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