Inventors and their inventions from 1900 to 1999 have come to dominate our lives. Here are a few of the major inventions and their inventors from the Twentieth Century.
| Orville and Wilbur Wright | Orville was at the controls of the world’s first powered flight while Wilbur observed (1903). |
| John Ambrose Fleming | Invented the diode – a vital part of radios and televisions (1904) |
| Christian Hulsmeyer | The first radar system used in shipping (1904) |
| Leo Baekeland | Inventor of plastic (1905) |
| Reginald Fessenden | Invented radio broadcasting (1906) |
| Mary Phelps Jacob | Invented the bra (1913) |
| Gidoen Sundback | Invented the zip (1913) |
| John Thompson | Invented the sub-machine gun (1920) |
| Frederick Banting / Charles Best | Isolated insulin (1921) |
| Karel Capek | Invented the first robot (1921) |
| Clarence Birdseye | Started the idea of frozen food (1924) |
| John Logie Baird | Invented the television – its first public demonstration was at Selfridges in London (1925) |
| Robert Goddard | Invented liquid fuel rocket (1926) |
| Alexander Fleming | Discovered penicillin and paved the way for antibiotics (1928) |
| Frank Whittle | The jet engine (1930) |
| Percy Shaw | Inventor of the cats eyes – a major factor in improved road safety (1934) |
| Laszlo Jose Biro | Invented the ball point pen (1938) |
| Igor Sikorsky | Inventor of the modern helicopter (1939) |
| Enrico Fermi | Built the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago (1942) |
| Willem Kolff | Invented the kidney dialysis machine (1944) |
| Percy LeBaron Spencer | Invented the microwave oven (1946) |
| George deMestral | Invented velcro (1948) |
| Carl Djerassi | Developed the contraceptive pill (1951) |
| Sir Christopher Cockerell | Invented the hovercraft (1955) |
| Jonas Salk | Made the vaccine for polio (1955) |
| Jack Kilby | Made the first microchip – the start of miniaturisation of technology (1958) |
| Wilson Greatbatch | Invented the first heart pacemaker (1960) |
| Douglas Engelbart | Invented the computer mouse (1964) |
| Stephanie Kwolek | Invented kevlar (1966) |
| Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman and James von Tassel | The portable calculator (1967) |
| George Gray | Invented the LCD and LED (1970) |
| Herbert Boyer | Pioneer of genetic engineering (1973) |
| Akio Morita | Inventor of the personal stereo (1979) |
| Tim Berners-Lee | Creator of the World Wide Web (1989) |
| Ian Wilmut | Headed team that produced the first cloned sheep – Dolly (1997) |
