Inventors 1900 to 1999

Inventors and their inventions from 1900 to 1999 have come to dominate our lives. Here are a few of the major inventions and their inventors from the Twentieth Century.

Orville and Wilbur Wright	Orville was at the controls of the world’s first powered flight while Wilbur observed (1903).
John Ambrose Fleming	Invented the diode - a vital part of radios and televisions (1904)
Christian Hulsmeyer	The first radar system used in shipping (1904)
Leo Baekeland	Inventor of plastic (1905)
Reginald Fessenden	Invented radio broadcasting (1906)
Mary Phelps Jacob	Invented the bra (1913)
Gidoen Sundback	Invented the zip (1913)
John Thompson	Invented the sub-machine gun (1920)
Frederick Banting / Charles Best	Isolated insulin (1921)
Karel Capek	Invented the first robot (1921)
Clarence Birdseye	Started the idea of frozen food (1924)
John Logie Baird	Invented the television - its first public demonstration was at Selfridges in London (1925)
Robert Goddard	Invented liquid fuel rocket (1926)
Alexander Fleming	Discovered penicillin and paved the way for antibiotics (1928)
Frank Whittle	The jet engine (1930)
Percy Shaw	Inventor of the cats eyes - a major factor in improved road safety (1934)
Laszlo Jose Biro	Invented the ball point pen (1938)
Igor Sikorsky	Inventor of the modern helicopter (1939)
Enrico Fermi	Built the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago (1942)
Willem Kolff	Invented the kidney dialysis machine (1944)
Percy LeBaron Spencer	Invented the microwave oven (1946)
George deMestral	Invented velcro (1948)
Carl Djerassi	Developed the contraceptive pill (1951)
Sir Christopher Cockerell	Invented the hovercraft (1955)
Jonas Salk	Made the vaccine for polio (1955)
Jack Kilby	Made the first microchip - the start of miniaturisation of technology (1958)
Wilson Greatbatch	Invented the first heart pacemaker (1960)
Douglas Engelbart	Invented the computer mouse (1964)
Stephanie Kwolek	Invented kevlar (1966)
Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman and James von Tassel	The portable calculator (1967)
George Gray	Invented the LCD and LED (1970)
Herbert Boyer	Pioneer of genetic engineering (1973)
Akio Morita	Inventor of the personal stereo (1979)
Tim Berners-Lee	Creator of the World Wide Web (1989)
Ian Wilmut	Headed team that produced the first cloned sheep - Dolly (1997)