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A seed drill was already a thing before Jethro, however he perfected it. The older seed drills would messily sling the seeds all over the farmland, while his put them neatly into rows. -
Thomas created the first steam engine, to serve the purpose of lifting water out of tin mines. -
John Wesley was an Anglican priest, but later converted to the Moravian sect of Christianity, a very early protestant branch. However, he soon left and founded his new way of thinking, Methodism. He believed in Christian perfectionism and was against Calvinism. He claimed that he wanted the movement to stay within the English Church, however that did not last long. -
After he saw his daughter knock over a spinning wheel and saw how it turned while upright, he had the idea to make all spinning wheels like that. The spinning jenny was able to spin a lot more threads than the spinning wheel -
The water frame had been used to make cotton thread, however Arkwright added a water wheel to it, and it was able to spin 96 threads at a time. -
Gaining inspiration from Arkwright, Crompton got the idea to make a more effective way of spinning thread from wool. The spinning mule spun a much finer thread, that couldn't be achieved by hand spinning. In 1812 there were a minimum of 4 million spindles being used. -
Cort combined two ideas in manufacturing iron. Where heat is applied from above and the iron is stirred to rid it of impurities. This created the puddling furnace. -
After the French Academy of Sciences offered a prize to whoever could make soda ash from salt, Nicolas Leblanc discovered a 2 step method to do so. He added sodium chloride with sulfuric acid at a temperature of 800 degrees. Resulting in sodium sulfate, you then crush it and mix it with charcoal and limestone and heat it again. -
Although he didn't invent the sewing machine, he greatly improved it. He moved the eye of the needle to the bottom. -
He started out working for his brother as an assistant in a paper manufacturing business. He later created his own paper manufacturing business and became a partner of another paper manufacturing business, but after 6 months his company failed. However, he stayed working as a partner, and became one of the richest men in New York. He retired at the age of 34. He joined the Cable Cabinet, and helped lay a 400 mile telegraph line across the Atlantic.