The flushing toilet
Sir John Harington invented the flushing toilet for his own manor house in Somerset and his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, requested one […]
Category: Inventions
The mackintosh (mac)
A ‘mac’ is a generic name for a waterproof coat, shortened from ‘mackintosh’. In the early 19th century Charles Macintosh (no ‘k’), […]
Concorde
The concept of a supersonic aeroplane was first discussed in Britain in the late 1950s. By 2003, after forty years of having […]
Tarmac
There were three people involved in the invention of tarmac (or tarmacadam), not counting John McAdam (1756-1836) from Ayrshire, who had previously […]
Pitman shorthand
Sir Isaac Pitman of Wiltshire, England, invented the Pitman shorthand system in 1837 when he was 24. He was an English teacher […]
The Bessemer Process
Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-98), born in Hertfordshire and mainly self-educated, gave his name to the Bessemer steel process and the Bessemer converter, […]
Alan Turing
Publicly recognised as a war hero long after his death, Alan Mathison Turing was born in London in 1912 and by age […]
Railways
It is said that the railways were the supreme achievement of the Victorian era in Britain. Cornishman Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) was the […]
Red buses
Red buses are a feature of the London street scene and an integral part of the public transport system, although they are […]
The Dyson
The Dyson vacuum cleaner was invented by Sir James Dyson (1947-) from Norfolk. It was the first machine to combine the two […]
Cash machines & PINs
Cash machines, or Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), were invented by James Goodfellow (1937-) of Renfrewshire. His employer, Kelvin Hughes of Glasgow, asked […]
The first postmarks
The very first postmark in the world was the invention of Colonel Henry Bishopp (or Bishop or Bisshopp) (1605-91) in 1661. He […]