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Flying Shuttle
The flying shuttle, created by John Kay, was created in 1733. John Kay created the flying shuttle as a way to speed up weaving in the loom. To use it, you insert it into the weft between the warp threads on the loom. This changed the world because it allowed people to produce fabrics and cloth much faster. -
Spinning Jenny
The spinning jenny, created by James Hargreaves in 1770. James Hargreaves created this to allow threads to be spun simultaneously. Before this, people would have to use a spinning wheel that could only spin one thread of yarn at a time. It operated using eight spindles that were powered by a single wheel. -
Water Frame
The water frame, created by Richard Arkwright, was created in 1775. Richard Arkwright created the water frame for a much easier and faster rate of production. The water frame is able to spin 96 threads at a time. This machine operated using a river to provide the rotary motion to drive the machine. -
Power Loom
The power loom, created by Edmund Cartwright, was created in 1785. It was invented to automate the weaving process, and needed less human labor. -
Cotton Gin
The cotton gin, created by Eli Whitney in 1793, was a machine that was created to speed up the process of separating cotton fibers from their seeds. It did this by running the seeds through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh. This really helped people as before they had to handpick the seeds out of the cotton, which was very time consuming and tedious. -
Steamboat
The steamboat created by Robert Fulton was the first commercially successful steamboat created. It was created in 1807, and it made transportation across water faster. Robert Fulton improved a steam engine that was in the shape of a rectangle for the boat, and the boat also had two paddles wheels which were used to move the boat. -
Sewing Machine
The sewing machine, created by Elias Howe, was created in 1819. This was the first practical sewing machine invented. It used a curved needed carried by a vibrating arm. The needle was provided with thread and a spool. The loops of the thread were locked by a second thread carried by a shuttle, which moved through the loop by reciprocating
drivers. -
Telegraph
The telegraph, created by Samuel Morse in 1844, was made to make communication faster. His system used an automatic sender consisting with long and short metal bars representing the morse code equivalent of the alphabet. The operator slid a pointer connected to a battery which sent the wire across the bars, and the dots and dashes were sent immediately over line. -
Dynamite
Dynamite, created by Alfred Nobel, was created in 1867 to make mining and the building of transportation safer. To make this, he added clay to nitroglycerin which made it safer. He then created blasting caps to explode the dynamite from a distance with a fuse. -
Maxim Machine Gun
The maxim machine gun, created by Hiram Maxim in 1884, was created for warfare. Hiram was told he'd make a fortune if he created a machine that would help the Europeans in war, so be build a gun and sold it to European countries on the eve of world war I. This changed the nature of combat.