Inventions Events

1483 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Parachute
Some think that a form of a primitive parachute was mentioned by Chinese texts 21 centuries ago. In 9th century Abbas Ibn Firnas and Ali Ben Isa (of Arabic origin) also created one of the...
1485 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Giant Crossbow
Leonardo’s project for a giant crossbow is found in a number of sheets in the Codex Atlanticus and Fol 149r shows the most well-defined and complete drawing. The effort put into the de...
1485 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Scythed Chariot
The scythed chariot is potentially one of the most lethal battlefield weapons and has ancient origins, though Leonardo noted their propensity to damage friend as readily as foe. The drawi...
1485 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Tank
Leonardo probably drew this model of a war machine for a presentation to Ludovico il Moro, “The Moor”, Duke of Milan, around 1485. The drawing in the original manuscript therefore appears...
1487
to 1489
Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Armored Vessel
This armoured assault vessel is probably one of the projects that Leonardo presented to Ludovico il Moro, “the Moor”, Duke of Milan, in order to obtain a commission as a military engineer...
1488
to 1489
Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Flying Machine
Leonardo studied mechanical wings for a long time and this is a reconstruction of one of the many projects for a flying machine documented in Manuscript B. In his fascination with flyi...
1488
to 1490
Leonardo Sketches the Design for a Double-Decker Bridge
Leonardo’s idea for a double-deck bridge is surprisingly modern. It recalls the function of bridges in some modern metropolis where the two-way flow of traffic is arranged on different le...
1490 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for an Adding Machine
On February 13, 1967 an amazing discovery was made by American scientists working in the National Library of Spain, Madrid. They had chanced upon 2 unknown works of Leonardo da Vinci, kno...
1493 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for the "Aerial Screw"
The first studies on helicopters were well in advance of the first airplanes. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with having first thought of a machine for vertical flight, the "airscrew," the...
1500 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for a Machine Gun
In Leonardo's notebooks there is an array of war machines which includes a tank to be propelled by two men powering crank shafts. Although the drawing itself looks quite finished, the mec...
1502 Leonardo da Vinci Sketches the Design for the Golden Horn Bridge
In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge over the Horn as part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Bayezid II. The vision was resurrecte...
1809 May 5 Mary Kies Receives the First Patent by a Woman in US
Mary Dixon Kies (March 21, 1752 – 1837) was an early 19th-century American who was the first recipient of a patent granted to a woman by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, on ...
1832 Jun 14 Nicolaus Otto is Born
Nikolaus August Otto (14 June 1832, Holzhausen an der Haide, Nassau - 26 January 1891, Cologne) was the German inventor of the first internal-combustion engine to efficiently burn fuel di...
1854 Four-Stroke Engine is Patented
The four-stroke or Otto cycle was patented by Felice Malteucci and Eugene Barsanti in 1854 and is used commonly today in the internal combustion engines of construction machinery, trucks,...
1857 Joseph Gayetty Invents Modern Commercial Toilet Paper
Gayetty's paper, first introduced in 1857, was available as late as the 1920's. Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, somewhat like Kleenex boxes. Original advert...
1860 Lenoir Patents First Internal Combustion Two-Stroke Engine
By 1859, Lenoir's experimentation with electricity led him to develop the first internal combustion engine, a single-cylinder two-stroke engine which burnt a mixture of coal gas and air i...
1867 May 7 Alfred Nobel Obtains a Patent for Dynamite in England
Dynamite is an explosive material based on the explosive potential of nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth (kieselgur: United States spelling; kieselguhr: UK spelling) or ano...
1876 Otto Builds his First Functioning Four-Stroke Engine
Though Otto had great success with his atmospheric engines, the really reliable and effective engine was not yet found. Otto was looking already for a long time for a solution of the prob...
1900 Oct 5 Flight of 1900 Wright Glider
The 1900 glider was the Wrights’ first piloted aircraft. First flight-tested at Kitty Hawk in the fall of that year, it incorporated the wire-braced biplane structure and wing-warping con...
1901 Jul 27 Flight of 1901 Wright Glider
The 1901 Wright Glider was the second of the brothers' experimental gliders. They tested it over the Kill Devil Hills, four miles south of Kitty Hawk. The glider was similar to the 1900 v...
1902 Sep 23 Flight of 1902 Wright Glider
The 1902 Wright Glider was the third free-flight glider built by the brothers. This was their first glider to incorporate yaw control by use of a rear rudder, and its design led directly ...
1903 Dec 17 Wright Brothers First Flight
On December 17, 1903, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, named Wilbur and Orville Wright, were successful in flying an airplane they built. Their powered aircraft flew for 12 seconds above t...
1904 Wrights build Flyer II
The Flyer II was the second powered aircraft built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, in 1904. The design of the Flyer II was very similar to the original 1903 Flyer, but with a slightly more ...
1904 Jan 5 Lizzie Magie is Granted US Patent for The Landlord's Game (Monopoly)
Elizabeth "Lizzie" J. Phillips nee Magie (1866–1948) was the games inventor of The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly. Magie first made the game, known as "The Landlord's Game"...
1905 Jun 23 First Flight with Flyer III
The Wright Flyer III was the third powered aircraft built by the Wright Brothers. Orville Wright made the first flight with it on June 23, 1905. The Flyer III had an airframe of spruce co...
1906 May 22 Wright Brothers Patent Granted
During their experiments of 1902 the Wrights succeeded in controlling their glider in all three axes of flight: pitch, roll and yaw. Their breakthrough discovery was the simultaneous use ...
1908 Wrights Sign Contract with a French Company and the U.S. Army
The Wright brothers made no flights at all in 1906 and 1907 while they pursued fitful negotiations with the U.S. and European governments. While grounded they experimented with a pontoon ...
1911 Henry Ginaca invents machine (the "Ginaca Machine") that automated the peeling and coring of pineapples
A Dole engineer, Henry Ginaca, invents a machine that peels, cores and cuts pineapple at the speed of 80 to 100 pineapples per minute.
1969 Gary Starkweather Invents the Laser Printer
The laser printer was invented at Xerox in 1969 by researcher Gary Starkweather, who had an improved printer working by 1971 and incorporated into a fully functional networked printer sys...
1970 First Dot Matrix Printer Introduced to Market
The LA30 was a 30 character/second dot matrix printer introduced in 1970 by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts. It printed 80 columns of uppercase-only 5x7 dot matrix...
2010 May 20 Geneticist Craig Venter Says Team has Created First Synthetic Cell
Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products li...