Famous Inventors

Benjamin Franklin (USA) - lightning conductor, bifocal lenses
Alexander Fleming (UK) - penicillin
Thomas Alva Edison (USA) – phonograph, commercially practical incandescent light bulb
James Dewar (UK) – Thermos flask
Frederick Banting (Canada) – Insulin

Mongolfier brothers (France) - first hot air balloon flight
Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur (USA) – powered airplane
Tom Parry Jones (UK) – first electronic Breathalyzer
Steve Jobs (USA) – Apple Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone, iPad and other devices, software operating systems and applications
Whitcomb Judson (USA) – zip fastener
Tim Berners-Lee (UK) - invented the World Wide Web
Eli Whitney (USA) – the cotton gin
Frank Hornby (UK) – invented Meccano
Rowland Hill (UK) – postage stamp
James Hargreaves (UK) – spinning jenny
Charles Goodyear (USA) – vulcanization of rubber
William Oughtred (UK) – slide rule
Percy Shaw (UK) - cat's eyes
Johann Gutenberg (Germany) – movable type printing press
Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof (Russia/Poland) – Esperanto (artificial language)
Elisha Otis (USA) – safety system for elevators
Joseph Priestley (UK) - invented carbonated water
Richard Trevithick (UK) – high-pressure steam engine, first full-scale steam locomotive
George Stephenson (UK) – steam railway
Levi Strauss (USA) – blue jeans

Norm Larsen (USA) – WD-40
Mary Anderson (USA) – windshield wiper blade
John Pemberton (USA) – Coca-Cola
Guglielmo Marconi (Italy) – radio telegraphy
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (Germany) – the X-ray machine
Charles Macintosh (UK) - inventor of waterproof fabric
Percy Spencer (USA) – microwave oven
Barnes Wallis (UK) – bouncing bomb
Alexander Graham Bell (UK) – telephone
Dmitri Mendeleev (Russia) – Periodic table
George de Mestral (Switzerland) – Velcro
Clarence Birdseye (USA) – Flash freezing
Laszlo Biro (Hungary) – Ballpoint pen
John Boyd Dunlop (UK) – first practical pneumatic tyre
Karl Benz (Germany) – the petrol-powered automobile
John Harrison (UK) – marine chronometer
Trevor Baylis (UK) – a wind-up radio
Samuel Colt (USA) - in 1836 received a U.S. patent for a revolver mechanism which enabled a gun to be fired several times without reloading