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Jan 1, 1300
Spinning Wheel
The spinning wheel is an ancient invention that turned plant and animal fibers into thread or yarn, which were then woven into cloth on a loom. However, no one knows who invented the first spinning wheel, but it most likely originated in India between 500 and 1000 A.D. By the 13th century, spinning wheels appeared in Europe. -
Jan 1, 1439
Printing Press
Although movable type, as well as paper, first appeared in China, it was in Europe that printing first became mechanized. The earliest mention of a printing press is in a lawsuit in Strasbourg revealing construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. (Scant evidence exists to support claims of Laurens Janszoon Coster as the inventor of printing.) The invention of the printing press itself obviously owed much to the medieval paper press, in turn modeled after the ancien -
Jan 1, 1577
Clocks
Jost Burgi invented the minute hand. Burgi's invention was part of a clock made for Tycho Brahe, an astronomer who needed an accurate clock for his stargazing. -
Automobils
The very first car might well have been the invention of a Flemish missionary named Ferdinand Verbiest. Born in Flanders in 1623, Verbiest was an accomplished astronomer who left Europe for China in 1658. He helped to modernize the now outmoded Chinese astronomy using recent European innovations, and he was asked by the emperor to become the director of the newly refurbished Beijing Ancient Observatory. -
Toilet
While he did not invent the toilet, Crapper still has a close connection to the first patent for the toilet. Albert Gilblin, an employee of Crapper, holds the 1819 British Patent for a “Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer”. This device was a system which allowed a toilet to flush effectively. Crapper later purchased the rights for this patent from his employee and marketed the device. -
Machine Gun
Gatling Gun
Doctor Richard Gatling patented his design of the "Gatling Gun", a six-barreled weapon capable of firing a (then) phenomenal 200 rounds per minute. -
Telephones
Two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won. -
Light Bulb
The invention of the electric light bulb is attributed to Thomas Alva Edison, with the first successful trial. -
First Rubber Heel Shoes
The first rubber heel for shoes was patented by Irish-American Humphrey O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan patented the rubber heel which outlasted the leather heel then in use. Elijah McCoy invented an improvement to the rubber heel. -
Televistion
In Sorbonne, France, Edwin Belin, an Englishman, who held the patent for the transmission of photographs by wire as well as fiber optics and radar, demonstrated a mechanical scanning device that was an early precursor to modern television. Belin’s machine took flashes of light and directed them at a selenium element connected to an electronic device that produced sound waves. These sound waves could be received in another location and remodulated into flashes of light on a m -
Computers
Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of WWII. Konrad Zuse earned the semiofficial title of "inventor of the modern computer" for his series of automatic calculators, which he invented to help him with his lengthy engineering calculations. -
Video Games
Invented by Willian Higinbotham
Before the era of electronic ping pong, hungry yellow dots, plumbers, mushrooms, and fire-flowers, people waited in line to play video games at roller-skating rinks, arcades, and other hangouts. More than fifty years ago, before either arcades or home video games, visitors waited in line at Brookhaven National Laboratory to play “Tennis for Two,” an electronic tennis game that is unquestionably a forerunner of the modern video game.
