| DATE | INVENTION OR DISCOVERY | INVENTOR OR DISCOVERER | NATIONALITY |
| 1590 | Compound microscope | Zacharias Janssen | Dutch |
| 1593 | Water thermometer | Galileo | Italian |
| 1608 | Telescope | Hans Lippershey | Dutch |
| 1625 | Blood transfusion | Jean-Baptiste Denys | French |
| 1629 | Steam turbine | Giovanni Branca | Italian |
| 1642 | Adding machine | Blaise Pascal | French |
| 1643 | Barometer | Evangelista Torricelli | Italian |
| 1650 | Air pump | Otto von Guericke | German |
| 1656 | Pendulum clock | Christiaan Huygens | Dutch |
| 1668 | Reflecting telescope | Isaac Newton | English |
| 1671 | Calculating machine | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | German |
| 1698 | Steam pump | Thomas Savery | English |
| 1701 | Seed drill | Jethro Tull | English |
| 1705 | Steam engine | Thomas Newcomen | English |
| 1709 | First smelting of iron with coke | Abraham Darby | British |
| 1710 | Piano | Bartolomeo Cristofori | Italian |
| 1714 | Mercury thermometer | Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit | German |
| 1717 | Diving bell | Edmond Halley | British |
| 1725 | Stereotyping | William Ged | British |
| 1745 | Leyden jar (condenser) | E.G. von Kleist | German |
| 1752 | Lightning rod | Benjamin Franklin | American |
| 1758 | Achromatic lens | John Dollond | British |
| 1759 | Marine chronometer | John Harrison | British |
| 1764 | Spinning jenny | James Hargreaves | British |
| 1769 | Spinning frame | Richard Arkwright | British |
| 1769 | Steam engine | James Watt | British |
| 1770 | Steam Vehicle | Nicholas Joseph Cugnot | French |
| 1775 | Submersible | David Bushnell | American |
| 1780 | Steel pen | Samuel Harrison | British |
| 1780 | Bifocal lens | Benjamin Franklin | American |
| 1783 | Balloon | Joseph Michel Montgolfier and Jacques Étienne Montgolfier | French |
| 1784 | Threshing machine | Andrew Meikle | British |
| 1785 | Power loom | Edmund Cartwright | British |
| 1786 | Steamboat | John Fitch | American |
| 1788 | Flyball governor | James Watt | British |
| 1791 | Gas turbine | John Barber | British |
| 1792 | Illuminating gas | William Murdock | British |
| 1793 | Cotton gin | Eli Whitney | American |
| 1795 | Hydraulic press | Joseph Bramah | British |
| 1796 | Lithography | Aloys Senefelder | German |
| 1796 | Smallpox vaccination | Edward Jenner | British |
| 1799 | Fourdrinier machine (papermaking) | Louis Robert | French |
| 1800 | Electric battery | Count Alessandro Volta | Italian |
| 1801 | Pattern loom | Joseph Marie Jacquard | French |
| 1801 | First discovery of an asteroid (Ceres) | Giuseppe Piazzi | Italian |
| 1804 | Screw propeller | John Stevens | American |
| 1804 | Solid-fuel rocket | William Congreve | British |
| 1804 | Steam locomotive | Richard Trevithick | British |
| 1805 | Electroplating | Luigi Gasparo Brugnatelli | Italian |
| 1810 | Food preservation | François Appert | French |
| 1810 | Printing Press | Frederick König | German |
| 1814 | Railway locomotive | George Stephenson | British |
| 1815 | Safety lamp | Sir Humphry Davy | British |
| 1816 | Bicycle | Karl D. Sauerbronn | German |
| 1819 | Stethoscope | René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec | French |
| 1820 | Hygrometer | J. F. Daniell | British |
| 1824 | Galvanometer | André-Marie Ampère | French |
| 1824 | Portland cement | Joseph Aspdin | British |
| 1825 | Electromagnet | William Sturgeon | British |
| 1827 | Friction match | John Walker | British |
| 1829 | Typewriter | W.A. Burt | American |
| 1829 | Braille printing | Louis Braille | French |
| 1830 | Platform scales | Thaddeus Fairbanks | American |
| 1830 | Sewing machine | Barthélemy Thimonnier | French |
| 1831 | Phosphorus match | Charles Sauria | French |
| 1831 | Reaper | Cyrus Hall McCormick | American |
| 1831 | Dynamo | Michael Faraday | British |
| 1832 | Electric motor | William Sturgeon | British |
| 1834 | Electric tram | Thomas Davenport | American |
| 1835 | Pistol (revolver) | Samuel Colt | American |
| 1837 | Telegraph | Samuel Finley Breese Morse Sir Charles Wheatstone | American British |
| 1838 | Morse code | Samuel Finley Breese Morse | American |
| 1839 | Photography | Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre William Henry Fox Talbot | French British |
| 1839 | Vulcanized rubber | Charles Goodyear | American |
| 1839 | Steam hammer | James Nasmyth | British |
| 1839 | Bicycle with driving levers and pedals | Kirkpatrick MacMillan | British |
| 1842 | Ether | Crawford Williamson Long | American |
| 1845 | Pneumatic tyre | Robert William Thompson | American |
| 1846 | Rotary printing press | Richard March Hoe | American |
| 1846 | Gun-cotton | Christian Friedrich Schönbein | German |
| 1849 | Reinforced concrete | F. J. Monier | French |
| 1849 | Safety pin | Walter Hunt | American |
| 1849 | Water turbine | James Bicheno Francis | American |
| 1850 | Mercerized cotton | John Mercer | British |
| 1851 | Breech-loading rifle | Edward Maynard | American |
| 1851 | Ophthalmoscope | Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz | German |
| 1852 | Non-rigid airship | Henri Giffard | French |
| 1852 | Safety lift (with brake) | Elisha Graves Otis | American |
| 1852 | Gyroscope | Jean Bernard Léon Foucault | French |
| 1855 | Hypodermic syringe | Alexander Wood | British |
| 1855 | Safety matches | J. E. Lundstrom | Swedish |
| 1855 | Gas burner | Robert Wilhelm Bunsen | German |
| 1856 | Bessemer converter (steel) | Sir Henry Bessemer | British |
| 1858 | Harvester | Charles and William Marsh | American |
| 1859 | Spectroscope | Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen | German |
| 1860 | Gas engine | Étienne Lenoir | French |
| 1861 | Web-fed newspaper printing press | Richard March Hoe | American |
| 1861 | Electric furnace | Wiliam Siemens | British |
| 1861 | Machine gun | Richard Jordan Gatling | American |
| 1861 | Kinematoscope | Coleman Sellers | American |
| 1865 | Antiseptic surgery | Joseph Lister | British |
| 1866 | Paper (from wood pulp, sulphite process) | Benjamin Chew Tilghman | American |
| 1866 | Dynamite | Alfred Bernhard Nobel | Swedish |
| 1868 | Dry cell battery | Georges Leclanché | French |
| 1868 | Typewriter | Carlos Glidden and Christopher Latham Sholes | American |
| 1868 | Air brake | George Westinghouse | American |
| 1870 | Celluloid | John Wesley Hyatt and Isaiah Hyatt | American |
| 1874 | Quadruplex telegraph | Thomas Alva Edison | American |
| 1876 | Telephone | Alexander Graham Bell | American |
| 1877 | Internal-combustion engine (four-cycle) | Nikolaus August Otto | German |
| 1877 | Gramophone (cylinder recorder) | Thomas Alva Edison | American |
| 1877 | Microphone | Emile Berliner | American |
| 1877 | Electric welding | Elihu Thomson | American |
| 1877 | Refrigerator car | G. F. Swift | American |
| 1878 | Cathode ray tube | Sir William Crookes | British |
| 1878 | Incandescent filament lamp | Sir Joseph Swan | British |
| 1879 | Cash register | James J. Ritty | American |
| 1879 | Car engine (two-cycle) | Karl Benz | German |
| 1879 | Arc lamp | Charles Francis Bush | American |
| 1880 | Linotype | Ottmar Mergenthaler | American |
| 1884 | Steam turbine | C. A. Parsons | British |
| 1884 | Rayon (nitrocellulose) | Comte Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet | French |
| 1884 | Multiple-wheel steam turbine | Sir Charles Algernon Parsons | British |
| 1884 | Nipkow disc (mechanical television scanning device) | Paul Gottlieb Nipkow | German |
| 1884 | Fountain pen | Lewis Edson Waterman | American |
| 1885 | Graphophone (dictating machine) | Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter | American |
| 1885 | AC transformer | William Stanley | American |
| 1887 | Air-inflated rubber tyre | J.B. Dunlop | British |
| 1887 | Gramophone (disc records) | Emile Berliner | American |
| 1887 | Gas mantle | Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach | Austrian |
| 1887 | Mimeograph | Albert Blake Dick | American |
| 1887 | Monotype | Tolbert Lanston | American |
| 1888 | Adding machine (recording) | William Seward Burroughs | American |
| 1888 | Flexible roll-film camera | George Eastman | American |
| 1889 | Steam turbine | C. G. de Laval | Swedish |
| 1890 | Rayon (cuprammonium) | Louis Henri Despeissis | French |
| 1891 | Glider | Otto Lilienthal | German |
| 1891 | Synthetic rubber | Sir William Augustus Tilden | British |
| 1892 | AC motor | Nikola Tesla | American |
| 1892 | Three-colour camera | Frederick Eugene Ives | American |
| 1892 | Rayon (viscose) | Charles Frederick Cross | British |
| 1892 | Vacuum bottle (Dewar flask) | Sir James Dewar | British |
| 1893 | Photoelectric cell | Julius Elster Hans F. Geitel German | German |
| 1893 | Diesel engine | Rudolf Diesel | German |
| 1893 | Petrol-driven car | Charles Edgar Duryea and J. Frank Duryea | American |
| 1893 | Moving picture viewer | Thomas Alva Edison | American |
| 1894 | Moving picture projection | Charles Francis Jenkins Louis Jean Lumière and Auguste Marie Lumière | American French |
| 1895 | X-ray | Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen | German |
| 1895 | Rayon (acetate) | Charles Frederick Cross | British |
| 1895 | Wireless telegraph (radio transmission) | Marchese Guglielmo Marconi | Italian |
| 1896 | Experimental aeroplane | Samuel Pierpont Langley | American |
| 1898 | Sensitized photographic paper | Leo Hendrik Baekeland | American |
| 1900 | Rigid dirigible airship | Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin | German |
| 1902 | Radiotelephone | Valdemar Poulsen Reginald Aubrey Fessenden | Danish American |
| 1903 | Aeroplane | Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright | American |
| 1903 | Electrocardiograph | Willem Einthoven | Dutch |
| 1905 | Diode rectifier tube (radio) | Sir John Ambrose Fleming | British |
| 1906 | Gyrocompass | Hermann Anschütz-Kampfe | German |
| 1907 | Bakelite | Leo Hendrik Baekeland | American |
| 1907 | Triode amplifier tube (radio) | Lee De Forest | American |
| 1908 | Two-colour moving picture camera | C. Albert Smith | British |
| 1909 | Salvarsan | Paul Ehrlich | German |
| 1910 | Hydrogenation of coal | Friedrich Bergius | German |
| 1910 | Gyroscopic compass and stabilizer | Elmer Ambrose Sperry | American |
| 1911 | Air conditioning | W. H. Carrier | American |
| 1911 | Vitamin B1 (thiamine) | Casimir Funk | Polish |
| 1911 | Cellophane | Jacques Edwin Brandenberger | Swiss |
| 1911 | Neon lamp | Georges Claude | French |
| 1912 | Mercury-vapour lamp | Peter Cooper Hewitt | American |
| 1913 | Ramjet engine | René Lorin | French |
| 1913 | Multigrid electron tube | Irving Langmuir | American |
| 1913 | Thermal cracking of crude oil | William Meriam Burton | American |
| 1913 | Heterodyne radio receiver | Reginald Aubrey Fessenden | American |
| 1915 | Car self-starter | Charles Franklin Kettering | American |
| 1916 | Browning gun (automatic rifle) | John Moses Browning | American |
| 1916 | Gas-filled incandescent lamp | Irving Langmuir | American |
| 1916 | X-ray tube | William David Coolidge | American |
| 1919 | Mass spectrograph | Sir Francis William Aston Arthur Jeffrey Dempster | British American |
| 1922 | Insulin | Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles H. Best | Canadian |
| 1922-26 | Sound films | T.W. Case | American |
| 1923 | Television iconoscope | Vladimir Kosma Zworykin | American |
| 1925 | Quick-frozen food | Clarence Birdseye | American |
| 1925 | Television image dissector tube | Philo Taylor Farnsworth | American |
| 1926 | Liquid-fuel rocket | Robert Hutchings Goddard | American |
| 1928 | Penicillin | Sir Alexander Fleming | British |
| 1930 | Nylon (fibre-forming synthetic polyamides) | Wallace Hume Carothers | American |
| 1930 | Bathysphere | (Charles) William Beebe | American |
| 1930 | Freon (low-boiling fluorine compounds) | Thomas Midgley and co-workers | American |
| 1930 | Modern gas-turbine engine | Sir Frank Whittle | British |
| 1930 | Neoprene (synthetic rubber) | Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland and Wallace Hume Carothers | American |
| 1931 | Cyclotron | Ernest Orlando Lawrence | American |
| 1931 | Differential analyser (analogue computer) | Vannevar Bush | American |
| 1932 | Phase contrast microscope | Frits Zernike | Dutch |
| 1932 | Van de Graaff generator | Robert Jemison Van de Graaff | American |
| 1933 | Frequency modulation (FM) | Edwin Howard Armstrong | American |
| 1935 | Buna (synthetic rubber) | Scientists of IG Farbenindustrie | German |
| 1935 | Radar | Sir Robert Watson-Watt | British |
| 1935 | Cortisone | Edward Calvin Kendall Tadeus Reichstein | American Swiss |
| 1935 | Electron microscope | M. Khal and E. Ruska | German |
| 1935 | Sulphanilamide | Gerhard Domagk | German |
| 1936 | Twin-rotor helicopter | Heinrich Focke | German |
| 1937 | Nylon | Wallace Hume Carothers | American |
| 1939 | DDT | Paul Müller | Swiss |
| 1939 | Helicopter | Igor Sikorsky | American |
| 1940 | Betatron | Donald William Kerst | American |
| 1941 | Turbojet aircraft engine | Sir Frank Whittle | British |
| 1942 | Ballistic missile | Wernher von Braun | German |
| 1942 | Nuclear reactor | Enrico Fermi | Italian |
| 1942 | Xerography | Chester Carlson | American |
| 1943 | Electronic digital computer | Tommy Flowers | British |
| 1945 | Atomic bomb | International team of scientists | - |
| 1945 | Streptomycin | Selman A. Waksman | American |
| 1947 | Holography | Dennis Gabor | British |
| 1947 | Chlormycetin | Mildred Rebstock | American |
| 1947 | Polaroid Land camera | Edwin Herbert Land | American |
| 1947 | Bathyscaphe | Auguste Piccard | Swiss |
| 1947 | Microwave oven | Percy L. Spencer | American |
| 1948 | Scintillation counter | Hartmut Kallmann | German |
| 1948 | Aureomycin | Benjamin Minge Duggar and Chandra Bose Subba Row | American |
| 1948 | Transistor | John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Shockley | American |
| 1949 | Ramjet aircraft | René Leduc | French |
| 1950 | Colour television | Peter Carl Goldmark | American |
| 1952 | Hydrogen bomb | US government scientists | American |
| 1952 | Bubble chamber (nuclear particle detector) | Donald Arthur Glaser | American |
| 1953 | Maser | Charles Townes | American |
| 1954 | Solar battery | Bell Telephone Laboratory scientists | American |
| 1954 | Polio vaccine | Jonas Salk | American |
| 1955 | Synthetic diamonds | General Electric scientists | American |
| 1955 | Carbon dating | W.F. Libby | American |
| 1956 | Hovercraft | Christopher Cockerell | British |
| 1956 | Rotary engine (prototype) | Felix Wankel | German |
| 1956 | Videotape | Charles Ginsberg Ray Dolby | American American |
| 1957 | Sodium-cooled atomic reactor | US government scientists | American |
| 1957 | Artificial earth satellite | USSR government scientists | Soviet |
| 1958 | Communications satellite | US government scientists | American |
| 1959 | Integrated circuit | Jack Kilby Robert Noyce American | American |
| 1960 | Laser | Charles Hard Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, and Gordon Gould | American |
| 1960 | Chlorophyll synthesized | Robert Burns Woodward | American |
| 1960 | Birth-control pill | Gregory Pincus, John Rock, and Min-chueh Chang | American |
| 1962 | Light-emitting diode (LED) | Nick Holonyak, Jr. | American |
| 1964 | Liquid-crystal display | George Heilmeier | American |
| 1966 | Artificial heart (left ventricle) | Michael Ellis DeBakey | American |
| 1967 | Human heart transplant | Christiaan Neethling Barnard | South Africa |
| 1970 | First complete synthesis of a gene | Har Gobind Khorana | Indian |
| 1971 | Microprocessor | Ted Hoff | American |
| 1971 | Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging | Raymond Damadian | American |
| 1972 | Electronic pocket calculator | J.S. Kilby and J.D. Merryman | American |
| 1972 | First magnetohydrodynamic power generator | USSR government scientists | Soviet |
| 1973 | Skylab orbiting space laboratory | US government scientists | American |
| 1974 | Recombinant DNA (genetic engineering) | US scientists | American |
| 1975 | CAT (computerized axial tomography) scanner | Godfrey N. Hounsfield | British |
| 1975 | Fibre optics | Bell Laboratories | American |
| 1976 | Supercomputer | J.H. Van Tassel and Seymour Cray | American |
| 1978 | Synthesis of human insulin genes | Roberto Crea, Tadaaki Hirose, Adam Kraszewski, and Keiichi Itakura | American |
| 1978 | Mammal-to-mammal gene transplants | Paul Berg, Richard Mulligan, and Bruce Howard | American |
| 1978 | Jarvik-7 artificial heart | Robert K. Jarvik | American |
| 1979 | Compact disc | Joop Sinjou Toshi Tada Doi Dutch | Japanese |
| 1979 | Genetic flaw repaired in mouse cells by recombinant DNA and micro-manipulation techniques | W. French Anderson and co-workers | American |
| 1981 | Space transportation system (space shuttle) | National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers | American |
| 1983 | Scanning tunnelling microscope | Gerd Binnig Heinrich Rohrer | German Swiss |
| 1984 | What appears to be a planetary system in the process of formation observed around the star Beta Pictoris | Bradford Smith and Richard Terrile, using data from the IRAS satellite | American |
| 1986 | High-temperature superconductors | J. Georg Bednorz Karl A. Müller | German Swiss |
| 1989 | COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite observes "wrinkles" in the microwave background radiation filling the universe, revealing first development of structure after the Big Bang | Team led by George Smoot | American |
| 1993 | Clockwork radio | Trevor Bayliss | British |
| 1993 | Keck 10-metre telescope, largest single optical telescope in the world, begins its work on Mauna Kea, Hawaii | University of California, California Institute of Technology | American |
| 1994 | Evidence for existence of top quark found | Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Illinois (Fermilab) | American |
| 1995 | Fermat's Last Theorem, a mathematical conjecture over 300 years old, was proved by a mathematician at Princeton University | Andrew Wiles | British |
| 1995 | Atoms of antimatter produced at CERN, Geneva | International team of physicists | German-Italian |
| 1995 | Probe from Galileo spacecraft enters atmosphere of Jupiter | US government scientists | American |
