List of English inventions and discoveries

Culture of England
History
People
Languages English language in England British Sign Language
Traditions Country clothing Fête Morris Dancing Pub
Mythology and folklore
Cuisine
Festivals Saint George's Day Commonwealth Day Guy Fawkes Night Harvest Festival Lady Day May Day Plough Monday Plough Sunday Whitsun
Religion
Art
Literature
Music and performing arts Abbots Bromley Horn Dance Country dance English folk music Garland dance Long Sword dance Morris dance Mummers play
Media Radio Television Cinema Newspapers Magazines
Sport Badminton Cricket Croquet Field hockey Football Lawn bowls Lawn tennis Netball Rugby Table tennis
Monuments World Heritage Sites
Symbols Flag Coat of arms National anthem English inventions and discoveries
England portal
v t e

English inventions and discoveries are objects, processes or techniques invented, innovated or discovered, partially or entirely, in England by a person from England. Often, things discovered for the first time are also called inventions and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two. Nonetheless, science and technology in England continued to develop rapidly in absolute terms. Furthermore, according to a Japanese research firm, over 40% of the world's inventions and discoveries were made in the UK, followed by France with 24% of the world's inventions and discoveries made in France and followed by the US with 20%.^[1]

The following is a list of inventions, innovations or discoveries known or generally recognised to be English.

• 1701: Seed drill improved by Jethro Tull (1674–1741).
• 18th century: of the horse-drawn hoe and scarifier by Jethro Tull^[2][3][4]
• 1780s: Selective breeding and artificial selection pioneered by Robert Bakewell (1725–1795).^[5]
• 1842: Superphosphate or chemical fertilizer developed by John Bennet Lawes (1814–1900).^[6]
• 1850s: Steam-driven ploughing engine invented by John Fowler (1826–1864).^[7]
• 1901: First commercially successful light farm-tractor invented by Dan Albone (1860–1906).^[8]
• 1930s onwards: Developments in dairy farming systems pioneered by Rex Paterson (1902–1978).^[9]

• 1748: Fine porcelain developed by Thomas Frye (c. 1710–1762), of Bow porcelain factory, London.^[10] Cf. Frye's rivals at Chelsea porcelain factory.
• 1770s: Jasperware developed by Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795).^[11]
• 1789–1793: Bone china created by Josiah Spode (1733–1797).^[12]
• 1813: Ironstone china invented by Charles James Mason (1791–1856).^[13]

• Anglo-Saxon times: type of candle clock invented by Alfred the Great (849–899).^[14]
• c. 1657: Anchor escapement probably invented by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).^[15]
• c. 1657: Balance spring added to balance wheel by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).^[16][17]
• c. 1722: Grasshopper escapement invented by John Harrison (1693–1776); Harrison created the H1, H2, H3 & H4 watches (to solve the longitude measurement problem).^[18]
• c. 1726: Gridiron pendulum invented by John Harrison (1693–1776).^[17]
• c. 1755: Lever escapement, the greatest single improvement ever applied to pocket watches, invented by Thomas Mudge (1715–1794).^[17]
• 1761: First true Marine chronometer perfected by John Harrison (1693–1776).^[17]
• 1923: Self-winding watch invented by John Harwood (1893–1964).^[19]
• 1955: First accurate atomic clock invented by Louis Essen (1908–1997).^[20]
• 1976: Coaxial escapement mechanism invented by George Daniels (1926–2011).

• 1589: The stocking frame, a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry, invented by William Lee (1563–1614).
• 1733: The flying shuttle, a key development in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution, invented by John Kay of Walmersley (1704-c. 1779).

• 1759: The Derby Rib machine (for stocking manufacture) invented by Jedediah Strutt (1726–1797).^[21]
• 1764: The spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves (c. 1720–1778).
• 1767: Spinning frame invented by John Kay of Warrington.
• 1769: The water frame, a water-powered spinning frame, developed by Richard Arkwright (1732–1792).
• 1775–1779: Spinning mule invented by Samuel Crompton (1753–1827).
• 1784: Power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823).
• 1790: Sewing machine invented by Thomas Saint.^[22]
• 1808: The bobbinet, a development on the warp-loom, invented by John Heathcoat (1783–1861).
• 1856: Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye, discovered by William Henry Perkin (1838–1907).
• 1941: Polyester invented by John Rex Whinfield (1901–1966).

• Pre-1565: The pencil invented in Seathwaite, Borrowdale, Cumbria, using Grey Knotts graphite.
• 1588: Modern shorthand invented by Timothy Bright (1551?–1615).
• 1661: The postmark (called the "Bishop Mark") introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop (1611–1691/2).^[23]
• 1667: Tin can telephone, a device that conveyed sounds over an extended wire by mechanical vibrations, invented by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).^[24]
• 1714: Patent for an apparatus regarded as the first typewriter granted to Henry Mill (c. 1683–1771).^[25]
• 18th century: The Valentine's card first popularised.^[26]
• 1822: The mechanical pencil patented by Sampson Mordan (1790–1843) and John Isaac Hawkins (1772–1855).^[27]
• 1831: Electromagnetic induction & Faraday's law of induction. Began as a series of experiments by Michael Faraday (1791–1867); later became some of the first experiments in the discovery of radio waves and the development of radio.^[28]
• 1837: The first commercially successful electric telegraph developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) and Sir William Fothergill Cooke (1806–1879).^[29][30][31]
• 1837: Pitman Shorthand invented by Isaac Pitman (1813–1897).

• 1840: Uniform Penny Post and postage stamp invented by Sir Rowland Hill (1795–1879).^[32]
• 1843: The Christmas card introduced commercially by Sir Henry Cole (1808–1882).^[33]
• 1873: Discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith (1828–1891). Smith's work led to the invention of photoelectric cells (solar panels), including those used in the earliest television systems.
• 1879: The first radio transmission, using a spark-gap transmitter (achieving a range of approximately 500 metres), made by David E. Hughes (1831–1900).
• 1888: The world's first moving picture film produced by Louis Le Prince (1841 – vanished 16 September 1890) of Roundhay Garden, Leeds Bridge.
• 1897: The world's first radio station was located at The Needles Batteries on the western tip of the Isle of Wight; it was set up by Marconi.^[34][35]
• 1899: The world's first colour motion picture film produced by Edward Raymond Turner (1873–1903).
• 1902: Proposition by Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) of the existence of the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, a layer of ionised gas that reflects radio waves around the Earth's curvature.
• 1912: Development of radio communication pioneered by William Eccles (1875–1966).
• 1914: The world's first automatic totalisator invented by English-born George Julius (1873–1946).
• 2 December 1922: Mechanical scanning device (a precursor to modern television) demonstrated in Sorbonne, France by Englishman Edwin Belin.
• 1930: The Plessey company in England began manufacturing the Baird Televisor receiver: the first television receiver sold to the public.
• 1931: Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo invented at EMI in Hayes, Middlesex by Alan Blumlein (1903–1942).^[36]
• 1933: The 405-line television system (the first fully electronic television system used in regular broadcasting) developed at EMI in Hayes, Middlesex by Alan Blumlein (1903–1942), under the supervision of Sir Isaac Shoenberg.
• 1936: The world's first regular public broadcasts of high-definition television began from Alexandra Palace, North London by the BBC Television Service.
• 1930s: Radar pioneered at Bawdsey Manor by Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973) and Englishman Henry Tizard (1885–1939).
• 1945: The concept of geostationary satellites for the use of telecommunications relays popularised by Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008).
• 1964 onwards: Use of fibre optics in telecommunications pioneered by Englishman George Hockham (1938–2013) and Chinese-born Charles K. Kao.
• Late 1960s: Development of the long-lasting materials that made liquid crystal displays possible. Team headed by Sir Brynmor Jones; developed by Scotsman George Gray and Englishman Ken Harrison in conjunction with the Royal Radar Establishment and the University of Hull, who ultimately discovered the crystals used in LCDs.^[37]
• 1970: The MTV-1, the first near pocket-sized handheld television, developed by Sir Clive Sinclair (1940–2021).
• 1973: First transmissions of the Teletext information service made by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
• 1992: Clockwork radio invented by Trevor Baylis (1937–2018).^[38]
• 3 December 1992: The world's first text/SMS message ("Merry Christmas") sent over the Vodafone GSM network by Neil Papworth (born 1969).
• 2016: Holographic TV device created by the BBC.^[39]

• 1822: The Difference Engine, an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions, proposed by Charles Babbage (1791–1871).^[40]
• 1837: The Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, designed by Charles Babbage (1791–1871).^[40]
• 1842: The person regarded as the first computer programmer was Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), only legitimate child of the poet Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth.^{[41][42][43][44]}
• 1842: First programming language, the Analytical Engine order code, produced by Charles Babbage (1791–1871) and Ada Lovelace (1815–1852).
• 1854: Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic, conceived by George Boole (1815–1864).
• 1912: Argo system, the world's first electrically powered mechanical analogue computer, invented by Arthur Pollen (1866–1937).
• 1918: The flip-flop circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory (Random-access memory) in computers, invented by William Eccles (1875–1966) and F. W. Jordan (1882–?).
• 1936–1937: The Universal Turing machine invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954).^[45] The UTM is considered to be the origin of the stored programme computer used in 1946 for the "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears John von Neumann's name: the Von Neumann architecture.
• 1939: The Bombe, a device used by the British to decipher German secret messages during World War II, invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954).^[45]
• 1943–1944: The Colossus computer – the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer – invented by Tommy Flowers (1905–1988).^[46]
• 1946–1950: ACE and Pilot ACE invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954).^[45]
• 1946–1947: The Williams tube, a cathode ray tube used to store electronically (500 to 1,000 bits of) binary data, developed by Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977) and Tom Kilburn (1921–2001).
• 1948: The Manchester Baby – the world's first electronic stored-programme computer – built by Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977) and Tom Kilburn (1921–2001) at the Victoria University of Manchester.^[47]
• 1949: The Manchester Mark 1 computer developed by Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977) and Tom Kilburn (1921–2001); historically significant because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers.
• 1949: EDSAC – the first complete, fully functional computer inspired by the von Neumann architecture, the basis of every modern computer – constructed by Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010).
• Late 1940s/early 1950s: The integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, conceptualised and built by Geoffrey Dummer (1909–2002).
• February 1951: The Ferranti Mark 1 (a.k.a. the Manchester Electronic Computer), the world's first successful commercially available general-purpose electronic computer, invented by Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977) and Tom Kilburn (1921–2001).
• 1951: The first known recordings of computer generated music played on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer using a programme designed by Christopher Strachey (1916–1975).
• 1951: LEO made history by running the first business application (payroll system) on an electronic computer for J. Lyons and Co. Under the advice of Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010), LEO was designed by John Pinkerton (1919–1997) and David Caminer (1915–2008).
• 1951: Concept of microprogramming developed by Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010) from the realisation that the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialised computer programme in high-speed ROM.
• 1952: Autocode developed by Alick Glennie (1925–2003) for the Manchester Mark 1 computer; Autocode is regarded as the first computer compiler.
• 1952: The first graphical computer game, OXO or Noughts and Crosses, programmed on the EDSAC at Cambridge University as part of a Ph.D. thesis by A.S. Douglas (1921–2010).
• 1952: First trackball built by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor (1908–1996); invented 1947 by Ralph Benjamin.
• 1956 onwards: Metrovick 950, the first commercial transistor computer, built by the Metropolitan-Vickers Company of Manchester.
• 1958: EDSAC 2, the first computer to have a microprogrammed (Microcode) control unit and a bit slice hardware architecture, developed by a team headed by Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010).
• 1961: The Sumlock ANITA calculator, the world's first all-electronic desktop calculator, designed and built by the Bell Punch Company of Uxbridge.
• 1962: The Atlas computer – arguably the world's first supercomputer, and fastest computer in the world until the American CDC 6600 – developed by a team headed by Tom Kilburn (1921–2001). Introduced modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, instruction pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory, and paging.
• Late 1960s: Denotational semantics originated in the work of Christopher Strachey (1916–1975), a pioneer in programming language design.
• 1970: Packet switching co-invented by Welsh engineer Donald Davies (1924–2000) and Polish-born Paul Baran; it was Davies who coined the term packet switching at the National Physical Laboratory in London.
• 1972: The Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator, produced by Sir Clive Sinclair (1940–2021).
• 1979: The first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass, designed by Bill Moggridge (1943–2012).
• 1979: Digital audio player (MP3 Player) invented by Kane Kramer (born 1956). His first investor was Sir Paul McCartney.
• 1980–1982: Home computers the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum produced by Sir Clive Sinclair (1940–2021).
• 1981: The Osborne 1 – the first commercially successful portable computer, precursor to the laptop computer – developed by English-American Adam Osborne (1939–2003).
• 1982: 3D Monster Maze, widely considered the first survival horror computer game, developed from an idea by J. K. Greye and programmed by Malcolm Evans (b. 1944).
• 1984: The world's first pocket computer, the (Psion Organiser), launched by London-based Psion PLC.
• 1984: Elite, the world's first computer game with 3D graphics, developed by David Braben (born 1964) and Ian Bell (born 1962).
• 1985: ARM architecture introduced by Cambridge computer manufacturer Acorn Computers; the ARM CPU design is the microprocessor architecture of 98% of mobile phones and every smartphone.^[48]
• 1989: World Wide Web invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955).^[49]
• 1989: HTTP application protocol and HTML markup language developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955).
• 1989: Launch of the first PC-compatible palmtop computer, the (Atari Portfolio), designed by Ian H. S. Cullimore.
• 1989: First touchpad pointing device developed for London-based Psion PLC's Psion MC 200/400/600/WORD Series.
• 1990: The world's first web browser invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955). Initially called WorldWideWeb, it ran on the NeXTSTEP platform, and was renamed Nexus in order to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web.
• 1990: The world's first web server invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Initially called WWWDaemon, it ran on the NeXTSTEP platform and was publicly released in 1991; later it evolved and was known as CERN httpd.
• 1991 onwards: Linux kernel development and maintenance were greatly helped by English-born Andrew Morton (born 1959) and Alan Cox (born 1968).
• 2002: Wolfram's 2-state 3-symbol Turing machine proposed by London-born Stephen Wolfram (born 1959).
• 2012: Launch of the Raspberry Pi, a modern single-board computer for education, designed and built by Cambridgeshire-based charity Raspberry Pi Foundation.^[50]

• 1836: Marsh test (used for detecting arsenic poisoning) invented by James Marsh (1794–1846).
• 1888–1895: Fingerprint classification method developed by Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911); a breakthrough in forensic science.
• 1910: First use of wireless telegraphy in the arrest of a criminal, Dr Crippen.^[51]
• 1984: DNA fingerprints are discovered by Alec Jeffreys (born 1950).^[52]
• 1987: Process of DNA profiling developed by Alec Jeffreys (born 1950).^[52]
• 1991: Iris recognition algorithm invented by Swede John Daugman working at the University of Cambridge.
• 1995: World's first national flop DNA database developed: National DNA Database.

• 1605: Bacon's cipher devised by Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626).
• 1854: The Playfair cipher, the first literal digraph substitution cipher, invented by Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875).^[31]
• 1941: Codebreaker Bill Tutte (1917–2002) developed the Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, which Hitler used to communicate with his generals in World War II.
• 1973: Clifford Cocks (born 1950) first developed what came to be known as the RSA cipher at GCHQ, approximately three years before it was rediscovered by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman at MIT.^[53]

• 1327-1356: The first astronomical clock in Europe (before the famous prague astronomical clock, designed and engineered by Jan Sindel, a medieval Czech polymath and priest) came from medieval England, where it was designed and engineered by the medieval English polymath and abbot, Richard of Wallingford, whose contributions to mechanical engineering are very relevant till this very day. Richard of Wallingford also engineered astronomical calculating devices and machinery such as the albion and the rectangulus. The rectangulus was an astronomical instrument made by Richard of Wallingford around 1326. Dissatisfied with the limitations of existing astrolabes, Richard developed the rectangulus as an instrument for spherical trigonometry and to measure the angles between planets and other astronomical bodies.[1][2] The Albion is an astronomical instrument invented by Richard of Wallingford at the beginning of the 14th century.[5] It has various functional uses such as that of the equatorium for planetary and conjunction computations. It can calculate when eclipses will occur. The Albion is made up of 18 different scales which makes it extremely complex in comparison to the equatorium. His expertise in astronomy, mathematics, mechanical engineering, horology while also being a prominent catholic theologian is genuinely incredible and innovative.
• 1600: The first electrical measuring instrument, the electroscope, invented by William Gilbert (1544–1603).
• 1676–1678: First working universal joint devised by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).
• 1698: First working steam pump invented by Thomas Savery (c. 1650–1715).^[54]
• 1709: First coke-consuming blast furnace developed by Abraham Darby I (1678–1717).^[54]

• 1712: Atmospheric steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729).^[54][55]
• 1739: Screw-cutting lathe invented by Henry Hindley (1701–1771).
• 1780: Modified version of the Newcomen engine (the Pickard engine) developed by James Pickard (dates unknown).
• 1781: The Iron Bridge, the first metal bridge, cast and built by Abraham Darby III (1750–1789).^[54]
• 1791: The first true gas turbine invented by John Barber (1734–1801).
• 1796–97: The first iron-framed building (and therefore forerunner of the skyscraper) – Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury, Shropshire – built by Charles Bage (1751–1822).
• 1800: First industrially practical screw-cutting lathe developed by Henry Maudslay (1771–1831).
• 1806: The Fourdrinier machine, a papermaking machine, invented by Henry Fourdrinier (1766–1854).
• 1823: First internal combustion engine to be applied industrially patented by Samuel Brown (?–1849).
• 1826: Continuous track (under the name "universal railway") patented by Sir George Cayley (1773–1857).
• 1830: First (toroidal, closed-core) electric transformer invented by Michael Faraday (1791–1867).^[56]
• 1831: First electrical generator (or dynamo), the Faraday disk, invented by Michael Faraday.^[56]
• 1834–1878: Water and sewerage systems for over thirty cities across Europe designed by William Lindley (1808–1900).
• 1837: Kingston valve is introduced by engineer John Kingston.^[57]
• 1840s: The linear motor, a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor, proposed by Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875); 1940s: developed by Eric Laithwaite (1921–1997).^[31]

• 1841: Widely accepted standard for screw threads devised by Joseph Whitworth (1803–1887).
• 1842: The adjustable spanner invented by Edwin Beard Budding (1796–1846).
• 1845: Hydraulic crane developed by William Armstrong (1810–1900); in 1863, Armstrong also built the first house in the world powered by hydroelectricity, at Cragside, Northumberland.
• 1846: The first fireproof warehousing complex – Albert Dock, Liverpool – designed by Jesse Hartley (1780–1860).
• 1848: The Francis turbine developed by James B. Francis (1815–1892), born near Witney, Oxfordshire.
• 1862: The invention of Plastic by Alexander Parkes (1813–1890)^[58]
• 1868: First commercial steel alloy produced by Robert Forester Mushet (1811–1891).
• 1869–1875: Crookes tube, the first cathode ray tube, invented by William Crookes (1832–1919).^[54]
• 1871: First enclosed wind tunnel invented, designed and operated by Francis Herbert Wenham (1824–1908).^[17]
• 1872: The Carey Foster bridge, a type of bridge circuit