1800 to 1899

Fulton's North River Steamboat, the Clermont, ran New York to Albany in 1807 under a New York state monopoly from his patent right...

Stephenson patented improved rails and locomotive designs while building Killingworth colliery engines, then the 1825 Stockton and...

Confectioner Appert won Napoleon's 12,000 franc prize for preserving food by heating it in sealed champagne bottles, patenting the...

American inventor Perkins, working in London, patented the first closed-cycle compressor system using ether. The principle, compre...

Colt patented his revolving-cylinder pistol in 1836, failed, then revived on Texas and Mexican War orders. His real innovation was...

McCormick patented his horse-drawn reaper and built Chicago's largest factory on it. The 1851 Crystal Palace exhibit dazzled Brita...

Daguerre patented his silvered-plate imaging process in England days before France bought it, releasing it freely everywhere else ...

Morse, a painter, patented the electromagnetic telegraph with Vail and Gale after witnessing electromagnetism aboard ship. The 184...

Howe patented the lockstitch with eye-pointed needle, then won a famous 1854 suit against Singer for royalties. Competing patents,...

Otis demonstrated his safety brake dramatically at the 1853 Crystal Palace, cutting the hoist rope above a crowd. The patent's too...

Goodyear spent years obsessed with gum elastic, accidentally finding sulfur-heat curing around 1839 and patenting vulcanization in...

Bessemer patented the converter that blasted air through molten pig iron, burning impurities and making steel cheaply at scale. Wi...

Bell's patent application arrived February 14, 1876, hours before Elisha Gray's caveat for the same idea. The famous Mr Watson, co...

Edison's tinfoil cylinder phonograph stunned 1878 audiences, singing and speaking back. He patented it, then shelved it for a deca...

Pasteur patented heating and cooling to stop fermentation spoilage, applying his germ theory. His 1873 US patent covered improving...

Glidden, a farmer, twisted two wires holding barbs and patented the design that beat dozens of rivals. Sales exploded as the treel...

Sholes patented the first commercially successful typewriter, sold to Remington in 1873. The QWERTY layout, arranged to stop typeb...

Cochrane, granddaughter of steamboat inventor John Fitch, built wire compartments and water jets after servants chipped her china....

Edison's 1879 high-resistance carbon filament made electric lighting commercially real, patented in 1880 after months of material ...

Nobel patented kieselguhr-stabilized nitroglycerin as dynamite, making blasting safe enough for canals, mines, and railroads. The ...

Eastman patented paper-backed then nitrocellulose roll film, freeing cameras from single glass plates. The 1888 Kodak, you press t...

Bayer's Hoffmann acetylated salicylic acid into a gentler analgesic, patented in Germany 1899 and America as patent 644,077. The t...

Starley's RoverSafety standardized the diamond frame, equal-sized wheels, and rear chain drive, replacing the dangerous penny-fart...

Benz's three-wheeler, patented January 1886, integrated a purpose-built gasoline engine, electric ignition, and differential. Bert...

Dunlop, a Belfast vet, patented the air tire for his son's tricycle, unaware Robert Thomson had patented a leather version in 1845...

Tesla patented the rotating-field induction motor, selling the patents to Westinghouse for cash plus royalties, later waived to sa...

Diesel patented compression ignition, where air heated by squeeze fires the fuel, far exceeding steam efficiency. US patent 542,84...

Marconi patented wireless telegraphy in Britain in 1896 and America as patent 586,193 (1897), building a company that spanned the ...

Auguste and Louis Lumiere patented their combined camera, printer, and projector in February 1895. The first public ticketed scree...

As a young man Lincoln saw riverboats run aground on the Mississippi and Sangamon, and in 1849 he patented a system of inflatable ...

Prolific New York mechanic Walter Hunt twisted a length of wire into a pin with a coiled spring at one end and a clasp shielding t...

Reno tailor Jacob Davis reinforced the pocket corners of work pants with copper rivets after a customer kept tearing them. Lacking...

Margaret Knight devised a machine that cut, folded and glued flat-bottomed paper bags, which stand up on their own and hold far mo...