Category: Inventions

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) from Dorset was a polymath but lacked one skill, namely draughtmanship, and he was even frustrated with […]

The pneumatic tyre was invented twice, since the second claimant was unaware of a patent registered in 1846 in France and 1847 […]

John Kay (1704-c.80) from Lancashire and one of his six sons, Robert (1728-1802), made vital contributions to the Industrial Revolution in the […]

A fearsome sight for many, the hypodermic syringe was nevertheless an improvement on the animal bladder and hollow goose quill used experimentally […]

As one of history’s greatest seafaring nations, Britain has made many contributions to oceanography, with the marine chronometer being one of the […]

Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) from Gloucestershire is best known for the ‘Wheatstone bridge’, a device for measuring electrical resistance, though he can […]

For Yorkshireman Richard Clyburn (1796/7-1852) to become a consulting engineer in his early 30s, he must have shown impressive manual, technical and […]

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 there was a gradual move towards organised firefighting (initially by insurance companies, who instructed […]

Yorkshire-born Dr. John Venn (1834-1923) had two obsessions ~ logic and Cambridge University. His deep interest and skill in mathematics, probability and […]

The flash rate of Belisha beacons (0.75 seconds on, 0.75 seconds off) might have been chosen by a psychologist, as it is […]