Showing 1 - 25 of 66 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…
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…
Eli Terry
Clock
A native of East Windsor, Connecticut, Eli Terry had his start in the clock-making business in a series of apprenticeships where he manufactured both…
Joseph Muhler
Stannous Fluoride Toothpaste
During the early 1940s, when dentist and biochemist Joseph Muhler was an Indiana University undergraduate, he began studying fluoride and tooth decay…
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…
Ambrose Swasey
Telescope
Ambrose Swasey, inventor of precise astronomical instruments, designed some of the most powerful and accurate telescopes of his day.Swasey was born…
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…
Ruth Benerito
Wrinkle-Free Cotton
Chemist Ruth Rogan Benerito was widely recognized for the development of wrinkle-free cotton.
Born in New Orleans, Benerito studied at Sophie…
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…
William Seward Burroughs
Calculator
William Seward Burroughs invented the first practical adding and listing machine. Born in Rochester, New York, Burroughs began his career as a bank…
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…
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…
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…
Howard Aiken
Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I)
With the Mark I calculator, Howard Aiken showed that a computer could provide high-powered, speedy mathematical solutions to many problems. Aiken…
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…