Showing 1 - 25 of 66 results
Elias Howe
Sewing Machine
Elias Howe invented the first practical sewing machine. Born in Spencer, Massachusetts, he spent his childhood and early adult years in Massachusetts…
Gideon Sundback
Modern Zipper
Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback improved on Whitcomb Judson's work, making the zipper practical and commercially successful. Today, thousands…
Henry Ford
Transmission Mechanism
Pioneering automotive engineer Henry Ford held many patents on automotive mechanisms. He is best remembered, however, for helping devise the factory…
Rebecca Richards-Kortum
Medical Devices for Low-Resource Settings
Rebecca Richards-Kortum develops low-cost, high-performance medical technologies for poor communities where standard medical equipment isn't an…
Radia Perlman
Robust Network Routing and Bridging
Radia Perlman has played a major role in driving the growth and development of the internet. Her best-known contribution is the Spanning Tree…
Emmanuelle Charpentier
CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing
Microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and biochemist Jennifer Doudna co-invented the gene-editing system CRISPR-Cas9, a versatile technology for…
Ming-Jun Li
Bend-Insensitive Optical Fiber
Ming-Jun Li, Dana Bookbinder and Pushkar Tandon invented bend-insensitive optical fiber. This technology can bend without causing significant signal…
Mary-Dell Chilton
Transgenic Plant
Mary-Dell Chilton is one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology. She led the research team that produced the first transgenic, or genetically…
Philippe Horvath
CRISPR-Enhanced Food Products
Molecular biologists Philippe Horvath and Rodolphe Barrangou discovered that CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) and…
Margaret E. Knight
Machine for Making Flat-Bottom Paper Bags
Margaret Knight invented a machine that could automatically cut, fold and glue flat-bottomed paper bags. Her revolutionary invention enabled the mass…
Francis P. Bundy
Diamond Synthesis
Francis Bundy, along with Tracy Hall, Robert Wentorf, and Herbert Strong, synthesized diamonds as part of Project Superpressure, as announced by the…
Frank Whittle
Jet Engine
By 1929, Frank Whittle had conceptualized the turbojet engine. The 1930s, however, proved challenging as he sought financial support and interest…
Gordon Gould
Optically Pumped Laser Amplifiers
Gordon Gould coined the word laser and patented optically pumped and discharge excited laser amplifiers now used in industrial, commercial, and…
Andrea Goldsmith
Adaptive Beamforming for Multi-Antenna Wi-Fi
Andrea Goldsmith created technical innovations including adaptive beamforming for multi-antenna Wi-Fi. Her work has shaped the performance of…
Frederic Eugene Ives
Color Photography
Frederic Ives was a pioneer of color and stereoscopic photography, and demonstrated a system of natural color photography at the 1885 Novelties…
Joseph-Armand Bombardier
Snowmobile
Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the Ski-Doo® snowmobile in 1959. It was the first mass-produced snow machine, and it launched snowmobiling as a…
Dawon Kahng
MOSFET
Dawon Kahng was an inventor of the first practical field-effect transistor, a device that controls electronic signals by switching them on or off or…
John Roebling
Suspension Bridge
In 1841, John Roebling invented a wire rope in order to improve upon the bulkier and weaker hemp fiber rope being used to haul canal boats along the…
Iver Anderson
Lead-Free Solder
Iver Anderson invented lead-free solder, a revolutionary tin, silver, and copper alternative to traditional tin and lead solder. Anderson's solder…
Aran Safir
Iris Recognition System
Aran Safir and Leonard Flom worked together in the 1980s on their concept for an iris identification system. They based their work on the fact that…
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Alternating Current
Without Charles Steinmetz's theories of alternating current, the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States in the early 20th…
Jacob Rabinow
Optical Character Reading
Jacob Rabinow invented machines that could recognize text, making it possible to automate vast amounts of routine work formerly done by hand.
A…
Stanley N. Cohen
Genetic Engineering
In 1973, Stan Cohen and Herb Boyer worked together to understand how genes work and ended up proving that DNA cloning was feasible. Their experiments…
Percy Lavon Julian
Preparation of Cortisone
Percy Lavon Julian synthesized physostigmine for treatment of glaucoma and cortisone for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. He is also noted for…
Helen Blanchard
Zig-Zag Sewing Machine
Helen Blanchard's improvements to the sewing machine allowed for the industrial growth of sewing machines. Twenty-two of Blanchard's twenty-eight…