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Electric battery invented
Alessandro Volta, in 1800, invented and describes the electric battery. Since he was 14 he was fascinated by electricity like many scientists did during that time. On March 20, 1800 he had reported his discovery of the battery and became a well-known scientist. -
Catalogue of 500 new Nebulae
In 1802, William Herschel published a book that contains over "500 new Nebulae, nebulous Stars, planetary Nebulae, and Clusters of Stars; with Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens." -
Tantalum was discovered
In 1802 the element Tantalum was discovered by Anders Ekeberg and was compared and thought of being identical to columbium by William Hyde Wollaston. His research was of course wrong but was understandable since they are very similar. -
Atomic Theory published
John Dalton, on October 21st, 1803, first read his paper of the atomic theory in front of Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. His theory involved the idea of tiny, invisible particles called atoms. -
First steam powered locomotive
The first steam powered locomotive was made by Richard Trevithick and was first operated on the 21st of february in 1804. It did work but was too heavy that it broke the very tracks it traveled on. -
Coffee pot
The coffee pot was invented in 1806 by Benjamin Thompson. He did experiments that involved heating, cooking, and lighting. He also studied and experimented with gunnery and explosives. -
Sodium discovered
in 1807 sodium was isolated by Sir Humphrey Davy and was given its scientific name and abbreviation by Jons Jakob Berzelius in 1814. -
Lamark publishes Philosophie Zoologique
In 1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamark publishes a book on the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, also know as soft inheritance. -
Niobium was discovered
An element formerly known as Columbium, now known as Niobium, was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston, of whom, had wrongly concluded that it was identical to tantalum. -
Patent for high-speed printing press
In 1810, Friedrich Koenig was granted approval for his patent of the high-speed printing press. His improvement on the printing press was a huge success. -
Iodine was discovered
Iodine was discovered in 1811 by Bernard Courtois by crystallizing a waste product from saltpeter and exposing the fumes to cold surfaces. -
New furnace invented
In 1811 a new kind of furnace was invented by Joseph von Fraunhofer which could aid in glass making. -
First successful steam powered boat built
In 1812 the first successful steam powered boat was created by Henry Bell and had regularly been used. -
First photograph
The first ever photograph taken was by scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1814 and it depicted a view out of his window in France. -
First Plastic Surgery performed
On the 23 of October in 1814 in England, the first ever plastic surgery was performed by surgeon Joseph Carpue. He got the idea from India where they would rebuild mutilated noses. -
Miners lamp
Somewhere between October and December in 1814, Humphrey Davy invented a lamp that is concealed and won't set off an explosion from the methane in mines. -
The stethoscope was invented
In 1816 the stethoscope was invented by Rene Laennec in France by using a wooden tube. It was invented because doctors were uncomfortable by placing their ears to women's chests to hear their heart beat. -
Lithium was discovered
In 1817, Lithium was discovered in the ore of Petalite by Johan August Arfwedson. The element was show to be similar to sodium and potassium. -
Cadmium is discovered
Cadmium was discovered simultaneously in 1817 by Friedrich Stromeyer and Karl Samuel Leberecht Hermann. It was found in a zinc compound and was isolated by roasting it. -
Soda fountain patented
In 1819 the first soda fountain was patented by Samuel Fahnestock and is suspected of inventing the "device". -
Braille is created
In 1821 braille was originally meant to be a military tactic called night writing and was created by Charles Barbier. -
Raincoat invented
In 1823, they Mackintosh raincoat was invented by Charles Mackintosh -
The microphone is invented
In 1823 the microphone was invented by Captain H.J. Round. It was the first moving coil microphone. -
First toy balloon made
In 1824 the first toy balloon was made by Micheal Faraday -
Megalosaurus was named
In 1824 the Megalosaurus was the first non-avian dinosaur to be validly named. It was found by William Buckland. -
Iguanodon was named
In 1825 the remains found by Gideon Mantell were named Iguanodon. He said his reasoning behind this was that it seemed to resemble a very large iguana. -
Portland Cement was patented
On the 21 of October the patent for Portland cement was issued. It was created by Joseph Aspdin. -
Dutch Chocolate was invented
In 1828 dutch chocolate was invented by Coenraad Johannes van Houten, whose father had created the method of removing fat from cocoa beans. -
Graham Cracker invented
In 1829 the graham cracker was inspired by Sylvester Graham. He had strongly influenced the 19th century temperance movement. -
Typographer is invented
In 1829 the typographer was invented by William Austin Burt and was consider to be the first documented typewriter. In used a dial instead of keys so in was called an index typewriter instead of a keyboard typewriter. -
First sewing machine patented
In 1830 the sewing machine was patented by Barthélemy Thimonnier, and that same year he founded a machine based clothing company. -
Sewing machine invented
In 1830 August Ferrand submitted a request for a patent for his invention the sewing machine. On July 17th 1830 August's patent was approved. -
Electric Telegraph commercially sold
In 1832 the electrical telegraph was designed by Pavel Schilling. His demonstration was performed by placing two telegraphs in two separate rooms in his apartment. -
Reaper
In 1834 on June 21 the reaper was patented by Cyrus McCormick. The reaper was a self-sharpening plow. Around 1845 the reaper become more popular and spread towards the west. -
Refrigerator
On August 14, 1835 an early form of the refrigerator was invented and patented by Jacob Perkins. The machine was meant to cool liquids and produce ice. -
Morse code is invented
In 1836 Morse code was invented by Samuel Morse. Joseph Henry, Alfred Vail and him invented the electrical Morse code Telegraph. -
revolver colt
In 1836 the revolver colt was patented by Samuel Colt and became popular in the Mexican War which lasted from 1846-1848 -
Electric carriage
In 1837 chemist Robert Davidson invented the first recorded Electric locomotive. Later in life he created a bigger version of his invention. -
Lanthanum
In 1839 lanthanum was discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth by separating two substances. -
bicycle
It is thought that in 1839 that an early version of the bicycle was created by Kirkpatrick Macmillan. There is little information on this but it was supposedly made from a wood with wheels that were rimmed with metal. -
Computer Program
In 1840 the first “computer” program, or algorithm, was designed by Countess Ada of Lovelace. She translated a seminar of which she translated and published her notes. -
Stapler
In 1841 September 30 Samuel Slocum patented the stapler. A sliding hopper would punch pins into grooves in a metal plate. -
Sauropods
In 1842 a sauropod vertebrae had many comparisons that were made between Cetiosaurus, dinosaurs and crocodiles, but Owen refrained from allocating Cetiosaurus to a specific reptile group until 1842, when he referred it to Crocodilia. -
Terbium
In 1843 Terbium was discovered by Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosande. It was discovered as an impurity in an oxide he was working with. -
Erbium
In 1843 the element Erbium was discovered by Carl Gustaf Mosander and was mistaken as Terbium. -
Fax machine
In from 1843-1846 Alexander Bain had experimented with an early version of the fax machine. He used a clock to synchronize the movement of two pendulums for line-by-line scanning of a message. For transmission, Bain applied metal pins arranged on a cylinder made of insulating material. -
Ruthenium
In 1844 Ruthenium was discovered by Karl Ernst Claus and a small a mount was found in another compound that same year. -
Neptune
On 23 of September in 1846 Neptune was discovered by James Challis around an area the Galileo had drawn in his sketches of supposed stars. It was close to where Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams. -
Candy Bar
In 1847, Joseph Fry created the candy bar by making a paste that could be put into a mold then solidify for consumption. -
Safety Pin
In 1849, Walter Hunt invented the safety pin by having to pay off fifteen dollars to a friend. His version is very similar to the ones used today which includes the spring on one end and the clasp at the other to cover and close the needle. -
Dishwasher
Joel Houghton was granted the first dishwasher patent in 1850. The machine was made of wood and required you to hand-turn a wheel that caused water to splash on the dishes. Houghton's machine barely worked. The first practical dishwasher was invented by a woman named Josephine Cochran in 1886. Dishwashers, however, did not begin appearing in homes until the 1950s. -
Gyroscope
In 1852 the gyroscope was used in an experiment about the rotation of the Earth by mathematician Léon Foucault. -
Elevator
In 1853 the first elevator was invented and sold by Elisha Graves Otis. The purpose of the contraption of the time was to haul freight. -
Manned Glider
In 1853, George Cayley invented the manned glider that could be controlled and ridden by one man. It had successfully flew across Brompton Dale. -
Hadrosaurus
In 1855, geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden collected fossil teeth from the Cretaceous badlands. In 1858 the teeth were found to be that of a Hadrosaurus. -
Pullman sleeping car
In 1857 the first specifically designed sleeping car was invented by Pullman. The car was made specially for long trips so the passengers could sleep on. -
can opener
Ezra J. Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut was an American inventor, who patented his design of a can opener in 1858. Crudely shaped bayonet and sickle combo, his design was widely accepted by the U.S. military during the period of the American Civil War. -
The Theory of Evolution
In 1859, Charles Darwin published a book called “On the Origin of Species” that explained evolution. Evolution is the theory that organisms change over time and that everything on Earth has to acclimate to the constant changing environments. -
Vacuum cleaner
In July of 1859, Daniel Hess patented the vacuum cleaner. Originally he had named it the carpet sweeper due to the fact that it was meant to “sweep” rugs, carpets, etc. with brushes that would move while air was sucked into a cylinder for disposal. -
Escalator
On August 9, 1859, the escalator was patented by Nathan Ames. His original design was a triangular shape and involved needing coordination. -
caesium
In 1860, caesium was discovered by Gustav Kirchhoff in some mineral water from Durkheim. He found it through a newly invented spectroscope. -
Rubidium
In 1861, Rubidium was discovered by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in mineral called lepidolite. -
Thallium
Thallium was discovered in 1861 by using flame spectroscopy, by scientists Claude-Auguste Lamy and William Crookes in different locations but at the same period of time. -
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun was designed by the American inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling in 1861 and patented on November 4, 1862. Gatling wrote that he created it to reduce the size of armies and so reduce the number of deaths by combat and disease, and to show how futile war is. -
Periodic table
In 1863, Dmitri Mendeleev attempted to organize all the known elements of the time which were consisted of 56. -
Indium
In 1863 by Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodore Richter in mines by Saxony. Reich would have been the only first person to discover indium but since he was colorblind he had hired Richter as an assistant. -
Dynamite
In 1866 Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and was the first manageable explosive that was stronger than black powder. -
Holmium
In 1867 the element Holmium was discovered by Marc Delafontaine and Jacques-Louis Soret but was not known at the time so was named as Element X. -
Motorcycle
Around 1867 the Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede was invented by Perreaux and is debated on being one of three that have claimed to be the first “motorcycles”. -
traffic lights
In 1868 an idea that would regulated traffic as to prevent collisions and fatalities that occurred in previous years. The invention has been accredited to John Peake Knight. -
moving pictures
In 1872, the former governor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for some photographic studies. He had taken a position on a popularly debated question of the day — whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time while trotting. In 1872, Muybridge began experimenting with an array of 12 cameras photographing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. -
earmuffs
Chester Greenwood invented the earmuff in 1873, at the age of 15.He reportedly came up with the idea while ice skating and he asked his grandmother to sew tufts of fur between loops of wire His patent was for improved ear protectors. He manufactured these ear protectors, providing jobs for people in the Farmington area for nearly 60 years. -
Barbed wire
The "Big Four" in barbed wire were Joseph Glidden, Jacob Haish, Charles Francis Washburn, and Isaac L. Ellwood.[14] Glidden, a farmer in 1873 and the first of the "Big Four," is often credited for designing a successful sturdy barbed wire product, but he let others popularize it for him. Glidden's idea came from a display at a fair in DeKalb, Illinois in 1873, by Henry B. Rose. Rose had patented "The Wooden Strip with Metallic Points" in May 1873. -
Telephone
On June 2, 1875, Watson accidentally plucked one of the reeds and Bell, at the receiving end of the wire, heard the overtones of the reed; overtones that would be necessary for transmitting speech. That demonstrated to Bell that only one reed or armature was necessary, not multiple reeds. This led to the "gallows" sound-powered telephone, which could transmit indistinct, voice-like sounds, but not clear speech. -
combustion engine
In 1876 Nikolaus Otto had perfected and invented the first internal combustion engine that would compress the fuel. This engine was extremely efficient for its time. -
phonograph cylinder
In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph cylinder which is a device that records and plays back sounds. It was the first of its kind and was only marketed as a novelty item and not really commercially sold. -
Camarasaurus
The first record of Camarasaurus comes from 1877, when a few scattered vertebrae were located in Colorado, by Oramel W. Lucas. Pursuing his long-running and acrimonious competition (known as the Bone Wars) with Othniel Charles Marsh, the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope paid for the bones and, moving quickly, named them in the same year. -
Ytterbium
Ytterbium was discovered by the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac in the year 1878. While examining samples of gadolinite, Marignac found a new component in the earth then known as erbia, and he named it ytterbia. -
Thulium
Thulium was discovered by Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve in 1879 by looking for impurities in the oxides of other rare earth elements (this was the same method Carl Gustaf Mosander earlier used to discover some other rare earth elements). Cleve started by removing all of the known contaminants of erbia (Er2O3). Upon additional processing, he obtained two new substances; one brown and one green. -
Samarium
Samarium was discovered in 1879 by chemist Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran and named after the mineral samarskite from which it was isolated. The mineral itself was earlier named after a Russian mine official, Colonel Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, who thereby became the first person to have a chemical element named after him, albeit indirectly. Although classified as a rare earth element, samarium is the 40th most abundant element in the Earth's crust and is more common than such metals as tin. -
Kodak Camera
George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. In 1880, he opened the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. His first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. Later he offered the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children. -
Christmas lights
The first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree was the creation of Edward H. Johnson. While he was Vice-President of the Edison Electric Light Company, he had Christmas tree bulbs especially made for him. He proudly displayed his Christmas tree — hand-wired with 80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs the size of walnuts — on December 22, 1882, at his home in New York City. -
Coca cola
Confederate Colonel John Pemberton, who became addicted to morphine, began to find a substitute for the drug. The prototype Coca-Cola recipe was formulated at Pemberton's Eagle Drug and Chemical House, a store in Columbus, Georgia, originally as a coca wine.In 1885, Pemberton registered his French Wine Coca nerve tonic. In 1886, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, a nonalcoholic version of French Wine Coca. -
neodymium
Neodymium was discovered by Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach, an Austrian chemist, in Vienna in 1885. He separated neodymium, as well as the element praseodymium, from a material known as didymium by means of fractional crystallization of the double ammonium nitrate tetrahydrates from nitric acid -
Machine gun
In 1886 the machine gun was invented by Harim Maxim. He had brought the prototype on an expedition from 1886-1890. It was effective in warding off natives in Africa. -
Automobile
On January 29, 1886, Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. In July 1886 the newspapers reported on the first public outing of the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car, model no. 1. -
AC electricity
In 1888, Tesla had constructed a model polyphase system consisting of an alternating current dynamo, step-up and step-down transformers and A.C. motor at the other end. -
paper straws
In 1888 the first paper straws were invented by Marvin C. Stone. He was getting tired of using rye straws because the flavor was mixing with his drinks. -
Spray atomizer
In 1888, Dr. DeVilbiss set about inventing a better method of coating infected throats of patients, he assembled a hollow rubber ball, a metal jar, and a small tube. The device would pump out a spray of medicine when the ball was squeezed. He next added an adjustable tip to the tube that allowed him to adjust the pattern of the spray. -
Matches
Pusey was a Pennsylvanian attorney who was fond of smoking cigars. Fed up with carrying bulky boxes of wooden matches, he set to work to invent paper matches that would be lighter and smaller. His final design had matches secured to a thin paper wrapping with an attached striking surface. In 1889 he finished and had created strike able book matches. -
Swiss army knife
In January of 1891 the swiss army knife was invented by Karl Elsener in the Swiss army. They had four main tools, a blade, a reamer, a can-opener, and a screwdriver. -
Argon
Argon was first isolated from air 1894 by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay by removing oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen from a sample of clean air. They had determined that nitrogen produced from chemical compounds was one-half percent lighter than nitrogen from the atmosphere. The difference was slight, but it was important enough to attract their attention for many months. -
Helium
On March 26, 1895, chemist Sir William Ramsay isolated helium on Earth by treating the mineral cleveite (a variety of uraninite with at least 10% rare earth elements) with mineral acids. Ramsay was looking for argon but, after separating nitrogen and oxygen from the gas liberated by sulfuric acid, he noticed a bright yellow line that matched the D3 line observed in the spectrum of the Sun. These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes. -
Jell-O
In 1897 Jell-O was trademarked by Pearle Bixby Wait. He and his wife had combined gelatin, sugar, and various flavorings for different types of gelatin. Then in 1899 the rights were sold to Orator Francis Woodward. -
Neon
Neon was discovered in 1898 by the British chemists Sir William Ramse and Morris W. Travers in London. Neon was discovered when Ramsay chilled a sample of air until it became a liquid, then warmed the liquid and captured the gases as they boiled off. The gases nitrogen, oxygen, and argon had been identified, but the remaining gases were isolated in roughly their order of abundance, in a six-week period beginning at the end of May 1898. -
Krypton
Krypton was discovered in 1898 by Sir William Ramsay, a chemist, and Morris Travers, another chemist, in residue left from evaporating nearly all components of liquid air. Neon was discovered by a similar procedure by the same workers just a few weeks later. William Ramsay was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of a series of noble gases, including krypton. -
polonium
Also called "radium F", polonium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898.This element was the first one discovered by the Curies while they were investigating the cause of pitchblende radioactivity. Pitchblende was more radioactive than the uranium and thorium combined. This spurred the Curies to search for additional radioactive elements. They first separated polonium from pitchblende in July 1898, and five months later, also isolated radium. -
Xenon
Xenon was discovered by the chemist William Ramsay and chemist Morris Travers in September 1898, shortly after their discovery of the elements krypton and neon. They found xenon in the residue left over from evaporating components of liquid air. In 1902, Ramsay estimated the proportion of xenon in the Earth's atmosphere to be one part in 20 million. -
Radium
Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, in a uraninite sample. The Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material still radioactive. They then separated out a radioactive mixture consisting mostly of two components: compounds of barium, which gave a brilliant green flame color, and unknown radioactive compounds which gave carmine spectral lines that had never been documented before. -
actinium
André-Louis Debierne, a chemist, announced the discovery of a new element in 1899. He separated it from pitchblende residues left by Marie and Pierre Curie after they had extracted radium. In 1899, Debierne described the substance as similar to titanium and as similar to thorium. -
Plastic
In the early 1900s, Bakelite, the first fully synthetic thermoset, was reported by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland by using phenol and formaldehyde. -
Radon
In 1900 Friedrich Ernst Dorn reported some experiments in which he noticed that radium compounds emanate a radioactive gas he named Radium Emanation. In 1901, he demonstrated that the emanations are radioactive, but credited the Curies for the discovery of the element. In 1903, similar emanations were observed from actinium by André-Louis Debierne and were called Actinium Emanation. -
Europium
Europium was first found in 1890 by Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who obtained basic fractions from samarium-gadolinium concentrates which had spectral lines not accounted for by samarium or gadolinium. However, the discovery of europium is generally credited to French chemist Eugène-Anatole Demarçay, who suspected samples of the recently discovered element samarium were contaminated with an unknown element in 1896 and who was able to isolate it in 1901; he then named it europium. -
Automatic tea maker
On 7 April 1902 a patent for a teasmade was registered by gunsmith Frank Clarke of Birmingham, England. He called it "An Apparatus Whereby a Cup of Tea or Coffee is Automatically Made" and it was later marketed as "A Clock That Makes Tea!". However, his original machine and all rights to it were purchased from Albert E Richardson, a clockmaker from Ashton-under-Lyne. -
Tea bags
The first Western tea bags were hand-sewn fabric bags; tea bag patents date as early as 1903. First appearing commercially around 1904, tea bags were successfully marketed by the tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan from New York, who shipped his tea bags around the world. The loose tea was intended to be removed from the sample bags by customers, but they found it easier to brew the tea with the tea still enclosed in the porous bags. -
Hershey Chocolate
The first Hershey bar was produced in 1900. On March 2, 1903, he began construction on what was to become the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing company, only he did not know that it would become a large company. The facility, completed in 1905, was designed to manufacture chocolate using the latest mass production techniques. Hershey’s milk chocolate quickly became the first nationally marketed product of its kind. -
Radar
Inventor Christian Hülsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect "the presence of distant metallic objects". He got a British patent on September 23, 1904 for a full radar system, that he called a telemobiloscope. It operated on a 50 cm wavelength and the pulsed radar signal was created via a spark-gap. -
First powered flight
A handful of flight claims have taken deeper root. Some New Zealanders argue that Richard Pearse made a powered flight as early as the spring of 1903—months before the Wrights’ first flight on December 17—even though Pearse himself remarked that he had not begun his experiments until 1904, and then only after being inspired by news accounts of the Wright brothers. -
Lutetium
Lutetium was independently discovered in 1907 by French scientist Georges Urbain, Austrian mineralogist Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach, and American chemist Charles James. They found it as an impurity in ytterbia, which was thought by Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac to consist entirely of ytterbium. The scientists proposed different names for the elements: Urbain chose neoytterbium and lutecium,[15] whereas Welsbach chose aldebaranium and cassiopeium. -
Paper cup
it was common to have shared glasses or dippers at water sources such as school faucets or water barrels in trains. Based on these concerns, and as paper goods became cheaply and cleanly available (especially after the 1908 invention of the Dixie Cup), local bans were passed on the shared-use cup. -
Neon lamp
In December 1910 Claude demonstrated modern neon lighting based on a sealed tube of neon. In 1915 a U.S. patent was issued to Claude covering the design of the electrodes for neon tube lights; this patent became the basis for the monopoly held in the U.S. by his company, Claude Neon Lights, through the early 1930s. -
Sonar
The use of sound to 'echo locate' underwater in the same way as bats use sound for aerial navigation seems to have been prompted by the Titanic disaster of 1912. The world's first patent for an underwater echo ranging device was filed at the British Patent Office by English meteorologist Lewis Richardson a month after the sinking of the Titanic, and a German physicist Alexander Behm obtained a patent for an echo sounder in 1913. -
lifesavers
Life Savers candy was first created in 1912 by Clarence Crane, a Cleveland, Ohio, candy maker (and father of the famed poet Hart Crane). Crane developed a line of hard mints but did not have the space or machinery to make them. He contracted with a pill manufacturer to press the mints into shape. -
Stenotype machine
The first stenotype machine was made in 1863 by the Italian Antonio Zucco and was in actual use since 1880 in the Italian Senate. An American shorthand machine was patented in 1879 by Miles M. Bartholomew. A French version was created by Marc Grandjean in 1909. The direct ancestor of today's stenotype was created by Ward Stone Ireland about 1913, and the word "stenotype" was applied to his machine and its descendants sometime thereafter. -
Protactinium
Protactinium was first identified in 1913, when Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring encountered the isotope 234Pa during their studies of the decay chains of uranium-238. They named the new element brevium (from the Latin word, brevis, meaning brief or short) because of its short half-life, 6.7 hours for 234
91Pa -
zipper
After his wife's death in 1911, Sundback devoted himself to improving the fastener, and by December 1913 he had designed the modern zipper. The rights to this invention were owned by the Meadville company, but Sundback retained non-U.S. rights and used these to set up in subsequent years the Canadian firm Lightning Fastner Co. in St. Catharines, Ont. Sundback's work with this firm has led to the common misperception that he was Canadian and that the zipper originated in that country. -
crossword puzzle
On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to "crossword". -
Tnkertoys
Spokes, spools, rods and reels . . . Playskool's Tinkertoy® Construction Sets, the tools of America's tinkerers were invented in 1914. Tinkertoy® Construction Sets are one of the truly classic toys of all time. They have driven the imaginations of children for generations, proving that fun and stimulating toys never lose their appeal. -
Lincoln logs
In the 1910s, builders were busy on construction sites in the city and in the playroom. Introduced just after Tinkertoys and the Erector Set, Lincoln Logs were yet another construction toy to make it big during the decade. John Lloyd Wright, son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, brought out the line of sturdy, interlocking logs in 1916. Wright claimed that the foundation of Tokyo’s earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel, which he saw while it was under construction, inspired the shape of his logs. -
Toaster
During World War I, a master mechanic in a plant in Stillwater, Minnesota decided to do something about the burnt toast served in the company cafeteria. To circumvent the need for continual human attention, Charles Strite incorporated springs and a variable timer, and filed the patent application for his pop-up toaster on May 29, 1919.
