Inventions and inventors

Jethro Tull

1701

Jethro Tull was an English agriculturist from Berkshire who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century. His frustration with their lack of cooperation prompted him to invent a machine to do the work for him

John Kay

1733

John Kay was an English machinist and engineer, inventor, and son of a woolen manufacturer which made him in charge of his father's mill while still a youth. In previous looms, the shuttle was thrown, or passed, through the threads by hand, and wide fabrics required two weavers seated side by side passing the shuttle between them.

John Roebuck

1746

John Roebuck was an English industrialist, inventor, mechanical engineer, and physician. Leaden condensing chambers in the manufacture of sulfuric acid. The substitution of leaden chambers for glass globes, which had been employed for years, revolutionized the production process and drastically reduced costs.

James Hargreaves

1764

James Hargreaves was an English weaver, carpenter and inventor. James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny. The spinning jenny was a machine that used a large wheel to spin many spindles of thread at once. The invention increased the production ability of textile manufactures and was particularly important for cotton.

David Ricardo

1772

David Ricardo was a British pocial economist, a politician, and a member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. He developed the comparative advantage theory, labor theory of value, and the theory of rents.

James Watt

1776

James Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine. Without Watt there would have been no locomotives, steam ships or factories where machines were energised by coal.

Henry Cort

1783

Henry Cort was an English ironware producer. The puddling process for making wrought iron. The puddling process converted pig iron into wrought iron by subjecting it to heat and stirring it in a furnace, without using charcoal.

Edmund Cartwright

1785

Edmund Cartwright was an English inventor. English inventor of the first wool-combing machine and of the predecessor of the modern power loom. Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom which used water power to speed up the weaving process.

Alessandro Volta

1800

Alessandro Volta who was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power and invented the electric battery, Voltaic Pile, hydrogen lamp and discovered Methane. Volta found that electricity could be produced by just stacking alternate layers or discs of metals zinc and silver in a saltwater bath that would allow current to flow.

George Stephenson

1814

George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer during the Industrial Revolution. Known as the 'Father of the Railways'. George obtains a patent for an improved steam locomotive, with exhaust steam providing a draught on the fire, and working purely by adhesion.

Elias Howe

1845

Elias Howe was an American inventor. Elias Howe was mostly known for his invention of the modern lockstitch sewing machine. Howe was born with a disability that left him weak in one arm, which may have led his inspiration to invent a functioning sewing machine to help ease the manual aspect of producing garments.

Karl Marx

1867

Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Karl Marx is best known for his theories that led to the development of Marxism. His ideas also served as the basis for communism. Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually destroy itself as more people become relegated to working-class status, inequality rises, and competition drives corporate profits to zero.