best british inventions ever

7/27/2019 Best British Inventions Ever

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1. LIGHT BULBInvented: 1880 Inventor: Joseph Swan

Cheap and reliable electric lighting was a holy grail for 19th- century inventors. But didnt Thomas Edison get there first? No! He was beaten by to

it by Britains very own Joseph Swan. Swan got his patent - and started manufacturing and selling his bulbs - in 1880. The first bulbs lasted little

more than 12 hours but, unlike gas lamps, there was no flame or dirty smoke and they soon caught on.

2. CHOCOLATE BARInvented: 1847 Inventor: JS Fry & Sons

The first chocolate bar was created by JS Fry & Sons of Bristol in 1847. It was sold to the public as chocolate delicieux a manger delicious to eat

because, until this point, chocolate had been exclusively consumed as a drink. Frys mixed cocoa powder with sugar and cocoa butter, making a

product which stays solid at room temperature but melts in the mouth

3. ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHInvented: 1837 Inventors: Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke

The electric telegraph was a world-shrinking technology like no other. The first fully operational telegraph ran from 1839 between Paddingtonand West Drayton railway stations, but at first it was slow to catch on. That is, until New Years Day 1845 when the telegrap h system helped

catch murderer John Tawell. It was a sensation and telegraph cables were soon everywhere.

4. PNEUMATIC TYREInvented: 1887 Inventor: John Boyd Dunlop

In 1845, railway engineer Robert William Thomson patented the worlds first pneumatic tyres but there was no real market for them. Forty years

later, Dunlop came up with pneumatic tyres to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. This time around,

the invention handily coincided with the new bicycle craze.

5. WORLD WIDE WEBInvented: 1989 Inventor: Tim Berners-LeeNot to be confused with the internet, which is a system of linked computer networks, the worldwide web was invented by British computer

scientist Tim Berners-Lee (left). He created the first server in late 1990 and, on 6 August 1991, the web went live, with the first page explaining

how to search and how to set up a site. Berners-Lee gave his invention to the world for free.

6. SODA WATERInvented: 1772 Inventor: Joseph Priestley
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18th century clergyman and scientist Priestley invented carbonated water when he suspended a bowl of water above a beer vat at a brewery

near his home in Leeds. In 1772 he published a description of how to make carbonated water and just a few years later Johann Schweppe set up

Schweppes and began manufacturing fizzy drinks using Priestleys method.

7. HYPODERMIC SYRINGE (Inyecciones)Invented: 1853 Inventor: Alexander Wood

While the syringe itself has been known since ancient times, Woods innovation was to design a syringe that would allow drugs to be

administered intravenously without the patients skin having to be cut first. It is said he found inspiration in the sting of a honeybee. The

hypodermic syringe was a breakthrough in anesthetics.

8. REFLECTING TELESCOPEInvented: 1668 Inventor: Isaac Newton

As a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Isaac Newton took the idea of a reflecting telescope and turned it into reality. This huge leap

forward in telescope technology made astronomical observation much more accurate.

9. TELEPHONEPatented: 1876 Inventor: Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (right) patented his telephone model just hours before a rival inventor. The telephone came about thanks to a discovery

that a thin metal sheet vibrating in an electromagnetic field produces an electrical waveform that corresponds to the vibration.

The invention was first publically demonstrated in 1876 at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

10.TELEVISIONInvented: 1925 Inventor: John Logie Baird

Its hard to credit just one person with the invention of television, but its indisputable that John Logie Baird was the first to transmit moving

pictures in October 1925. But his mechanical system ultimately failed with a rival being developed at the same time able to produce a visiblysuperior picture. Baird, it was said at the time, was doomed to be the man who sows the seed but does not reap the harvest.

11.SYNTHETIC DYEInvented: 1856 Inventor: William Perkin

William Perkin was studying Chemistry when he discovered how to make synthetic dye mauveine. He was using alcohol to clean up some

chemical residue when he suddenly saw an intense purple colour appear. At that time, purple dye was one of the priciest. Perkin worked out how

to produce his new colour, patented it and set up a company to produce it.
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12.HIP REPLACEMENTInvented: 1962 Inventor: John Charnley

British surgeon John Charnley designed the first hip joint and, in 1962, performed the first successful hip-replacement operation. His design used

a femoral stem and ball made of steel and a hip socket made of Teflon, glued together using acrylic bone cement. Many improvements have

been made since but Charnley set the standard and today 80,000 hip replacements are performed in Britain each year.

13.WIND-UP RADIOInvented: 1991 Inventor: Trevor Baylis

In 1991, Trevor Baylis saw a television programme about Aids in Africa that said one way to stop its spread was for people to hear educational

information on the radio. So Baylis desined one that needed no batteries, running off an internal generator powered by a mainspring wound by a

hand crank. He was able to demonstrate it to Nelson Mandela and since then its been distributed all over Africa.

14.SAFETY BICYCLEInvented: 1885 Inventor: John Kemp Starley

The bicycle as we know it today was originally developed as the safety bicycle, because other bikes at the time including the penny-farthingwere extremely dangerous. The key to the new bicycle was the chain drive, which meant you could still go fast even though both wheels were

the same size. For most people it was arguably the most liberatinginvention of all time.

15.CEMENTInvented: 1824 Inventor: Joseph Aspdin

In 1824, Leeds bricklayer Joseph Aspdin invented and patented a method of making what he called Portland Cement the type thats most

widely used today. The process involved burning limestone, mixing it with clay and burning it again; the burning produced a much stronger

cement than just mixing limestone and clay. Aspdin called it Portland as he claimed the set mortar resembled the best limestone quarried from

Portland in Dorset.

16.ELECTRIC MOTORInvented: 1821 Inventer: Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday was working at the Royal Institution when he demonstrated electromagnetic rotation for the first time. A free-hanging wire was

dipped into a pool of mercury that had a fixed magnet in it. When an electric current was passed through the wire, it rotated around the magnet

the electricity produced a magnetic field around the wire, which interacted with the magnet in the mercury. This was the worlds first electric

motor.
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17.PHOTOGRAPHYInvented: 1835 Inventor: William Henry Fox Talbot

Its hard to say who was the inventor of photography the first fixed image was made by Joseph Nipce in 1826 but took eight hours to expose.

In 1835, Fox Talbot (right) made another breakthrough by using silver iodide on paper and found a way to produce a translucent negative that

could be used to make any number of positives by contact printing a system used until the advent of digital cameras.

18.COMPUTERInvented: 1812 Inventor: Charles Babbage

We know what you're thinking: it has to be American, surely? In fact the idea for the first programmable machine was dreamed up in 1812 by

London-born boffin Charles Babbage, who dedicated his life to actually building the thing. Thanks to a unfortunate series of personal and

financial problems, Babbage never got around to completing his Difference Engine - a feat finally accomplished in 1991, 120 years after his death.

The British are also credited with the invention of Colossus, the first electronic mechanical computer. It saw duty at Bletchley Park near Milton

Keynes where it helped to crack secret messages sent on Lorenz coding machines used by Nazi high command during WWII.

19.SEWAGE SYSTEMInvented: 1865 Inventor: Joseph Bazalgette

The creator of the London sewers, Joseph Bazalgette, may be remembered as more of an engineer than an inventor, but developing the largest

sewage system the world had ever seen in London changed life in the city completely. The previous system an open sewer tipped waste into

the Thames but this new invention pumped it eastwards out to sea. Bazalgette estimated the population increase of the next 100 years so the

system is still in use today.

20.TIN CANInvented: 1810 Inventor: Peter Durand

It was Frenchman Nicholas Appert who first preserved food by packing it into glass jars and cooking it for hours to sterilise it but British merchant

Peter Durand adopted the same method with the tin can. Initially a hammer and chisel were required to open the cans as the tin opener wasntpatented until 1855!

21.ATMInvented: 1967 Inventor: John Shepherd-Barron

John Shepherd-Barron first hit on the idea of a cash dispenser in the bath and secured a meeting with Barclays who signed up, installing the first

ATM outside their Enfield branch in 1967. It gave out a maximum of 10 after customers inserted special cheques that the machine could

recognise alongside a four-digit PIN number thats still in use today.
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best british inventions ever

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