Inventors

What lands on a date

• 01-17 Benjamin Franklin · Printer-scientist who invented the lightning rod. source
• 01-19 James Watt · Instrument maker whose condenser made steam power efficient. source
• 01-30 Douglas Engelbart · Engineer who invented the mouse and networked computing. source
• 02-11 Thomas Edison · Prolific inventor who industrialized electric light. source
• 02-15 Cyrus McCormick · Inventor who industrialized grain harvesting. source
• 02-18 Alessandro Volta · Physicist who built the first electric battery. source
• 02-24 Thomas Newcomen · Ironmonger who built the first practical steam engine. source
• 02-29 Herman Hollerith · Statistician whose punched cards automated the census. source
• 03-03 Alexander Graham Bell · Speech teacher who patented the telephone. source
• 03-17 Gottlieb Daimler · Engineer who built the first high-speed petrol engine. source
• 03-18 Rudolf Diesel · Engineer who patented the compression-ignition engine. source
• 04-13 Richard Trevithick · Cornish engineer who ran the first steam locomotive. source
• 04-15 Leonardo da Vinci · Artist-engineer whose notebooks sketched flight and machines. source
• 04-16 Wilbur Wright · Elder Wright brother who helped achieve powered flight. source
• 04-25 Guglielmo Marconi · Italian inventor who developed practical radio telegraphy. source
• 04-27 Samuel Morse · Painter who developed the electric telegraph code. source
• 05-07 Edwin Land · Chemist who invented instant photography. source
• 06-09 George Stephenson · Railway engineer who built the Rocket locomotive. source
• 07-09 Elias Howe · Inventor of a practical lockstitch sewing machine. source
• 07-10 Nikola Tesla · Engineer whose AC systems electrified the world. source
• 07-12 George Eastman · Founder who made roll film and snapshot photography possible. source
• 07-30 Henry Ford · Manufacturer who built the moving assembly line. source
• 07-31 Stephanie Kwolek · Chemist who invented Kevlar aramid fibre. source
• 08-03 Elisha Otis · Mechanic whose safety brake made elevators viable. source
• 08-13 John Logie Baird · Scotsman who first demonstrated live television. source
• 08-19 Orville Wright · Younger Wright brother who piloted the first powered flight. source
• 08-19 Philo Farnsworth · Farm boy who devised electronic television. source
• 08-22 Denis Papin · Physicist who built an early steam digester. source
• 08-26 Lee de Forest · Engineer whose triode valve enabled amplification. source
• 10-21 Alfred Nobel · Chemist who invented dynamite and endowed the Nobel Prizes. source
• 10-24 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · Draper who built microscopes and first saw microbes. source
• 11-09 Hedy Lamarr · Actress whose frequency-hopping patent prefigured secure wireless. source
• 11-14 Robert Fulton · Engineer who made steamboats commercially practical. source
• 11-25 Karl Benz · Built the first practical automobile powered by an engine. source
• 12-08 Eli Whitney · Inventor of the cotton gin and interchangeable parts. source
• 12-09 Grace Hopper · Computing pioneer who built compilers and coined debugging lore. source
• 12-23 Richard Arkwright · Barber who mechanized cotton spinning. source
• 12-26 Charles Babbage · Mathematician who designed the Difference and Analytical Engines. source

The year rail

Some lives are known by year, not by day. Those entries are kept on a rail — never placed on a fabricated date.

• Archimedes' screw -250
• Hero's aeolipile 60
• Zhang Heng's seismoscope 132
• Cai Lun's paper 105
• Bi Sheng's movable type 1040
• Gutenberg's printing press 1440
• Lippershey's telescope 1608
• Janssen's microscope 1590