Showing 1 - 25 of 72 results

Elias Howe
Sewing Machine
Elias Howe invented the first practical sewing machine. Born in Spencer, Massachusetts, he spent his childhood and early adult years in Massachusetts…

Gideon Sundback
Modern Zipper
Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback improved on Whitcomb Judson's work, making the zipper practical and commercially successful. Today, thousands…

Henry Ford
Transmission Mechanism
Pioneering automotive engineer Henry Ford held many patents on automotive mechanisms. He is best remembered, however, for helping devise the factory…

Rebecca Richards-Kortum
Medical Devices for Low-Resource Settings
Rebecca Richards-Kortum develops low-cost, high-performance medical technologies for poor communities where standard medical equipment isn't an…

Radia Perlman
Robust Network Routing and Bridging
Radia Perlman has played a major role in driving the growth and development of the internet. Her best-known contribution is the Spanning Tree…

Emmanuelle Charpentier
CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing
Microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and biochemist Jennifer Doudna co-invented the gene-editing system CRISPR-Cas9, a versatile technology for…

Ming-Jun Li
Bend-Insensitive Optical Fiber
Ming-Jun Li, Dana Bookbinder and Pushkar Tandon invented bend-insensitive optical fiber. This technology can bend without causing significant signal…
Mary-Dell Chilton
Transgenic Plant
Mary-Dell Chilton is one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology. She led the research team that produced the first transgenic, or genetically…

Philippe Horvath
CRISPR-Enhanced Food Products
Molecular biologists Philippe Horvath and Rodolphe Barrangou discovered that CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and…

Barney Graham
Structure-Based Vaccine Design
Immunologist and virologist Barney Graham and structural biologist Jason McLellan used structure-based vaccine design to stabilize and modify surface…

Virginia Norwood
Multispectral Scanner
Virginia Norwood invented the Multispectral Scanner (MSS), the first in a series of satellite-based instruments that have been continuously imaging…

Margaret E. Knight
Machine for Making Flat-Bottom Paper Bags
Margaret Knight invented a machine that could automatically cut, fold and glue flat-bottomed paper bags. Her revolutionary invention enabled the mass…

Herbert M. Strong
Diamond Synthesis
Herbert Strong, along with Tracy Hall, Francis Bundy, and Robert Wentorf, synthesized diamonds as part of Project Superpressure, as announced by the…

Mary Florence Potts
Cold-Handle Sad Iron
Mary Florence Potts invented an improved sad iron, which was lighter and offered a cooler, more ergonomic handle. Beginning in the 1870s, it was…

Frank Whittle
Jet Engine
By 1929, Frank Whittle had conceptualized the turbojet engine. The 1930s, however, proved challenging as he sought financial support and interest…

John Ericsson
Screw Propeller
John Ericsson invented the ship propeller and incorporated the landmark device into his design for the Civil War ironclad the Monitor. Born in the…

Charles Jenkins
Motion Picture Projector
Charles Jenkins was an innovator of early cinema and one of the first inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic…

Dawon Kahng
MOSFET
Dawon Kahng was an inventor of the first practical field-effect transistor, a device that controls electronic signals by switching them on or off or…

Nils I. Bohlin
Safety Belt
Nils Bohlin, while with Volvo, invented the three-point safety belt, a standard in the modern automobile. Early tests showed that the belt was…

Aran Safir
Iris Recognition System
Aran Safir and Leonard Flom worked together in the 1980s on their concept for an iris identification system. They based their work on the fact that…

Andrew J. Moyer
Method for Production of Penicillin
Andrew J. Moyer's discoveries provided the foundation for the industrial production of penicillin. Born in Star City, Indiana, Moyer received his A.B…

Jacob Rabinow
Optical Character Reading
Jacob Rabinow invented machines that could recognize text, making it possible to automate vast amounts of routine work formerly done by hand.
A…

Graham J. Durant
Tagamet - Cimetidine
Graham John Durant, John Emmett, and Robin Ganellin led the SmithKline Beecham Corporation's research team that discovered the H2 receptor class of…

Thomas A. Watson
Improvements to the Telephone
Thomas Watson is best known for working as Alexander Graham Bell's assistant during the development of the telephone. It was Watson who heard the…

Marvin Caruthers
Chemical Synthesis of DNA
In the early 1980s, biochemist Marvin Caruthers and his team at the University of Colorado Boulder developed the methods for chemically synthesizing…