Curated playlist
English inventors
- Daniel BournDaniel Bourn patented a carding machine with rotating cylinders in 1748. It combed raw cotton fiber before spinning.
- James HargreavesA knocked-over spinning wheel that kept spinning gave James Hargreaves the idea for the jenny.
- Lewis PaulLewis Paul died in 1759, and he is credited as the original inventor of roller spinning. That idea later became the basis of the water frame, the machine that spun cotton in a cotton mill. Yet his name is far less familiar than the man…
- Robert Kay (inventor)Robert Kay devised a way to switch between several shuttles on a loom. Cross-striped cloth became far easier to make.
- John RoebuckJohn Roebuck agreed to pay James Watt's debts for a two-thirds share in an engine that still fell short.
- Isaac NewtonIsaac Newton was born so small, he said, that he could have fit inside a quart mug.
- John Kay (flying shuttle)John Kay was an English inventor whose weaving device moved so fast that one early description said the shuttle could only be seen "like a tiny cloud which disappears the same instant." That machine became a key contribution to the…
- Richard Roberts (engineer)Before Richard Roberts built his planer in 1817, fitters made flat metal surfaces by hand.
- Henry MaudslayA lock built by Henry Maudslay resisted every attempt to pick it for 47 years. It carried a 200 guinea reward.
- Samuel CromptonSamuel Crompton gave his spinning mule to the world without a patent. Parliament later paid him £5,000 for it in 1812.
- Henry FourdrinierHenry Fourdrinier spent sixty thousand pounds on a paper machine and went bankrupt.
- Robert HookeRobert Hooke built the air pump that made Boyle's Law possible. He also designed London's Monument to the Great Fire.
- Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen.
- Josiah WedgwoodJosiah Wedgwood lost his right leg in 1768, then opened his Etruria pottery works the next year.
- Joseph BramahJoseph Bramah's lock sat unpicked in a London shop window for more than 67 years. An American opened it in 1851.
- Edmund CartwrightA mill meant for 500 power looms burned down with only 30 installed. Weavers working by hand were the likely arsonists.
- Joseph WhitworthSir Joseph Whitworth was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, he demonstrated a measuring system precise to one millionth of an inch. That is about 25 nanometres, a distance no…
- Matthew MurrayMatthew Murray built the first commercially successful steam locomotive in 1812.
- Edmond HalleyEdmond Halley never saw the comet that carries his name. He predicted its 1758 return, sixteen years after he died.
- John Wilkinson (industrialist)John Wilkinson, an English ironmaster, had several coffins made of iron.
- Clement ClerkeSir Clement Clerke did not invent the reverberatory furnace, but he used it to smelt lead and copper.