Curated category
British inventions
- Electric motorIn the basement of the Royal Institution, a free-hanging wire dipped into a pool of mercury rotated around a permanent magnet on the 3rd of September 1821.
- Cable televisionIn 1936, Rediffusion began operating the very first cable networks in London. That same year, a similar system launched in Berlin to broadcast coverage of…
- Hot blastJames Beaumont Neilson stood at the Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland during 1828. He had previously worked as a foreman at Glasgow gas works before turning…
- RadioHeinrich Hertz stood in a laboratory on the 11th of November 1886. He held a primitive spark-gap transmitter that generated invisible waves.
- Flush toiletArchaeologists in China announced the discovery of remains from a 2,400-year-old lavatory at the Yueyang site in Xi'an during February 2023.
- PodcastThe word podcast first appeared in print on the 1st of February 2004. Ben Hammersley wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper that week while searching…
- TelevisionThe word television first appeared in print on the 24th of August 1900. A Russian scientist named Constantin Perskyi used it during a paper presentation at…
- Hedgehog (weapon)In 1941, a secret test aboard the destroyer HMS Starling revealed a fatal flaw in existing anti-submarine tactics. The Fairlie Mortar had failed to deliver…
- Operation PlutoIn early April 1942, Lord Louis Mountbatten approached Geoffrey Lloyd with a desperate question. Could an oil pipeline be laid across the English Channel?
- RadomeThe word radome emerged in 1941 as a portmanteau of radar and dome. It describes a structural enclosure that shields a radar antenna from weather while…