Inventions and Inventors (20th century onwards)

1903, Airplane, Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright, American


1905, Diode rectifier tube (radio), Sir John Ambrose Fleming, British


1907, Triode amplifier tube (radio), Lee De Forest, American


1911, Air conditioning, W.H. Carrier, American


1916, Browning gun (automatic rifle), John Moses Browning, American


1916, Gas-filled incandescent lamp, Irving Langmuir, American


1916, X-ray tube, William David Coolidge, American


1922, Insulin, Sir Frederick Grant Banting, Canadian


1922-26, Sound motion pictures, T.W. Case, American


1923, Television iconoscope, Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, American


1925, Quick-frozen food, Clarence Birdseye, American


1925, Television image dissector tube, Philo Taylor Farnsworth, American


1926, Liquid-fuel rocket, Robert Hutchings Goddard, American


1928, Penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming, British


1930, Nylon (fiber-forming synthetic polyamides), Wallace Hume Carothers, American


1930, Modern gas-turbine engine, Sir Frank Whittle, British


1931, Cyclotron, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, American


1931, Differential analyzer (analogue computer), Vannevar Bush, American


1932, Van de Graaff generator, Robert Jemison Van de Graaff, American


1933, Frequency modulation (FM), Edwin Howard Armstrong, American


1939, DDT, Paul Muller, Swiss


1939, Helicopter, Igor Sikorsky, American


1942, Guided missile, Wernher von Braun, German


1942, Nuclear reactor, Enrico Fermi, American


1942, Xerography, Chester Carlson, American


1946, Electronic digital computer, John Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W. Mauchly, American


1947, Holography, Dennis Gabon, English


1947, Microwave oven, Percy L. Spencer, American


1947, Holography, Dennis Gabon, English


1948, Transistor, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Shockley, American


1950, Color television, Peter Carl Goldmark, American


1955, Carbon dating, W.F. Libby, American


1955, Polio vaccine, polio, Salk, American, oral polio vaccine by Sabin, American


1956, Hovercraft, Christopher Cockerell, English


1959, Integrated circuit, Jack Kilby Robert Noyce, American


1960, Laser, Charles Hard Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, and Gordon Gould, American


1964, Liquid-crystal display, George Heilmeier, American


1966, Artificial heart (left ventricle), Michael Ellis DeBakey, American


1967, Human heart transplant, Christiaan Neethling Barnard, South Africa


1976, Supercomputer, J.H. Van Tassel and Seymour Cray, American


1978, Jarvik-7 artificial heart, Robert K. Jarvik, American


1980, Compact Disk Digital Audio, Philips and Sony, Dutch and Japanese


1992, World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, English