Category: Inventions

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 Pitman shorthand became the most widely used shorthand method in the world in the 1900s, but it has now been superseded by recording devices, as well as newer shorthand systems.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)

The very first postmark in the world was the invention of Colonel Henry Bishopp (or Bishop or Bisshopp) (1605-91) in 1661. He had bought the monopoly for delivering letters around the country and had become the first ‘Postmaster General’ in Britain.

He wanted a method of recording the date each letter was handed in to the post office. This was because of complaints from customers about delays in delivery. His ‘bishopmark’ provided the means of better organising the delivery schedules.

The bishopmarks were approximately half an inch diameter black circles with the month and the day inside. Each wooden stamper was chiselled individually in the first year and kept for re-use thereafter. Postmarks, as they later became known, have been used ever since.

(Image: Alwyn Ladell at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In 1959 the British Motor Company (BMC) launched the Mini to meet public demand for smaller cars with more economical petrol consumption. It was innovative not just on the exterior but also under the bonnet, having one of the first front-wheel-drive systems.

It was fun to drive, easy to park and it soon became a 1960s icon. The Mini Cooper S was the sporty version and it won the Monte Carlo Rally several times in that decade. Up until 2000, when production ceased, almost 5.4 million Minis had been sold in the UK and abroad.

Since 2000, BMW has owned the name and has rebranded it as the ‘MINI’. Their car has similar looks to the old Mini, and, in a nod to its British ancestor, has a Union Jack picture on its rear lights!

(Top image: Mark Brown at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Alan Dower Blumlein (1903-1942) was born in London and became a pioneer in the field of sound technology. He carried out work on standards for long-distance telecommunications and the reduction of cross-talk effects and filed a total of 128 patents. At EMI (Electric and Musical Industries) in Hayes, Middlesex, he invented stereo sound in 1931, devising techniques still in use today.

It is said that he was prompted by the abysmal sound distribution through speakers at a cinema! He realised that a new model of sound was needed which did not assume that two speakers represented two ears. His solution ~ to record two channels that are replayed simultaneously ~ received a prestigious recognition posthumously, with a Grammy Award in 2017. He was carrying out top secret research on aeronautical radar equipment during WW2 when his Halifax bomber aeroplane crashed in a field and he and the rest of the passengers were killed. Crucially, his work was recovered and was of immense importance in operations such as D-Day.

(Image: AlanBlumlein at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)