Inventions Category
Parkesine, the first plastic
The motivation behind the first plastic was to conserve natural resources, such as rubber and timber, and…
Rawlplugs
When the British Museum asked their local building contractor, Rawlings Brothers, to attach electrical fittings to the…
The lawnmower
Edwin Beard Budding (1796-1846) from Gloucestershire was a mechanical engineer with a knack for devising improvements, repairs…
Tinned food
Northumberland-born Bryan Donkin (1768-1855) was an extraordinarily creative engineer whose inventions included the world’s first commercial canning…
The London Underground
The London Underground, or ‘the Tube’, was the world’s first subterranean railway network and without it and…
The toothbrush
William Addis (1734-1808) from London is the protagonist of a story about the invention of the toothbrush…
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Londoner Sir Peter Mansfield (1933-2017) was among several developers of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technique and…
Colossus
The ten Colossus machines built at Bletchley Park during WW2 were the first electronic programming computers, albeit…
Jethro Tull’s seed drill
Jethro Tull (1674-1741) was born into a wealthy farming family in Berkshire. He began a career in…
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) certainly had a penchant for ‘big’ and ‘first’ achievements, epitomised in the iconic…
Float glass
Plate glass was initially manufactured in the UK in the thirteenth century by a method which produced…
Logarithms
One of the biggest leaps in mathematics was the invention of logarithms by Edinburgh-born John Napier (1550-1617).…