Engineering

Engineering

1600: The first electrical measuring instrument, the electroscope, invented by William Gilbert (1544–1603).

1676–1678: First working universal joint devised by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).

1698: First working steam pump invented by Thomas Savery (c. 1650–1715).

1709: First coke-consuming blast furnace developed by Abraham Darby I (1678–1717).

1712: Atmospheric steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729).

1739: Screw-cutting lathe invented by Henry Hindley (1701–1771).

1770s: Continuous track first conceived by Anglo-Irish Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817).

1780: Modified version of the Newcomen engine (the Pickard engine) developed by James Pickard (dates unknown).

1781: The Iron Bridge, the first metal bridge, cast and built by Abraham Darby III (1750–1789).

1791: The first true gas turbine invented by John Barber (1734–1801).

179697: The first iron-framed building (and therefore forerunner of the skyscraper) – Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury, Shropshire – built by Charles Bage (1751–1822).

1800: First industrially practical screw-cutting lathe developed by Henry Maudslay (1771–1831).

1806: The Fourdrinier machine, a papermaking machine, invented by Henry Fourdrinier (1766–1854).

1823: First internal combustion engine to be applied industrially patented by Samuel Brown (?-1849).

1826: Continuous track (under the name “universal railway”) patented by Sir George Cayley (1773–1857).

1830: First (toroidal, closed-core) electric transformer invented by Michael Faraday (1791–1867).

1831: First Electrical generator (or dynamo), the Faraday disk, invented by Michael Faraday.

1834–1878: Water and sewerage systems for over thirty cities across Europe designed by William Lindley (1808–1900).

1840s: The linear motor, a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor, proposed by Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875); 1940s: developed by Eric Laithwaite (1921–1997).

1841: Widely accepted standard for screw threads devised by Joseph Whitworth (1803–1887).

1842: The adjustable spanner invented by Edwin Beard Budding (1796–1846).

1845: Hydraulic crane developed by William Armstrong (1810–1900); in 1863, Armstrong also built the first house in the world powered by hydroelectricity, at Cragside, Northumberland.

1846: The first fireproof warehousing complex – Albert Dock, Liverpool – designed by Jesse Hartley (1780–1860).

1848: The Francis turbine developed by James B. Francis (1815–1892), born near Witney, Oxfordshire.

1868: First commercial steel alloy produced by Robert Forester Mushet (1811–1891).

1869–1875: Crookes tube, the first cathode ray tube, invented by William Crookes (1832–1919).

1871: First enclosed wind tunnel invented, designed and operated by Francis Herbert Wenham (1824–1908).

1872: The Carey Foster bridge, a type of bridge circuit, invented by Carey Foster (1835–1919).

1880–1883: The Wimshurst machine, an Electrostatic generator for producing high voltages, developed by James Wimshurst (1832–1903).

1884: Steam turbine invented by Charles Algernon Parsons (1854–1913).

1885: Compression ignition engine (a.k.a. the diesel engine) invented by Herbert Akroyd Stuart (1864–1927).

1886: Prototype hot bulb engine or heavy oil engine built by Herbert Akroyd Stuart (1864–1927).

1889: Two-stroke engine invented by Joseph Day (1855–1946).

1890: Opening of the Forth Bridge – monumental cantilever railway bridge, and icon of Scotland – designed and engineered by English civil engineers Benjamin Baker (1840–1907) and John Fowler (1817–1898).

1902: Disc brakes patented by Frederick W. Lanchester (1868–1946).

1904: Vacuum tube (or valve) invented by John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945).

1907: First reported observation of electroluminescence from a diode by H. J. Round (1881–1966); Round’s discovery led to the creation of the light-emitting diode.

1917 onwards: Radio guidance systems pioneered by Archibald Low (1888–1956).

1935: Arnold Frederic Wilkins (1907–1985) contributed to the development of radar.

1940: Cavity magnetron improved by John Randall (1905–1984) and Harry Boot (1917–1983); consequently a critical component in microwave ovens and some radar.

Late-1940s/early 1950s: The microchip invented by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer (1909–2002).

1963: High strength carbon fibre invented at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1963. January 1969: Carr Reinforcements (Stockport, England) wove the first carbon fibre fabric in the world.

2007: The RepRap Project, the first self-replicating 3D Printer, developed at the University of Bath.