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The Most Important Inventions of the 19th Century

  • Eli Whitney made the cotton gin

    Eli Whitney made the cotton gin
  • Alessandro Volta invented the battery

  • French silk weaver J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom.

  • Count Alessandro Volta invents the battery.

  • French silk weaver J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom.

  • Count Alessandro Volta invents the battery.

  • French silk weaver J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom.

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    The Most Important Inventions of the 19th Century

  • Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) patented coal-gas.

  • Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) patented coal-gas.

  • English mining engineer Richard Trevithick develops a steam-powered locomotive but is unable to produce a viable prototype.

  • Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp, the first electric light.

  • Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp, the first electric light.

  • German Frederick Koenig invents an improved printing press.

  • Peter Durand invents the tin can.

  • German Frederick Koenig invents an improved printing press.

  • The first successful steam locomotive, designed by George Stephenson, makes its debut.

  • Joseph von Fraunhofer invents the spectroscope for use in the chemical analysis of glowing objects.

  • Using a camera obscura, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph. The process takes eight hours.

  • Humphry Davy invents the miner's lamp.

  • René Laënnec invents the stethoscope.

  • Samuel Fahnestock patents the soda fountain.

  • Charles Mackintosh invents his eponymous raincoat (a.k.a. "the Mac") in Scotland.

  • Professor Michael Faraday invents the toy balloons.

  • Joseph Aspdin takes out an English patent for Portland cement.

  • William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet.

  • John Walker invents modern-day matches.

  • Charles Wheatstone invents the microphone.

  • W.A. Burt invents the typographer, the precursor to the typewriter.

  • Louis Braille develops his eponymous method of raised printing to be read by the blind.​​​​

  • Frenchman Barthelemy Thimonnier invents a rudimentary sewing machine.

  • Cyrus H. McCormick invents the first commercially viable reaper.

  • Michael Faraday invents the electric dynamo.

  • Henry Blair, the second African American to receive a U.S. patent, invents the corn planter.

  • Jacob Perkins invents and ether ice machine, a precursor to the modern refrigerator.

  • Solymon Merrick patents the wrench.

  • Charles Babbage invents a mechanical calculator.

  • Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericcson team up to invent the propellor.

  • Samuel Colt invents the first revolver.

  • Samuel Morse invents the telegraph. (Morse code arrives the following year.)

  • English schoolmaster, Rowland Hill invents the postage stamp.

  • Thaddeus Fairbanks invents platform scales.

  • Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber.

  • Louis Daguerre invents the daguerreotype.

  • Englishmen John Herschel invents the blueprint.

  • Samuel Slocum patents the stapler.

  • Englishman John Mercer invents a process to increase the tensile strength and affinity for dyes in cotton thread.

  • Elias Howe invents the modern sewing machine.

  • Robert William Thomson patents pneumatic tires made of vulcanized rubber.

  • Massachusetts dentist Dr. William Morton is the first to use anesthesia for a tooth extraction.

  • Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis invents antiseptics.

  • Waldo Hanchett patents the dentist's chair.

  • Walter Hunt invents the safety pin.

  • Isaac Singer invents his eponymous sewing machine, and four years later, patents a sewing machine motor.