English inventions and discoveries [Archive] - The Apricity Forum: A European Cultural Community

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11-08-2014, 01:27 PM

English/British inventions and discoveries

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Agriculture

Improved seed drill – Jethro Tull
Steam-driven ploughing engine – John Fowler
Pioneer of selective breeding and artificial selection – Robert Bakewell
Superphosphate or chemical fertilizer – John Bennet Lawes
Pioneer of the development in dairy farming systems – Rex Paterson
The first commercially successful light farm tractor – Dan Albone
Water desalination process – Sir Francis Bacon

Banking

Bank of Scotland Founded by John Holland (banker) in 1695

Clock making

Anchor escapement – Robert Hooke
First accurate atomic clock – Louis Essen
Balance spring – Robert Hooke
Balance wheel – Robert Hooke
Coaxial escapement – George Daniels
Grasshopper escapement, H1, H2, H3 and H4 watches (a watch built to solve the longitude measurement problem) – John Harrison
Gridiron pendulum – John Harrison
Lever escapement, the greatest single improvement ever applied to pocket watches – Thomas Mudge
Marine chronometer – John Harrison

Clothing manufacturing

Derby Rib (stocking manufacture) – Jedediah Strutt
Flying shuttle – John Kay
Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye – William Henry Perkin
Power loom – Edmund Cartwright
Spinning frame – John Kay
Spinning jenny – James Hargreaves
Spinning mule – Samuel Crompton
Polyester – John Rex Whinfield
Sewing machine – Thomas Saint in 1790
Water frame – Richard Arkwright
Stocking frame – William Lee
Warp-loom and Bobbinet – John Heathcoat

Communications

The postmark (called the "Bishop Mark"), introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop in 1661 and showed only the day and month of mailing in order to prevent the delay of the mail by carriers.
Uniform Penny Post, and postage stamp – Sir Rowland Hill
Christmas card – Sir Henry Cole
Valentines card – Modern card 18th century England
Pencil – Cumbria, England
Mechanical pencil – Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins in 1822.
Clockwork radio – Trevor Baylis
The first Radio transmission using a Spark Transmitter, achieving a range of approximately 500 metres. – David E. Hughes
Radar was pioneered at Bawdsey Manor by Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt and Englishman Henry Tizard in the 1930s.
Electromagnetic induction & Faraday's law of induction Began as a series of experiments by Faraday that later became some of the first ever experiments in the discovery of radio waves and the development of radio – Michael Faraday
Pioneer in the development of radio communication – William Eccles
Tin can telephone a device that conveyed sounds over an extended wire by mechanical vibrations – Robert Hooke 1667
The world's first radio station on the Isle of Wight
On 2 December 1922, in Sorbonne, France, Edwin Belin, an Englishman demonstrated a mechanical scanning device that was an early precursor to modern television
The Baird Televisor receiver - was made by Plessey in England from 1930 through the early 30s. It was the first television receiver sold to the public.
The first pocket sized handheld television, the MTV-1 – Sir Clive Sinclair
Pioneering work on the development of the long-lasting materials that made today's liquid crystal displays possible – Team headed by Sir Brynmor Jones and Developed by Scotsman George Gray and Englishman Ken Harrison In conjunction with the Royal Radar Establishment and the University of Hull
405-line television system was the first fully electronic television system used in regular broadcasting – Alan Blumlein
The world's first public broadcasts of high-definition television were made from Alexandra Palace, North London in 1936 – BBC Television Service
The first commercially successful electric telegraph – Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke in 1837
Pioneer of stereo – Alan Blumlein
Shorthand – Timothy Bright (1550/1-1615). Invented first modern shorthand
Pitman Shorthand – Isaac Pitman
Discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium. This discovery led to the invention of photoelectric cells (solar panels), including those used in the earliest television systems – Willoughby Smith in 1873
Proposed the existence of the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, a layer of ionised gas that reflects radio waves around the Earth's curvature – Oliver Heaviside
The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in 1992 – Neil Papworth
Typewriter – First patent for a device similar to a typewriter granted to Henry Mill in 1714.
the world's first automatic totalisator – George Julius
the world's first Color motion picture film – Edward Raymond Turner in 1899
pioneer in the use of fibre optics in telecommunications – Charles K. Kao and George Hockham
The originator of the concept of geostationary satellites for the use of telecommunications relays – Arthur C Clarke
Teletext Information Service – The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Computing

Analytical engine – Sir Charles Babbage
ACE and Pilot ACE – Alan Turing
ARM architecture The ARM CPU design is the microprocessor architecture of 98% of mobile phones and every smartphone.
Bombe – Alan Turing
Colossus computer Colossus computers were the first electronic digital programmable computers. They used vacuum tubes and binary representation of numbers – Tommy Flowers
Difference engine – Sir Charles Babbage
First programmer – Ada Lovelace
First Programming Language Analytical Engine ordercode – Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic – George Boole
World Wide Web – Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Developed HTTP and HTML – Tim Berners-Lee
Argo system the world's first electrically powered mechanical analogue computer (also called at the Argo Clock) – Arthur Pollen
Sumlock ANITA calculator the world's first all-electronic desktop calculator – Bell Punch Co
Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator – Sir Clive Sinclair
Osborne 1 The first commercially successful portable computer, the precursor to the Laptop computer – Adam Osborne
Designed what was the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass in 1979 – Bill Moggridge
Heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel – Andrew Morton & Alan Cox
Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum – Sir Clive Sinclair
Flip-flop circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory (Random-access memory) in computers – William Eccles and F. W. Jordan
Universal Turing machine – The UTM model is considered to be the origin of the "stored program computer" used by John von Neumann in 1946 for his "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears von Neumann's name: the von Neumann architecture, also UTM is considered the first operating system – Alan Turing
The development of packet switching co-invented by British engineer Donald Davies and American Paul Baran – National Physical Laboratory, London England
The first person to conceptualise the Integrated Circuit – Geoffrey W.A. Dummer
The first modern computer Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine – (SSEM), nicknamed Baby. Was the world's first stored-program computer. Developed by Frederic Calland Williams & Tom Kilburn
Williams tube – a cathode ray tube used to electronically store binary data (Can store roughly 500 to 1,000 bits of data) – Freddie Williams & Tom Kilburn
Manchester Mark 1 Historically significant computer because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers – Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn
Autocode regarded as the first ever computer compiler in 1952 for the Manchester Mark 1 computer – Alick Glennie
Developed the concept of microprogramming from the realisation that the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialised computer program in high-speed ROM – Maurice Wilkes in 1951
Ferranti Mark 1 – Also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer was the first computer to use the principles of early CPU design (Central processing unit) – Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn – Also the world's first successful commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.
The oldest known recordings of computer generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer – Christopher Strachey
EDSAC was the first complete, fully functional computer to use the von Neumann architecture, the basis of every modern computer – Maurice Wilkes
EDSAC 2 the successor to the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator or EDSAC. It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed (Microcode)control unit and a bit slice hardware architecture – Team headed by Maurice Wilkes
The first graphical computer game OXO on the EDSAC at Cambridge University – A.S. Douglas
The world's first computer game with 3D graphics – Elite Developed by David Braben and Ian Bell in 1984
Metrovick 950 was the first commercial transistor computer built in 1959 – Metropolitan-Vickers company
LEO Made history by running the first business application (payroll system) on an electronic computer in 1951 for J. Lyons and Co – Maurice Wilkes
Atlas Computer, it was arguably the world's first supercomputer and was the fastest computer in the world until the release of the American CDC 6600 Also This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory and paging – Team headed by Tom Kilburn
The world's first web browser called WorldWideWeb that ran on the NeXTSTEP platform. It was later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web – Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Digital audio player (MP3 Player) – Kane Kramer
Touchpad Pointing device – First developed for Psion PLC's Psion MC 200/400/600/WORD Series in 1989
Co-Inventor of the world's first trackball device – developed by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor
The world's first handheld computer (Psion Organiser) – Psion PLC
First PC-compatible palmtop computer (Atari Portfolio) – Ian Cullimore
Denotational semantics – Christopher Strachey pioneer in programming language design
Wolfram's 2-state 3-symbol Turing machine – Stephen Wolfram
Raspberry Pi, a modern single-board computer for education

Criminology

DNA fingerprinting – Sir Alec Jeffreys
The world's first national flop DNA database developed in 1995
Devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science – Francis Galton
Iris recognition – John Daugman
Chemist who developed the rabies infestationMarsh test for detecting arsenic poisoning – James Marsh

Cryptography

Codebreaker of the Lorenz cipher, which Hitler used to communicate with his generals in WW2 - Bill Tutte
Playfair cipher – Charles Wheatstone
Bacon's cipher – Sir Francis Bacon
RSA cipher – Clifford Cocks developed the RSA algorithm at GCHQ, approximately three years before it was independently developed by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman at MIT. The British government were not interested in using Cocks' algorithm, so it was classified until 1998, when it was revealed that he had developed RSA before Rivest et al.

Engineering

caterpillar track first conceived by Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Sir George Cayley patented a continuous track, which he called a "universal railway" by 1826 (The Mechanics' Magazine, 28 January 1826). He described it as a "cart that carries its own road".
Adjustable spanner – Edwin Beard Budding
Cavity magnetron – John Randall and Harry Boot critical component for Microwave generation in Microwave ovens and high powered Radios (Radar)
Carey Foster bridge – Carey Foster
Electric transformer – Michael Faraday
Electrical generator (dynamo) – Michael Faraday
First coke-consuming blast furnace – Abraham Darby I
First working universal joint – Robert Hooke
Produced the first commercial steel alloy in 1868 – Robert Forester Mushet
Crookes tube the first cathode ray tubes – William Crookes
First compression ignition engine aka the Diesel Engine – Herbert Akroyd Stuart
First working steam pump – Thomas Savery in 1698
Atmospheric steam engine – Thomas Newcomen in 1712
Modified version of the Newcomen steam engine (Pickard engine) – James Pickard
Steam turbine – Charles Algernon Parsons
High strength carbon fibre – Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1963. In January 1969, Carr Reinforcements (Stockport, England) wove the first carbon fibre fabric in the world
RepRap Project - The first self replicating 3D Printer, developed at the University of Bath
Contributed to the development of Radar – Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt and Englishman Arnold Frederic Wilkins
Disc brakes – Frederick W. Lanchester
Internal combustion engine – Samuel Brown
Fourdrinier machine – Henry Fourdrinier
Microchip – Geoffrey W.A. Dummer
light-emitting diode (did not invent the first visible light, only theorised) - H. J. Round
Francis turbine – James B. Francis
Gas turbine – John Barber (engineer)
Two-stroke engine – Joseph Day
Pioneer of radio guidance systems – Archibald Low
Screw-cutting lathe – Henry Hindley
The first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe – Henry Maudslay
The first electrical measuring instrument, the electroscope – William Gilbert
Devised a standard for screw threads which achieved widespread acceptance – Joseph Whitworth
The Wimshurst machine, an Electrostatic generator for producing high voltages – James Wimshurst
Hot bulb engine or heavy oil engine – Herbert Akroyd Stuart
Hydraulic crane – William George Armstrong
Vacuum diode or vacuum tube – John Ambrose Fleming
Linear motor, a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor – Charles Wheatstone then improved by Eric Laithwaite
Designed water and sewerage systems for over 30 cities across Europe – William Lindley
The Iron Bridge (1791), the first metal bridge of any kind – Abraham Darby III
Forth Bridge - this monumental cantilever railway bridge, opened in 1890 and icon of Scotland, was designed and engineered by Benjamin Baker and John Fowler
The world's first house powered with hydroelectricity – Cragside, Northumberland
Wind tunnel – Francis Herbert Wenham

Food

Bangers and mash
Black pudding
Balti – British-style type of curry, served in many restaurants in the United Kingdom. The origins of the Balti style of cooking are uncertain; some believe it to have been invented in Birmingham, England while others believe it originated in the northern Pakistani region of Baltistan in Kashmir from where it spread to Britain.
Brown Sauce (HP Sauce)
Bubble and squeak
Cheddar cheese – modern cheddar cheese manufacture Joseph Harding
Cornish pasty
Cottage pie
Cumberland sausage
Eccles cake
English mustard
Fish and chips
Full English breakfast
Gravy
Haggis – Normally assumed to be of Scottish origin, but the first known written recipe for a dish of the name (as 'hagese'), made with offal and herbs, is in the verse cookbook Liber Cure Cocorum dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, North-West England.[49]
Ice cream – Modern Ice cream 1718 England
Jellied eels
Kendal mint cake
Lancashire hotpot
Lasagne – Contrary to popular belief, the first recipes for a lasagne-styled dish were found in an English 14th Century cookbook called Forme of Cury, it was a popular dish during the reign of King Richard II.
Lincolnshire sausage
Pancake – Modern pancake, English culinary manuscript 1430
Parkin
Pasty
Piccalilli
Pork pie
Sausage roll
Sandwich – John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich
Scotch egg – Invented by the famous London department store, Fortnum & Mason, in 1738.
Scouse
Shepherd's pie
Carbonated water, major and defining component of soft drinks – Joseph Priestley
Sparkling wine – Christopher Merrett
Spotted Dick
Steak and kidney pie
Sunday roast
Toad in the hole
Worcestershire sauce
Yorkshire Pudding

Household appliances

Mass-produced toothbrush - William Addis of England produced the first mass-produced toothbrush in 1780
Perambulator – William Kent designed a baby carriage in 1733
Collapsible baby buggy – Owen Maclaren
Domestic dishwasher – key modifications by William Howard Livens
"Bagless" vacuum cleaner – James Dyson
"Puffing Billy" – First powered vacuum cleaner – Hubert Cecil Booth
Fire extinguisher – George William Manby
Folding carton – Charles Henry Foyle
Lawn mower – Edwin Beard Budding
Rubber band – Stephen Perry
Daniell cell – John Frederic Daniell
First incandescent light bulb – Joseph Wilson Swan in 1878.[65][66]
Tin can – Peter Durand
Light switch – Invented by John Holmes in 1884
Corkscrew – Reverend Samuell Henshall
Mouse trap – James Henry Atkinson
Postage stamp – Rowland Hill
Modern flushing toilet – John Harington
The pay toilet – John Nevil Maskelyne, Maskelyne invented a lock for London toilets, which required a penny to operate, hence the euphemism "spend a penny".
Electric toaster – Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton
Teasmade – Albert E. Richardson
Magnifying glass – Roger Bacon
Thermosiphon, which forms the basis of most modern central heating systems – Thomas Fowler
Automatic electric kettle – Russell Hobbs

Industrial processes

Coade stone - Eleanor Coade
English crucible steel – Benjamin Huntsman
Steel production Bessemer process – Henry Bessemer
Hydraulic press – Joseph Bramah
Parkesine, the first man-made plastic – Alexander Parkes
Portland cement – Joseph Aspdin
Sheffield plate – Thomas Boulsover
Water frame – Richard Arkwright
Stainless steel – Harry Brearley
Rubber Masticator – Thomas Hancock
Power Loom – Edmund Cartwright
Parkes process – Alexander Parkes
Lead chamber process – John Roebuck
Development of the world's first commercially successful manufacture of high quality flat glass using the float glass process – Alastair Pilkington
Pioneers of the Industrial Revolution – Isambard Kingdom Brunel – Abraham Darby I – Abraham Darby II – Abraham Darby III – Robert Forester Mushet
The first commercial electroplating process – George Elkington
The Wilson Yarn Clearer – Peter Wilson
Polythene - the first industrially practical polythene was discovered by accident in 1933 in Northwich, Cheshire, by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson.

Medicine

First correct description of circulation of the blood – William Harvey
Smallpox vaccine – Edward Jenner with his discovery is said to have "saved more lives (...) than were lost in all the wars of mankind since the beginning of recorded history."
Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932). Born in India to English mother. Schooling and Medical education in England.
Surgical forceps – Stephen Hales
Antisepsis in surgery – Joseph Lister
Artificial intraocular lens transplant surgery for cataract patients – Harold Ridley
Clinical thermometer – Thomas Clifford Allbutt.
isolation of fibrinogen ("coagulable lymph"), investigation of the structure of the lymphatic system and description of red blood cells by the surgeon William Hewson (surgeon)
Colour blindness first described by John Dalton in Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours
Credited with discovering how to culture embryonic stem cells in 1981 – Martin Evans
Carried out ground breaking research on the use of penicillin in the treatment of venereal disease with the Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in London – Jack Suchet
Crucial first steps in the mass production of penicillin - Norman Heatley
First blood pressure measurement and first cardiac catheterisation - Stephen Hales
Pioneer of anaesthesia and father of epidemiology for locating the source of cholera – John Snow (physician)
pioneered the use of sodium cromoglycate as a remedy for asthma – Roger Altounyan
The first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen and one of the founders of orthopedy – Percivall Pott
Performed the first successful blood transfusion – James Blundell
Discovered the active ingredient of Aspirin – Edward Stone
Discovery of Protein crystallography – Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
The world’s first successful stem cell transplant and the first British Bone Marrow Transplant using bone marrow from a matching sibling – John Raymond Hobbs
First typhoid vaccine – Almroth Wright
Pioneer of the treatment of epilepsy – Edward Henry Sieveking
discovery of Nitrous oxide (entonox/"laughing gas") and its anaesthetic properties – Humphry Davy
Ophthalmoscope – conceived by Charles Babbage in 1847
Computed Tomography (CT scanner) – Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield
Gray's Anatomy widely regarded as the first complete human anatomy textbook – Henry Gray
Discovered Parkinson's disease – James Parkinson
General anaesthetic – Pionered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow
Contributed to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – Sir Peter Mansfield
The development of in vitro fertilization – Patrick Christopher Steptoe and Robert Geoffrey Edwards
First baby genetically selected to be free of a breast cancer – University College London
Viagra – Peter Dunn, Albert Wood, Dr Nicholas Terrett
Pioneer of modern nursing – Florence Nightingale
Acetylcholine – Henry Hallett Dale
Basic principles of Electrocardiography (also known as ECG or EKG) – Augustus Waller among others
Vitamins and Tryptophan – Frederick Gowland Hopkins
diagnostic ultrasound – John J. Wild (although his research was conducted in US)
Peak Flow Meter and Syringe Driver - Martin Wright
Earliest pharmacopoeia in English
The hip replacement operation, in which a stainless steel stem and 22mm head fit into a polymer socket and both parts are fixed into position by PMMA cement – pioneered by John Charnley
Description of Hay Fever – John Bostock (physician) in 1819
Discovery of the Citric acid cycle ("Krebs Cycle") – Hans Adolf Krebs in 1937 at the University of Sheffield.

Military

Dazzle camouflage - Norman Wilkinson
The tank – Developed and first used in combat by the British during World War I as a means to break the deadlock of trench warfare.
Fighter aircraft – The Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus of 1914 was the first of its kind.
Congreve rocket – William Congreve
High explosive squash head – Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney
Shrapnel shell – Henry Shrapnel
Harrier Jump Jet
Bullpup firearm configuration – Thorneycroft carbine
Puckle Gun – James Puckle
The side by side Boxlock action, AKA The double barreled shotgun – Anson and Deeley
Dreadnought Battleship
Bailey Bridge – Donald Bailey
Chobham armour
Livens Projector – William Howard Livens
H2S radar (airborne radar to aid the bomb targeting) – Alan Blumlein
Bouncing bomb – Barnes Wallis
Safety fuse – William Bickford
Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife – William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes
Armstrong Gun – Sir William Armstrong
Depth charge
Stun grenades – Invented by the SAS in the 60s.
Smokeless propellant to replace gunpowder with the use of Cordite – Frederick Abel
Torpedo – Robert Whitehead
The Whitworth rifle, considered the first sniper rifle. During the American Civil War the Whitworth rifle had been known to kill at ranges of about 800 yards – Sir Joseph Whitworth
The world's first practical underwater active sound detection apparatus, the ASDIC Active Sonar – Developed by Canadian physicist Robert William Boyle and English physicist Albert Beaumont Wood
The first self-powered machine gun Maxim gun – Sir Hiram Maxim, Although the Inventor is American, the Maxim gun was financed by Albert Vickers of Vickers Limited company and produced in Hatton Garden London
Steam catapult-Commander Colin C. Mitchell RNVR

Mining

Davy lamp – Humphry Davy
Geordie lamp – George Stephenson
Beam engine – Used for pumping water from mines

Musical instruments

Concertina – Charles Wheatstone
Theatre organ – Robert Hope-Jones
Logical bassoon, an electronically controlled version of the bassoon – Giles Brindley
Northumbrian smallpipes
Tuning fork – John Shore
Irish flute

Photography

Ambrotype – Frederick Scott Archer
Calotype – William Fox Talbot
Collodion process – Frederick Scott Archer
Collodion-albumen process – Joseph Sidebotham in 1861
Stereoscope – Charles Wheatstone
Thomas Wedgwood – pioneer of photography, devised the method to copy visible images chemically to permanent media.
Dry plate process also known as gelatine process, is the first economically successful durable photographic medium – Richard Leach Maddox
Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914 – George Albert Smith
cinematography – William Friese-Greene
Motion picture camera, the Kinetoscope – William Kennedy Laurie Dickson
The first movie projector, the Zoopraxiscope – Eadweard Muybridge
The first experimental film called "The Horse in Motion" in 1872 – Eadweard Muybridge

Publishing firsts

Oldest publisher and printer in the world (having been operating continuously since 1584): Cambridge University Press
first book printed in English: "The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye" by Englishman William Caxton in 1475
First journal in the world exclusively devoted to science and world's longest-running scientific journal: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans.) is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665,
First journal club is found in a book of memoirs and letters by the late Sir James Paget, an English surgeon, who describes a group at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in the mid-19th century as "a kind of club ... a small room over a baker's shop near the Hospital-gate where we could sit and read the journals."

Science

Physical Sciences

In 1600, recognition that the earth was a giant magnet - William Gilbert. His book, De Magnete, was known all over Europe, and was almost certainly an influence on Galileo.
Theories of universal gravitation and optics – Sir Isaac Newton
Newton's laws of motion – Sir Isaac Newton
Evidence for a wave theory of light; physiological basis of colour vision - Thomas Young
Major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics; predicted the existence of antimatter - Paul Dirac
Electromagnet – William Sturgeon in 1823.
Discovery that electric current could be generated by altering magnetic fields (the principle underlying modern power generation) – Michael Faraday
Proposition that light and electromagnetism are related – Michael Faraday
Bragg's law and the field of X-ray crystallography, an important tool for elucidating the crystal structure of substances – William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg
Higgs boson - an elementary particle implied by the Higgs Field, proposed in 1964 by Peter Higgs (and others) to explain why fundamental particles (which are theoretically weightless) might have acquired mass after their formation in the Big Bang
Arnold Frederic Wilkins – pioneer in the development of Radar
Hooke's Law (equation describing elasticity) – Robert Hooke
Infrared radiation – discovery commonly attributed to William Herschel.
Holography – First developed by Dennis Gabor in Rugby, England. Improved by Nicholas J. Phillips who made it possible to record multi-colour reflection holograms
Discovery of the pion (pi-meson) – Cecil Frank Powell
Hawking radiation – Stephen Hawking
Demonstrated that electric circuits obey the law of the conservation of energy and that electricity is a form of energy First Law of Thermodynamics. The unit of energy, the Joule, is named after him – James Joule
Splitting the atom – John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest Walton
Discovery of the Atom (nuclear model of) – Ernest Rutherford
Discovery of the Proton – Ernest Rutherford
Discovery of the Electron, isotopes and the inventor of the Mass spectrometer – J. J. Thomson
Discovery of the Neutron – James Chadwick
Rayleigh scattering to explain why the sky is blue, and also predicted the existence of surface waves – John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

Biological Sciences

Theories of Evolution by Natural Selection and Sexual Selection – Charles Darwin
Nuclear transfer – a form of cloning first put into practice by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell to clone Dolly the Sheep
Cell biology – Credit for the discovery of the first cells is given to Robert Hooke who described the microscopic compartments within cork in 1665
Determining the double-helix structure of DNA and pioneering the field of molecular biology – Francis Crick and the American James Watson
DNA sequencing by chain termination – Frederick Sanger
Discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing – Richard J. Roberts

Geology and Meteorology

the first geological map of a country (England and Wales, 1815) and the observation that fossils can be used to work out the relative ages of rocks and strata (Principle of Faunal Succession) - William Smith
from the 1820s, initiated the scientific study of dinosaurs - Gideon Mantell
Geological Timescale – Arthur Holmes
Seismograph – John Milne
Callendar effect, the theory that linked rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature (Global warming) – Guy Stewart Callendar
Weather map – Sir Francis Galton
Pioneer of meteorology by developing a nomenclature system for clouds in 1802 – Luke Howard
Dew Point Hygrometer – John Frederic Daniell

Mathematics and Statistics

Calculus – Sir Isaac Newton
Key contributors to the development of statistics - Thomas Bayes (Bayes' theorem); Florence Nightingale (statistical graphics); Francis Galton (standard deviation, correlation, regression, questionnaires); Karl Pearson (correlation coefficient, chi-square); Ronald Fisher (Analysis of variance); William Gosset (Student's t-distribution); Frank Yates
Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic – George Boole
In 1876, suggesting a connection between energy, matter and the curvature of space, forty years before Einstein's general theory of relativity - William Clifford
Reformulated Maxwell's equations into the four we know today - Oliver Heaviside
The symbol for "is less than" and "is greater than" – Thomas Harriot 1630
The "×" symbol for multiplication as well as the abbreviations "sin" and "cos" for the sine and cosine functions – William Oughtred
Venn diagram – John Venn

Astronomy

Discovery of the planet Uranus and the moons Titania, Oberon, Enceladus, Mimas - Sir William Herschel
Discovery of Triton and the moons Hyperion, Ariel and Umbriel – William Lassell
Planetarium – John Theophilus Desaguliers
Predicted the existence and location of Neptune from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus – John Couch Adams
Important contributions to the development of radio astronomy – Bernard Lovell
Newtonian telescope – Sir Isaac Newton
Achromatic doublet lens – John Dollond
Pioneering theories of Nucleosynthesis (the formation of chemical elements in stars and supernova); also coined the phrase 'Big Bang' – Fred Hoyle
First theorised existence of black holes, binary stars; invented torsion balance – John Michell
Stephen Hawking – World-renowned theoretical physicist made many important contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes
Spiral galaxies – William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse
Discovery of Halley's Comet – Edmond Halley
Discovery of pulsars – Antony Hewish
Discovery of Sunspots and was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope – Thomas Harriot
The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object – Arthur Stanley Eddington
Aperture synthesis, used for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources in the field of Radio astronomy – Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish

Chemistry

Modern atomic theory – Considered the father of modern chemistry, John Dalton's experiments with gases led to the development of what is called the modern atomic theory. See also Dalton's law and Law of multiple proportions – John Dalton
Periodic Table – John Newlands. His contribution was to propose the law of octaves, a precursor to the Periodic Law
Introduced concept of atomic number to fix inadequacies of Mendeleev's periodic table, which had been based on atomic weight – Henry Moseley
Proposes the concept of isotopes, elements with the same chemical properties may have differing atomic weights – Frederick Soddy
Correct theory of combustion – Robert Hooke
Discovery of oxygen – Joseph Priestley
Discovery of hydrogen – Henry Cavendish. Described it as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air – Henry Cavendish
Discovery of argon – John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh with Scotsman William Ramsay
Identification of helium in the sun (via spectroscopy), ten years before it was found on earth – Norman Lockyer
Partition chromatography – Richard Laurence Millington Synge and Archer J.P. Martin
Discovery of Buckminsterfullerene – Sir Harry Kroto
Discovery of thallium – William Crookes
Discovered the structure of ferrocene – Geoffrey Wilkinson & others
First isolation of sodium – Humphry Davy
First isolation of potassium – Humphry Davy
First isolation of boron – Humphry Davy
First isolation of benzene, the first known aromatic hydrocarbon – Michael Faraday
The first discovery of aluminium – Sir Humphry Davy
Synthesis of coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfumes, and cinnamic acid via the Perkin reaction - William Henry Perkin
The synthesising of xenon hexafluoroplatinate, the first demonstration that noble gases can form chemical compounds – Neil Bartlett
Pioneer of the fuel cell – Francis Thomas Bacon
Pioneer in early Solar Power – Weston cell – Edward Weston (chemist)

Philosophy of Science

Opus Maius, a book which, among other things, proposes an early form of the scientific method, and contains results of his experiments with gunpowder – Roger Bacon
Aristotelian commentaries which were an early framework for the scientific method – Robert Grosseteste
Baconian method, a forerunner of the scientific method – Sir Francis Bacon
The Grammar of Science, a book by Karl Pearson that was a pivotal influence on the young Albert Einstein and contained several ideas that were developed by him

Scientific Instruments

Sinclair Executive, the world's first small electronic pocket calculator – Sir Clive Sinclair
Compound microscope with 30x magnification – Robert Hooke
Atwood machine used for illustrating the law of uniformly accelerated motion – George Atwood
Marine Barometer – Robert Hooke
Wheatstone bridge – Samuel Hunter Christie
Triple achromatic lens – Peter Dollond
Micrometer – William Gascoigne
The first bench micrometer, capable of measuring to one ten thousandth of an inch – Henry Maudslay
Slide rule – William Oughtred
Coggeshall slide rule – Henry Coggeshall

Sport

Bungee jumping - The first modern bungee jumps were made on 1 April 1979 from the 250-foot (76 m) Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, by members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club.
Association football – The rules as we know them today were established in 1848 at Cambridge University, Sheffield F.C. is acknowledged by The Football Association and FIFA as the world's first and oldest football club.
Rugby – William Webb Ellis
Rugby league - Invented in 1895
Cricket – the world's second-most popular sport can be traced back to the 13th century
Bowling machine (for cricket) and predecessor of the pitching machine first invented by Nicholas Felix (born 1804)
Baseball – A diary has been found which describes the game being played by a teenager in Guildford in 1755 before it was recorded as being played in the US in the 1790s.
Tennis – widely known to have originated in England.
Boxing – England played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing. Boxing was first accepted as an Olympic sport in Ancient Greece in 688 BC
MMA – Edward William Barton-Wright
Ice Hockey – a variant of Field Hockey invented by British soldiers based in Canada.
Darts – a traditional pub game, the numbering layout was devised by Brian Gamlin
Snooker – Invented by the British Army in India
Ping pong – The game was invented in the 1880s on the dinner tables of Britain as an indoor version of tennis
Bowls – has been traced to 13th century England
Field hockey – the modern game grew from English public schools in the early 19th century
Netball – the sport emerged from early versions of women's basketball, at Madame Österberg's College in England during the late 1890s.
Rounders – the game originates in England most likely from an older game known as stool ball
Thoroughbred Horseracing – Was first developed in 17th and 18th century England
Tiddlywinks
Polo – its roots began in Persia as a training game for cavalry units, the formal codification of the rules of modern Polo as a sport were established in 19th century England
The format of Modern Olympics – William Penny Brookes. See also Cotswold Olimpick Games
Modern Rock Climbing – Walter Parry Haskett Smith (1859–1946) is considered the Father of Rock Climbing.
The first Paralympic games competition were held in England in 1948 – Ludwig Guttmann
oldest rowing competition in existence and oldest rowing race in the world: Doggett's Coat and Badge annual race on the Thames since 1715
oldest sporting competition in the world still running: the Kiplingcotes Derby (horse-racing), held each year in the town of South Dalton, near Hull and run annually without a break since 1519 The oldest non-horse competition in England is the Ancient Silver Arrow Archery competition known as the Scorton Arrow as it was originally held in Scorton, Yorkshire. It was first shot for in 1673.

Transport

Aviation

Aeronautics and flight – George Cayley
Jet engine – Sir Frank Whittle
Steam Powered Flight with the Aerial Steam Carriage – John Stringfellow. The world's first powered flight took place at Chard in Somerset 55 years before the Wright brothers attempt at Kitty Hawk
VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft, most famously the Harrier – Gordon Lewis, Ralph Hooper, Stanley Hooker and Sydney Camm developing initial ideas by Frenchman Michel Wibault
The first commercial jet airliner (de Havilland Comet)
Pioneer of parachute design – Robert Cocking
Pioneer of glider development & first well-documented human flight. He discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight – weight, lift, drag, and thrust. Modern airplane design is based on those discoveries including cambered wings. He is sometimes called the "Father of aviation" – George Cayley
The first aircraft capable of supercruise – English Electric Lightning
Hale rockets, improved version of the Congreve rocket design that introduced Thrust vectoring – William Hale
The term airport – first used to describe the port city Southampton where boat planes landed in the nineteenth century
NASA exploration John Hodge (engineer)

Railways

The first full scale railway steam locomotive was built in 1804 – Richard Trevithick
Great Western Railway – Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Stockton and Darlington Railway the world's first operational steam passenger railway
First inter-city steam-powered railway – Liverpool and Manchester Railway

Locomotives

Blücher – George Stephenson
Puffing Billy -William Hedley
Locomotion No 1 – Robert Stephenson
Sans Pareil – Timothy Hackworth
Stourbridge Lion – Foster, Rastrick and Company
Stephenson's Rocket – George and Robert Stephenson
Salamanca – Matthew Murray
Flying Scotsman- Sir Nigel Gresley

Other railway developments

Displacement lubricator, Ramsbottom safety valve, the water trough, the split piston ring – John Ramsbottom
Maglev (transport) rail system – Eric Laithwaite
World's oldest underground railway and the oldest rapid transit system. It was also the first underground railway to operate electric trains – London underground
Advanced Passenger Train(APT) was an experimental High Speed Train that introduced tilting – British Rail

Roads

Bowden cable – Frank Bowden
Cat's eye – Percy Shaw
Hansom cab – Joseph Hansom
Seat belt – George Cayley
Sinclair C5 – Sir Clive Sinclair
Inventor of tarmac – E. Purnell Hooley
Tension-spoke Wire wheels – George Cayley
Belisha beacon – Leslie Hore-Belisha
ThrustSSC jet-propelled car holds the World Land Speed Record, it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph). The car was designed and built in England – ThrustSSC Project director Richard Noble, Designed by Ron Ayers, Glynne Bowsher, Jeremy Bliss and piloted by Andy Green
Lotus 25 Considered the first modern F1 race car designed for the 1962 Formula One season. It was a revolutionary design the first fully stressed monocoque chassis to appear in Formula One – Colin Chapman, Team Lotus
Horstmann suspension, tracked armoured fighting vehicle suspension – Sidney Horstmann
Steam fire engine – John Braithwaite
Safety bicycle – John Kemp Starley & Dan Albone
Penny-farthing – James Starley
First traffic lights installed (gas lamp) – Outside Houses of Parliament, London. 10 December 1868
First automatic traffic lights installed – Wolverhampton England. 1927
The oldest existing driving school and first formal driving tuition is the British School of Motoring, founded in 1910 in Peckham, London

Sea

Plimsoll Line – Samuel Plimsoll
Hovercraft – Christopher Cockerell
Lifeboat – Lionel Lukin
Resurgam – George Garrett
Transit (ship) – Richard Hall Gower
Submarine – Designed by Englishman William Bourne and built by Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel in 1620
SS Great Britain, the world's first steam-powered, screw propeller-driven passenger liner with an iron hull. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched in 1843 it was at the time the largest ship afloat.
Turbinia, the first steam turbine powered steamship, designed by the engineer Sir Charles Algernon Parsons and built in Newcastle upon Tyne
Diving Equipment/Scuba Gear – Henry Fleuss
Diving bell – Edmund Halley
Sextant – John Bird
Octant (instrument) – Independently developed by Englishman John Hadley and the American Thomas Godfrey
Whirling speculum, This device can be seen as a precursor to the gyroscope – John Serson
Screw propeller – Francis Pettit Smith
The world's first patent for an underwater echo ranging device (Sonar) – Lewis Richardson
hydrophone Before the invention of Sonar convoy escort ships used them to detect U-boats, greatly lessening the effectiveness of the submarine – Research headed by Ernest Rutherford
Hydrofoil – John Isaac Thornycroft

Miscellaneous

Toy Building Bricks - Hilary Harry Fisher Page (1904-1957) Invented and Patented (1946) the first plastic interlocking building bricks, patent later acquired by Lego.
Oldest police force in continuous operation: Marine Police Force founded in 1798 and now part of the Metropolitan Police Service
Oldest life insurance company in the world: Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office founded 1706
First Glee Club, founded in Harrow School in 1787.
Oldest arts festival – Norwich 1772
Oldest music festival – The Three Choirs Festival
Oldest literary festival – The Cheltenham Literature Festival
Bayko – Charles Plimpton
Linoleum – Frederick Walton
Meccano – Frank Hornby
Crossword puzzle – Arthur Wynne
Gas mask – (disputed) John Tyndall and others
Graphic telescope – Cornelius Varley
Steel-ribbed Umbrella – Samuel Fox
Plastic – Alexander Parkes
Plasticine – William Harbutt
Carbonated soft drink – Joseph Priestley
Friction Match – John Walker
Invented the rubber balloon – Michael Faraday
Earliest concept of a Metric system – John Wilkins
Edmondson railway ticket – Thomas Edmondson
The world's first Nature Reserve – Charles Waterton *Public Park – Joseph Paxton
Scouts – Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Spirograph – Denys Fisher
The Young Men's Christian Association YMCA was founded in London – George Williams (YMCA)
The Salvation Army, known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid – Methodist minister William Booth
Prime meridian – George Biddell Airy
Produced the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English – Myles Coverdale
vulcanisation of rubber – Thomas Hancock
Silicone – Frederick Kipping
Stamp collecting – John Edward Gray bought penny blacks on first day of issue in order to keep them
lorgnette – George Adams (optician)
Comics – William Hogarth, George Cruikshank and James Gillray and others
The modern circus – Philip Astely, 1770 The popularity of the circus in England may be traced to that held by Philip Astley in London.
Modern kilt – Thomas Rawlinson