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Thomas Newcomen - Steam Engine
Machine using steam power to perform mechanical work through the agency of heat. In 1698 Thomas Savery patented a pump with hand-operated valves to raise water from mines by suction produced by condensing steam. In about 1712 another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, developed a more efficient steam engine with a piston separating the condensing steam from the water. -
John Kay - Flying Shuttle
Facilitated the weaving of considerably broader fabrics, enabling the production of wider textiles. Machine that represented an important step toward automatic weaving. It was invented by John Kay in 1733. 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. -
Samuel Crompton - Spinning Mule
This permitted large-scale manufacture of high-quality thread and yarn. The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys, the little piecer and the big or side piecer. -
Henry Cort - puddling process
Henry Cort discovered 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. It was the first method that allowed quality wrought iron to be produced on a large scale. -
Edmund Cartwright - Power Loom
In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom which used water power to speed up the weaving process, the predecessor to the modern power loom. His ideas were licensed first by Grimshaw of Manchester who built a small steam-powered weaving factory in Manchester in 1790, but the factory burnt down. Essentially, the power loom mechanized the function of a loom by use of large shaft and sped up the process of textile manufacturing. -
Robert Fulton - Steamboat
Steamboats proved a popular method of commercial and passenger transportation along the Mississippi River and other inland U.S. rivers in the 19th century. Their relative speed and ability to travel against the current reduced time and expense. From then on and until about 1870, the steamboat dominated the economy, agriculture, and commerce of the middle area of the United States. -
Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin
The cotton gin is the machine used to pull cotton fibers from the seed which was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 or 1794. -
Alessandro Volta - Voltaic Pile
The first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit. It was the first device to provide a steady supply of electricity. Its invention can be traced back to an argument between Volta and Luigi Galvani. -
George Stephenson - First Steam Locomotive
The first practical steam engines were developed to solve a very specific problem: how to remove water from flooded mines. As Europeans of the 17th century switched from wood to coal as their main source of fuel, mines were deepened and, as a result, often became flooded after penetrating underground water sources. Was used to achieve motive steam power would, for the first time in history, allow man to travel on land at a speed faster than that of the domesticated horse. -
David Ricardo - Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
A book by David Ricardo on economics. The book concludes that land rent grows as population increases. -
Elias Howe - Sewing machine
A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. -
John Wesley - Celluloid
A transparent flammable plastic made in sheets from camphor and nitrocellulose, formerly used for cinematographic film. John invented the process for making celluloid, the first artificial plastic. In the late 1860s, while searching for a substitute for ivory for making billiard balls, John combined nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol and heated the mixture under pressure to make it pliable for molding.