British Inventions - Engineering

Engineering

• Adjustable spanner - Edwin Beard Budding
• Cavity magnetron - John Randall and Harry Boot critical component for Microwave generation in Microwave ovens and high powered Radios (Radar)
• Carey Foster bridge - Carey Foster
• Electric transformer - Michael Faraday
• First coke-consuming blast furnace - Abraham Darby I
• First working universal joint - Robert Hooke
• Produced the first commercial steel alloy in 1868 - Robert Forester Mushet
• Crookes tube the first cathode ray tubes - William Crookes
• First compression ignition engine aka the Diesel Engine - Herbert Akroyd Stuart
• First working steam pump - Thomas Savery in 1698
• Atmospheric steam engine - Thomas Newcomen in 1712
• Modified version of the Newcomen steam engine (Pickard engine) - James Pickard
• Steam turbine - Charles Algernon Parsons
• Pendulum governor - Frederick Lanchester
• High strength carbon fiber - Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1963 - Also on January 14, 1969 Carr Reinforcements (Stockport, England) wove the first carbon fiber fabric in the world
• Contributed to the development of Radar - Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt and Englishman Arnold Frederic Wilkins
• Disc brakes - Frederick W. Lanchester
• Internal combustion engine - Samuel Brown
• Fourdrinier machine - Henry Fourdrinier
• Microchip - Geoffrey W.A. Dummer
• light-emitting diode (did not invent the first visible light, only theorised)- H. J. Round
• Francis turbine - James B. Francis
• Gas turbine - John Barber (engineer)
• Two-stroke engine - Joseph Day
• Pioneer of radio guidance systems - Archibald Low
• Screw-cutting lathe - Henry Hindley
  • The first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe - Henry Maudslay
• The first electrical measuring instrument, the electroscope - William Gilbert
• Rectilinear Slide rule - William Oughtred
• Devised a standard for screw threads leading to its widespread acceptance - Joseph Whitworth
• The Wimshurst machine is an Electrostatic generator for producing high voltages - James Wimshurst
• Hot bulb engine or heavy oil engine - Herbert Akroyd Stuart
• Hydraulic crane - William George Armstrong
• Vacuum diode also known as a vacuum tube - John Ambrose Fleming
• Linear motor is a multi-phase alternating current (AC) electric motor - Charles Wheatstone then improved by Eric Laithwaite
• Designed water and sewerage systems for over 30 cities across Europe - William Lindley
• The Iron Bridge (1791), the first metal bridge of any kind - Abraham Darby III
• The world's first house powered with hydroelectricity - Cragside, Northumberland
• Wind tunnel - Francis Herbert Wenham