Category: Inventions

Sir John Harington invented the flushing toilet for his own manor house in Somerset and his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, requested one for herself when she visited him in 1592. However, this did not become a brilliant business opportunity for Harington, whose main interest was writing. People continued to use their chamber pots for many years after that.

Eventually, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the population in burgeoning cities, necessity stepped in. In 1775, Alexander Cummings patented the S-bend in a re-vamped version of Harington’s idea. With massive break-outs of cholera and typhoid, caused largely by dirty brown tap water, the authorities decided to build sewage systems. These were completed in the mid-19th century.

From that point on, manufacturers such as Twyford put flushing toilets into mass production. Thomas Crapper was the first manufacturer to have a toilet showroom but, contrary to popular belief, he did not actually invent the toilet.

(Image: Thomas Twyford Co. at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

A ‘mac’ is a generic name for a waterproof coat, shortened from ‘mackintosh’. In the early 19th century Charles Macintosh (no ‘k’), a chemist in Scotland, came up with a process for sandwiching rubber between two layers of fabric. He patented his rubberised material in 1823 and his company used it to make coats that were glued and taped together at the seams. The problem was that these first macs were heavy, stiff and tended to melt in hot sun!

Meanwhile, Thomas Hancock in England also had a company working on rubber goods, including recycling rubber left-overs. Macintosh and Hancock started to collaborate as Hancock’s rubberised fabric was made in a way that solved the previous issues. Hancock filed a patent for his vulcanised rubber in 1843.

The British Army made use of this invention and, in rainy UK, macs were very popular with the public. Later competition saw a downturn in sales, but today, Mackintosh Ltd and Hancock Vulcanised Articles Ltd both operate in the up-market rainwear sector.

(Image: pixabay.com)

The concept of a supersonic aeroplane was first discussed in Britain in the late 1950s. By 2003, after forty years of having the stunningly beautiful sight of Concorde in our skies, the venture was over. This is a sad case of the onward march of technology, coupled with economic and environmental realities, seeing off an iconic, never-to-be-forgotten marvel.

Concorde was a joint project between British Airways and Sud Aviation of France. Assembly began in 1963 with Britain producing 60% of the engine and 40% of the airframe. The prototype made its appearance six years later and achieved Mach-1 (the speed of sound) the same year. Some people complained about the ‘sonic boom’ which could be heard from the ground.

Concorde was actually capable of flying at Mach-2 and inevitably broke speed records for crossing the Atlantic. However, it could only take one hundred passengers and the passenger-fuel ratio was very poor compared to the Boeing 747. Maintenance costs were high and sales to other countries flopped after the oil crises of the 1970s. In July 2000 a Concorde in Paris suffered a fatal crash when one of its tyres was punctured by debris. This was the final straw for the British and French governments.

(Image: Eduard Marmet at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

There were three people involved in the invention of tarmac (or tarmacadam), not counting John McAdam (1756-1836) from Ayrshire, who had previously come up with the ‘macadam’ road surfacing material. This was fine for horse-drawn carriages but not for cars, as the broken-up stones were loose and easily scattered.

The first person in the tarmac story is unknown, but it was his idea to cover up some spilled tar on a macadam road in Denbigh with slag. The second person was Edgar Purnell Hooley (1860-1942), from Glamorgan, who in 1901 saw how effective this covering had been in making that road durable enough for cars, albeit unintentionally. The next year he patented his own mixture, initially called ‘Tar Macadam’. This was smoothed over by a steam-roller.

The third man was Sir Alfred Hickman (1830-1910) from Staffordshire, who had sufficient finances and business acumen to buy Hooley’s company in 1905 and greatly expand its reach. Today, even surfaces which are not made of tarmac may be referred to as ‘the tarmac’, as it became so well-known.

(Top image: Peter Facey at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sir Isaac Pitman of Wiltshire, England, invented the Pitman shorthand system in 1837 when he was 24. He was an English teacher and saw the difficulties caused by the peculiarities of English spelling. He initially called his system ‘Sound-hand‘ because it is a phonetic system not based on spelling at all.

He gave similar sounds similar strokes, only differing in their thickness ~ for example, ‘v’ and ‘f’ are the same curved stroke but ‘v’ is heavier. Vowel sounds are represented by dots, dashes and other symbols, but an advanced writer can omit them altogether.

This invention helped people such as secretaries and reporters to write quickly, at speeds of 120 words per minute or more, without needing to think about spelling (and then decipher it later!). Pitman shorthand became the most widely used shorthand method in the world in the 1900s, but it has now been superseded by recording devices, as well as newer shorthand systems.

(Image: Flamenco108 at Wikimedia Commons / CC0)

Publicly recognised as a war hero long after his death, Alan Mathison Turing was born in London in 1912 and by age nine was already being hailed as a “genius” by his schoolteachers. He studied advanced science in his leisure time, took his mathematics degree at Cambridge and his PhD at Princeton.

He published a paper in 1936 on ‘computing machines’ and at the start of World War 2 in 1939 began working at Bletchley Park, where he and a small team of codebreakers used such machines on the enemy’s secret communications. He famously broke the Enigma code used for messages to German submarines in the Atlantic. It is estimated that this saved millions of lives and shortened the War by as much as two years.

He continued in the field of computer science and machine intelligence post-War at the National Physical Laboratory and the University of Manchester, and is often called ‘the father of modern computing’ for laying down the theory. Sadly, he took his own life in 1954. He is featured on the new £50 note first issued on his birthdate in 2021.

(Images LtoR: TedColes at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain & unknown at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

It is said that the railways were the supreme achievement of the Victorian era in Britain. Cornishman Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) was the first to build a series of short-range prototypes in 1801-4, developed from his portable steam engines that were used in the Cornish mines, but his engineering talent then turned in another direction. The world’s first operational railway lines were in fact opened in the north of England in 1825-6.

They provided cheap, fast transport for passengers and commerce alike. Railway systems were later exported to countries such as the USA, Australia, India and to the continent of Europe.

The railways changed daily lives. By the ingenuity of engineers like Stephenson, Brunel and Locke, trains opened up the whole country to one and all. Commuting into cities became a possibility, enabling families to live further out in newly-built suburbs. Seaside resorts enjoyed thousands more regular visitors and sports such as football were able to establish national leagues.

Initially there was some resistance from landowners, farmers and those who earned a living from the canals, but the advantages soon overcame this. There were, however, many fatal accidents in the early days, with previously unknown speeds of around 30mph catching some people unawares.

(Image: pxhere.com / CC0)

The Dyson vacuum cleaner was invented by Sir James Dyson (1947-) from Norfolk. It was the first machine to combine the two principles of:

• the cyclonic separation of dust from air using filters
• a collection chamber which could be detached, emptied and clicked back into position, instead of a collection bag.

Dyson had previously invented the ‘ballbarrow’ ~ a wheelbarrow that has a ball instead of a wheel ~ and in 2005 the ball was incorporated into his vacuum cleaner to improve manoeuvrability. However, the initial development in the late 1970s/early 1980s saw him produce more than 5,000 prototypes, with rejections from all the major vacuum cleaner manufacturers guarding their bag sales.

Eventually, in 1986, he started to sell his machine in Japan and the USA and today it is sold worldwide. ‘The Dyson’ is not a cheap appliance but quite a status symbol. In 2014 a robotic version was launched.

(Images LtoR: Royal Society at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 & William Clifford at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Cash machines,  or Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), were invented by James Goodfellow (1937-) of Renfrewshire. His employer, Kelvin Hughes of Glasgow, asked him to come up with a machine that could dispense cash at any time. Bank branches were only open on weekdays until 3pm, so there was a big demand for this type of facility.

There was a race to produce the first cash machine, but Goodfellow was the first to file a patent, which he did in May 1966. His machines were then launched by the National Westminster Bank in 1967. This was before the computer age, so Goodfellow had also invented a plastic card and Personal Identification Number (PIN) system which operated via punched holes.

Unfortunately, Goodfellow’s achievement has only recently been recognised. He did not make any money from it, but he did eventually receive an OBE in 2006 for services to banking. It was long thought that John Shepherd-Barron (1925-2010), born in British India, had been the inventor of the ATM, with Barclays Bank installing the first machines. The above image shows comedy actor Reg Varney (1916-2008) officially, as it was thought, becoming the first person to use a cash machine, also in 1967.

(Image: Robert Wade (Wadey) at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)