Slide rule - William Oughtred^{[citation needed]}
• Devised a standard for screw threads leading to its widespread acceptance - Joseph Whitworth^{[citation needed]}
• The Wimshurst machine is an Electrostatic generator for producing high voltages - James Wimshurst^{[citation needed]}
• Hot bulb engine or heavy oil engine - Herbert Akroyd Stuart^{[citation needed]}
• Hydraulic crane - William George Armstrong^{[citation needed]}
• Vacuum diode also known as a Vacuum tube - John Ambrose Fleming^{[citation needed]}
• Linear motor is a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor - Charles Wheatstone then improved by Eric Laithwaite^{[citation needed]}
• Designed water and sewerage systems for over 30 cities across Europe - William Lindley^{[citation needed]}
• The Iron Bridge (1791), the first metal bridge of any kind - Abraham Darby III^{[citation needed]}

Food

• Apple Pie^{[citation needed]}
• Bangers and mash^{[citation needed]}
• Bird's Custard - Alfred Bird^{[citation needed]}
• Black Pudding^{[citation needed]}
• Branston Pickle^{[citation needed]}
• Brown Sauce (HP Sauce)^{[citation needed]}
• Bubble and Squeak^{[citation needed]}
• Cheddar cheese^{[citation needed]}
• Cornish pasty^{[citation needed]}
• Cottage pie^{[citation needed]}
• Cumberland sausage^{[citation needed]}
• Eccles cake^{[citation needed]}
• English mustard^{[citation needed]}
• Fish and Chips^{[citation needed]}
• Full English breakfast^{[citation needed]}
• Gravy^{[citation needed]}
• Haggis - Normally assumed to be Scottish but the first known written recipe for a dish of the name (as 'hagese'), made with offal and herbs, is in the verse cookbook Liber Cure Cocorum dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, North-West England.^[12]
• Jellied eels^{[citation needed]}
• Kendal mint cake^{[citation needed]}
• Lancashire hotpot^{[citation needed]}
• Lincolnshire sausage^{[citation needed]}
• Marmite^{[citation needed]}
• Mince n cheese pie^{[citation needed]}
• Parkin^{[citation needed]}
• Pasty^{[citation needed]}
• Piccalilli^{[citation needed]}
• Pork pie^{[citation needed]}
• Sandwich - John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich^{[citation needed]}
• Scouse^{[citation needed]}
• Shepherd's pie^{[citation needed]}
• Spotted Dick^{[citation needed]}
• Steak and kidney pie^{[citation needed]}
• Sunday roast^{[citation needed]}
• Toad in the hole^{[citation needed]}
• Worcestershire sauce^{[citation needed]}
• Yorkshire Pudding^{[citation needed]}

Household appliances

• Ballbarrow - James Dyson^{[citation needed]}
• Collapsible baby buggy - Owen Maclaren^{[citation needed]}
• domestic diswasher - key modifications by William Howard Livens ^[13]
• Dyson DC01 - James Dyson^{[citation needed]}
• Fire extinguisher - George William Manby^{[citation needed]}
• Folding carton - Charles Henry Foyle^{[citation needed]}
• Lawn mower - Edwin Beard Budding^{[citation needed]}
• Rubber band - Stephen Perry^{[citation needed]}
• Electric battery - John Frederic Daniell^{[citation needed]}
• Light Bulb - Joseph Wilson Swan^{[citation needed]}
• Tin can - Peter Durand^{[citation needed]}
• Light switch - Invented by John Holmes in 1884^{[citation needed]}
• Corkscrew - Reverend Samuell Henshall^{[citation needed]}
• Mouse trap - James Henry Atkinson^{[citation needed]}
• Sewing machine - Thomas Saint^{[citation needed]}
• Postage Stamp - Rowland Hill^{[citation needed]}
• Vacuum cleaner (not the first vac cleaner, but electric version) - Hubert Cecil Booth^{[citation needed]}
• Flushing toilet - Thomas Crapper and John Harington^{[citation needed]}
• The pay toilet - John Nevil Maskelyne, Maskelyne invented a lock for London toilets which required a penny to operate, hence the euphemism "spend a penny".^{[citation needed]}
• Electric Toaster - Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton^{[citation needed]}
• Teasmade - Albert E. Richardson^{[citation needed]}
• Magnifying glass - Roger Bacon^{[citation needed]}
• Thermosiphon which forms the basis of most modern central heating systems - Thomas Fowler^{[citation needed]}
• Automatic electric kettle - Russell Hobbs^{[citation needed]}

Industrial processes

• English crucible steel - Benjamin Huntsman^{[citation needed]}
• Steel production Bessemer process - Henry Bessemer^{[citation needed]}
• Hydraulic press - Joseph Bramah^{[citation needed]}
• Fourdrinier machine is the basis for most modern papermaking machines - Henry Fourdrinier^{[citation needed]}
• Parkesine, the first man-made plastic - Alexander Parkes^{[citation needed]}
• Portland cement - Joseph Aspdin^{[citation needed]}
• Sheffield plate - Thomas Boulsover^{[citation needed]}
• Water frame - Richard Arkwright^{[citation needed]}
• Stainless Steel - Harry Brearley^{[citation needed]}
• Rubber Masticator - Thomas Hancock^{[citation needed]}
• Power Loom - Edmund Cartwright^{[citation needed]}
• Parkes process - Alexander Parkes^{[citation needed]}
• Lead chamber process - John Roebuck^{[citation needed]}
• Development of the world's first commercially successful manufacture of high quality flat glass using the float glass process - Alastair Pilkington^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer's of the Industrial Revolution - Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Abraham Darby I - Abraham Darby II - Abraham Darby III - Robert Forester Mushet^{[citation needed]}
• The first commercial electroplating process - George Elkington^{[citation needed]}

Medical

• First correct description of circulation of the blood - William Harvey^{[citation needed]}
• Smallpox vaccine - Edward Jenner^{[citation needed]}
• Antisepsis in surgery - Joseph Lister^{[citation needed]}
• Artificial intraocular lens transplant surgery for cataract patients - Harold Ridley^{[citation needed]}
• Clinical thermometer - Thomas Clifford Allbutt.^[14]
• Colour blindness first described by John Dalton in Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours ^[15]
• Credited with discovering how to culture embryonic stem cells in 1981 - Martin Evans^{[citation needed]}
• Carried out ground breaking research on the use of penicillin in the treatment of venereal disease with the Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in London - Jack Suchet^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of anaesthesia and epidemiology for locating the source of cholera - John Snow (physician)^{[citation needed]}
• pioneered the use of sodium cromoglycate as a remedy for asthma - Roger Altounyan^{[citation needed]}
• The first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen and one of the founders of orthopedy - Percivall Pott^{[citation needed]}
• Performed the first blood transfusion - James Blundell^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered the active ingredient of Aspirin - Edmund Stone^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of Protein crystallography - Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin^{[citation needed]}
• The world’s first successful stem cell transplant and the first British Bone Marrow Transplant using bone marrow from a matching sibling - John Raymond Hobbs^{[citation needed]}
• First typhoid vaccine - Almroth Wright^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of the treatment of epilepsy - Edward Henry Sieveking^{[citation needed]}
• Computed Tomography (CT scanner) - Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield^{[citation needed]}
• Gray's Anatomy widely regarded as the first complete human anatomy textbook - Henry Gray^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered Parkinson's disease - James Parkinson^{[citation needed]}
• General anaesthetic - Pionered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow^{[citation needed]}
• Contributed to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - Sir Peter Mansfield^{[citation needed]}
• The development of in vitro fertilization - Patrick Christopher Steptoe and Robert Geoffrey Edwards^{[citation needed]}
• First test-tube baby - born 1978 England^{[citation needed]}
• First baby genetically selected to be free of a breast cancer - University College London^{[citation needed]}
• Viagra - Peter Dunn, Albert Wood, Dr Nicholas Terrett^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of modern nursing - Florence Nightingale^{[citation needed]}
• Acetylcholine - Henry Hallett Dale^{[citation needed]}
• EKG (underlying principles) - various^{[citation needed]}
• Vitamins and Tryptophan - Frederick Gowland Hopkins^{[citation needed]}
• diagnostic ultrasound - John J. Wild (although his research was conducted in US)^{[citation needed]}

Military

• Congreve rocket - William Congreve^{[citation needed]}
• High explosive squash head - Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney^{[citation needed]}
• Shrapnel shell - Henry Shrapnel^{[citation needed]}
• Harrier Jump Jet^{[citation needed]}
• Puckle Gun - James Puckle^{[citation needed]}
• Concentration Camps - First used by Lord Kitchener during the (Scotland has an earlier concentration camp in Edinburgh the Covenanters prison) South African War^{[citation needed]}
• The side by side Boxlock action, AKA The double barreled shotgun - Anson and Deeley^{[citation needed]}
• Dreadnought Battleship^{[citation needed]}
• Bailey Bridge - Donald Bailey^{[citation needed]}
• Chobham armour^{[citation needed]}
• Livens Projector - William Howard Livens^{[citation needed]}
• Central to the development of H2S radar (airborne radar to aid the bomb targeting) - Alan Blumlein^{[citation needed]}
• Bouncing bomb - Barnes Wallis^{[citation needed]}
• Safety fuse - William Bickford^{[citation needed]}
• Armstrong Gun - Sir William Armstrong^{[citation needed]}
• Depth charge^{[citation needed]}
• Stun grenades - Invented by the SAS in the 60s.^{[citation needed]}
• Smokeless propellant to replace gunpowder with the use of Cordite - Frederick Abel^{[citation needed]}
• Torpedo - Robert Whitehead^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first practical underwater active sound detection apparatus, the ASDIC Active Sonar - Developed by Canadian physicist Robert William Boyle and English physicist Albert Beaumont Wood^{[citation needed]}
• The first self-powered machine gun Maxim gun - Sir Hiram Maxim, Although the Inventor is American, the Maxim gun was financed by Albert Vickers of Vickers Limited company and produced in Hatton Garden London^{[citation needed]}
• Steam catapult-Commander Colin C. Mitchell RNVR^{[citation needed]}

Mining

• Davy lamp - Humphry Davy^{[citation needed]}
• Geordie lamp - George Stephenson^{[citation needed]}
• Beam engine - Used for pumping water from mines^{[citation needed]}

Musical instruments

• Concertina - Charles Wheatstone^{[citation needed]}
• Theatre organ - Robert Hope-Jones^{[citation needed]}
• English horn - A version of the Oboe^{[citation needed]}
• Logical bassoon, an electronically controlled version of the bassoon - Giles Brindley^{[citation needed]}
• Northumbrian smallpipes^{[citation needed]}
• Tuning fork - John Shore^{[citation needed]}

Photography

• Ambrotype - Frederick Scott Archer^{[citation needed]}
• Calotype - William Fox Talbot^{[citation needed]}
• Collodion process - Frederick Scott Archer^{[citation needed]}
• Stereoscope - Charles Wheatstone^{[citation needed]}
• Thomas Wedgwood - pioneer of photography, devised the method to copy visible images chemically to permanent media.^{[citation needed]}
• Dry plate process also known as gelatine process, is the first economically successful durable photographic medium - Richard Leach Maddox^{[citation needed]}
• Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914 - George Albert Smith^{[citation needed]}
• cinematography - William Friese-Greene^{[citation needed]}
• Motion picture camera, the Kinetoscope - William Kennedy Laurie Dickson^{[citation needed]}
• The first movie projector, the Zoopraxiscope - Eadweard Muybridge^{[citation needed]}
• The first experimental film called "The Horse in Motion" in 1872 - Eadweard Muybridge^{[citation needed]}

Science

• Modern atomic theory - John Dalton^{[citation needed]}
• Equals sign Robert Recorde, Welshman^{[citation needed]}
• Compound microscope with 30x magnification - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Universal Joint - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• The Iris diaphragm - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Anchor escapement and the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Correct theory of combustion - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Chromatography - Richard Laurence Millington Synge^{[citation needed]}
• Arnold Frederic Wilkins - pioneer in the development of Radar^{[citation needed]}
• Atwood machine used for illustrating the law of uniformly accelerated motion - George Atwood^{[citation needed]}
• Barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer (invented or improved) - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Hooke's Law (equation describing elasticity) - Robert Hooke^{[citation needed]}
• Electrical generator (dynamo) - Michael Faraday^{[citation needed]}
• Cavity magnetron - Harry Boot critical component for Microwave generation in Microwave ovens and high powered Radios^{[citation needed]}
• Calculus - Sir Isaac Newton^{[citation needed]}
• Galvanometer - William Sturgeon^{[citation needed]}
• Infrared radiation - discovery commonly attributed to William Herschel.^{[citation needed]}
• Holography - First developed by Dennis Gabor in Rugby, England. Improved by Nicholas J. Phillips who made it possible to record multi-colour reflection holograms^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of the pion (pi-meson) - Cecil Frank Powell^{[citation needed]}
• Wheatstone bridge - Samuel Hunter Christie^{[citation needed]}
• Triple achromatic lens - Peter Dollond^{[citation needed]}
• Newtonian telescope - Sir Isaac Newton^{[citation needed]}
• Hawking radiation - Stephen Hawking^{[citation needed]}
• Demonstrated that electric circuits obey the law of the conservation of energy and that electricity is a form of energy First Law of Thermodynamics. Also the unit of energy, the Joule is named after him - James Prescott Joule^{[citation needed]}
• Micrometer - Sir William Gascoigne^{[citation needed]}
  • the first bench micrometer that was capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch - Henry Maudslay^{[citation needed]}
• Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator - Sir Clive Sinclair^{[citation needed]}
• Discovered the element argon - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh with Scotsman William Ramsay^{[citation needed]}
• Standard deviation - Francis Galton^{[citation needed]}
• Slide rule - William Oughtred ^[16]
• Synthesis of coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfumes, and cinnamic acid via the Perkin reaction- William Henry Perkin^{[citation needed]}
• The Law of Gravity - Sir Isaac Newton^{[citation needed]}
• Newton's laws of motion - Sir Isaac Newton^{[citation needed]}
• DNA fingerprinting - Sir Alec Jeffreys^{[citation needed]}
• Smallpox Vaccination - Edward Jenner^{[citation needed]}
• Electromagnet - William Sturgeon^{[citation needed]}
• Helium - Norman Lockyer^{[citation needed]}
• Introduced the "×" symbol for multiplication as well as the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions - William Oughtred^{[citation needed]}
• Dew Point Hygrometer - John Frederic Daniell^{[citation needed]}
• Periodic Table - John Alexander Reina Newlands^{[citation needed]}
• Splitting the atom - John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest Walton^{[citation needed]}
• Seismograph - John Milne^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of oxygen gas (O2) - Joseph Priestley^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of the Atom(nuclear model of) - Ernest Rutherford^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of the Proton - Ernest Rutherford^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of the Electron, isotopes and the inventor of the Mass spectrometer - J. J. Thomson^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of the Neutron - James Chadwick^{[citation needed]}
• Discovery of Hydrogen - Henry Cavendish^{[citation needed]}
• Nuclear transfer - Is a form of cloning first put into practice by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell to clone Dolly the Sheep^{[citation needed]}
• Theory of Evolution - Charles Darwin^{[citation needed]}

Transport

Railways

• The first full scale railway steam locomotive was built in 1804 - Richard Trevithick^{[citation needed]}
• Great Western Railway - Isambard Kingdom Brunel^{[citation needed]}
• Stockton and Darlington Railway the Worlds first operational steam passenger railway^{[citation needed]}
• First inter-city steam-powered railway - Liverpool and Manchester Railway^{[citation needed]}

Locomotives

• Blücher - George Stephenson^{[citation needed]}
• Puffing Billy -William Hedley^{[citation needed]}
• Locomotion No 1 - Robert Stephenson^{[citation needed]}
• Sans Pareil - Timothy Hackworth^{[citation needed]}
• Stourbridge Lion - Foster, Rastrick and Company^{[citation needed]}
• Stephenson's Rocket - George and Robert Stephenson^{[citation needed]}
• The Salamanca - Matthew Murray^{[citation needed]}

Other railway developments

• Displacement lubricator, Ramsbottom safety valve, the water trough, the split piston ring - John Ramsbottom^{[citation needed]}
• Maglev (transport) rail system - Eric Laithwaite^{[citation needed]}
• World's oldest underground railway and the oldest rapid transit system. It was also the first underground railway to operate electric trains - London underground^{[citation needed]}
• Advanced Passenger Train(APT) was an experimental High Speed Train that introduced tilting - British Rail^{[citation needed]}

Roads

• Bowden cable - Frank Bowden^{[citation needed]}
• Cat's eye - Percy Shaw ^[17]
• Hansom cab - Joseph Hansom^{[citation needed]}
• Seat belt - George Cayley^{[citation needed]}
• Sinclair C5 - Sir Clive Sinclair^{[citation needed]}
• Inventor of tarmac - E. Purnell Hooley^{[citation needed]}
• Tension-spokeWire wheels - George Cayley^{[citation needed]}
• Belisha beacon - Leslie Hore-Belisha^{[citation needed]}
• ThrustSSC jet-propelled car holds the World Land Speed Record, it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph). The car was designed and built in England - ThrustSSC Project director Richard Noble, Designed by Ron Ayers, Glynne Bowsher, Jeremy Bliss and piloted by Andy Green^{[citation needed]}
• Lotus 25 Considered to be the first modern F1 race car designed for the 1962 Formula One season. It was a revolutionary design the first fully stressed monocoque chassis to appear in Formula One - Colin Chapman, Team Lotus^{[citation needed]}
• Horstmann suspension, tracked armoured fighting vehicle suspension - Sidney Horstmann^{[citation needed]}
• Steam fire engine - John Braithwaite^{[citation needed]}
• Safety bicycle - John Kemp Starley & Dan Albone^{[citation needed]}
• First traffic lights installed (gas lamp) - Outside Houses of Parliament, London. December 10, 1868^{[citation needed]}
• First automatic traffic lights installed - Wolverhampton England. 1927^{[citation needed]}

Sea

• Plimsol line - Samuel Plimsoll^{[citation needed]}
• Hovercraft - Christopher Cockerell^{[citation needed]}
• Lifeboat - Lionel Lukin^{[citation needed]}
• Resurgam - George Garrett^{[citation needed]}
• Richard Hall Gower – Transit (ship)^{[citation needed]}
• Submarine - Designed by Englishman William Bourne and built by Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel in 1620^{[citation needed]}
• SS Great Britain, the world's first steam-powered, screw propeller-driven passenger liner with an iron hull. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched in 1843 it was at the time the largest ship afloat.^{[citation needed]}
• Turbinia, the first steam turbine powered steamship, designed by the engineer Sir Charles Algernon Parsons and built in Newcastle upon Tyne^{[citation needed]}
• Diving Equipment/Scuba Gear - Henry Fleuss^{[citation needed]}
• Diving bell - Edmund Halley^{[citation needed]}
• Sextant - John Bird^{[citation needed]}
• Octant (instrument) - Independently developed by Enlishman John Hadley and the American Thomas Godfrey^{[citation needed]}
• Whirling speculum, This device can be seen as a precursor to the gyroscope - John Serson^{[citation needed]}
• Screw propeller - Francis Pettit Smith^{[citation needed]}
• The world's first patent for an underwater echo ranging device (Sonar) - Lewis Richardson^{[citation needed]}
• hydrophone Before the invention of Sonar convoy escort ships used them to detect U-boats, greatly lessening the effectiveness of the submarine - Research headed by Ernest Rutherford^{[citation needed]}

Air

• Aeronautics and flight - George Cayley^{[citation needed]}
• Jet Engine - Sir Frank Whittle^{[citation needed]}
• Steam Powered Flight with the Aerial Steam Carriage - John Stringfellow- The world's first powered flight took place at Chard in Somerset 55 years before the Wright brothers attempt at Kitty Hawk^{[citation needed]}
• VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) fighter-bomber aircraft - Hawker P.1127, Designed by Sydney Camm^{[citation needed]}
• The first commercial jet airliner (de Havilland Comet)^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of parachute design - Robert Cocking^{[citation needed]}
• Pioneer of glider development & first well-documented human flight. He discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight - weight, lift, drag, and thrust. Modern airplane design is based on those discoveries including cambered wings. He is sometimes called the "Father of aviation" - George Cayley^{[citation needed]}
• Halerockets, improved version of the Congreve rocket design that introduced Thrust vectoring - William Hale^{[citation needed]}

Sport

• Football - The rules as we know them today were established in 1848 at Cambridge University, Sheffield FC is acknowledged by the FA and FIFA to be the Worlds First and oldest Football Club.^{[citation needed]}
• Rugby - William Webb Ellis^{[citation needed]}
• Cricket - the world's second-most popular sport can be traced back to the 13th century^{[citation needed]}
• Tennis - widely known to have originated in England.^{[citation needed]}
• Badminton - Modern rules of the game was launched in 1873 at the Badminton House after being imported from India by British soldiers.^{[citation needed]}
• Boxing - England played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing^{[citation needed]}
• Darts - a traditional pub game, the numbering layout was devised by Brian Gamlin^{[citation needed]}
• Table-Tennis - was invented on the dinner tables of Britain as an indoor version of tennis^{[citation needed]}
• Ping pong - The game has its origins in England, in the 1880s^{[citation needed]}
• Bowls - has been traced to 13th century England^{[citation needed]}
• Field hockey - the modern game grew from English public schools in the early 19th century^{[citation needed]}
• Netball - netball was first played in England in 1895 at Madame Osterburg's College, Invented by Clara Gregory Baer as women's basketball, adopted in England as Netball^{[citation needed]}
• Rounders - the game originates in England most likely from an older game known as stool ball^{[citation needed]}
• The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, the first race was in 1829 on the River Thames in London^{[citation needed]}
• Thoroughbred Horseracing - Was first developed in 17th and 18th century England^{[citation needed]}
• Polo - its roots began in Persia as a training game for cavalry units, the formal codification of the rules of modern Polo as a sport were established in 19th century England^{[citation needed]}
• The format of Modern Olympics - William Penny Brookes^{[citation needed]}
• The first Paralympic games competition were held in England in 1948 - Ludwig Guttmann^{[citation needed]}

Miscellaneous

• Bayko - Charles Plimpton^{[citation needed]}
• Linoleum - Frederick Walton ^[18]
• Meccano - Frank Hornby^{[citation needed]}
• Crossword puzzle - Arthur Wynne^{[citation needed]}
• Gas Mask - (disputed) John Tyndall and others^{[citation needed]}
• Graphic telescope - Cornelius Varley^{[citation needed]}
• Steel-ribbed Umbrella - Samuel Fox^{[citation needed]}
• Plastic - Alexander Parkes^{[citation needed]}
• Plasticine - William Harbutt^{[citation needed]}
• Police - Robert Peel^{[citation needed]}
• Carbonated soft drink - Joseph Priestley^{[citation needed]}
• Friction Match - John Walker^{[citation needed]}
• Invented the rubber balloon - Michael Faraday^{[citation needed]}
• Earliest concept of a Metric system - John Wilkins^{[citation needed]}
• Edmondson railway ticket - Thomas Edmondson^{[citation needed]}
• The worlds first Nature Reserve - Charles Waterton^{[citation needed]}
• Public Park - Joseph Paxton^{[citation needed]}
• Scouts - Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell^{[citation needed]}
• Spirograph - Denys Fisher^{[citation needed]}
• The Young Men's Christian Association YMCA was founded in London - George Williams (YMCA)^{[citation needed]}
• The Salvation Army, known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid - Methodist minister William Booth^{[citation needed]}
• Prime meridian - George Biddell Airy^{[citation needed]}
• Produced the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English - Myles Coverdale^{[citation needed]}
• Silicone - Frederick Kipping^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Welsh inventions and discoveries
• Scottish inventions and discoveries
• Irish inventions and discoveries
• Dutch inventions and discoveries
• German inventions and discoveries
• Swedish inventions
• Science in Medieval Western Europe

References

v • d • e Inventions by nation or region Lists of inventors British (English · Welsh) · German · Jewish · New Zealand · Romanian · Russian Lists of inventions Britain: (England · Scotland) · Canada · China · France · Germany · India · Medieval Islam · Italy · Japan · Korea · Netherlands · Russia Timelines of inventions Australia · Ireland · Islamic world · Sweden · United States

v • d • e  England topics History Timeline · Prehistoric · Roman Britain · Logres · Heptarchy · Anglo-Saxon England · Kingdom of England · Norman conquest · Angevin Empire · Wars of the Roses · Tudor period · Stuart period · English Renaissance · English Reformation · Elizabethan era · Jacobean era · Civil War · Union with Scotland · Georgian era · Regency · Victorian era · Edwardian period · The Blitz · Maritime history of England Politics Governance (Elizabethan) · Parliament · Monarchy · Economy Geography Regions · Counties · Districts · Gardens · Islands · Places · Towns · Parishes Demographics English language in England · English people (list) Culture Castles · Church of England · Education · Museums · Innovations and discoveries · Cuisine · Anglophilia Symbols National flag (list) · Heraldry · Coat of arms · Tudor Rose · Oak tree · St. George (St. George's Day) Sport Football (The Football Association, national football team)  · Cricket (National cricket team) · Rugby league · Rugby union (National rugby team, Rugby Football Union) · Wimbledon England portal