Science & Nature · Reference dataset
Inventions Through History
136 inventions, discoveries and techniques from pottery and the first writing to the internet, across ten categories and every inhabited continent: the problem each solved, why it mattered, where it began, who contributed, what it built on and what it led to. Where several people or places share the credit, all are named; the dated steps are in the list inventionmilestones.
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The 10 most recently added of 136 records · Select a column heading to sort.
| ID | Invention | Category | Kind | First year | First date | Contributors | Place | Region | Modern countries | Problem solved | Significance | Built on | Led to | Milestones | Wikidata ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 127 | Compiler | Computing | Invention | 1952 | 1952 | Grace Hopper; Alick Glennie; John Backus | Philadelphia; Manchester; IBM, New York | United States and United Kingdom | United States; United Kingdom | Programming in machine code was slow and error-prone and tied to one machine. | Programs that translate human-readable code into machine code made programming accessible and portable. | Programmable digital computer | 2 | Q47506 | |
| 128 | Integrated circuit (microchip) | Computing | Invention | 1952 | 1952 | Geoffrey Dummer; Jack Kilby; Robert Noyce | Dallas, Texas; Mountain View, California | United States | United States | Wiring thousands of separate components by hand was costly and unreliable. | Putting a whole circuit on one piece of semiconductor made electronics small and cheap; Kilby and Noyce worked separately. | Transistor | Microprocessor | 3 | Q80831 |
| 129 | Internet | Computing | System | 1960 | 1960–1965 | Paul Baran; Donald Davies; Leonard Kleinrock; Vint Cerf; Bob Kahn | Los Angeles and Menlo Park, California; Teddington, England | United States and United Kingdom | United States; United Kingdom | Computers on different networks could not share data or survive the failure of a central link. | Packet switching and shared protocols let any network connect to any other, creating the global network behind email, the web and streaming. | Programmable digital computer | World Wide Web | 4 | Q75 |
| 130 | CT scanner | Medicine | Invention | 1963 | 1963–1964 | Allan MacLeod Cormack; Godfrey Hounsfield | Tufts University, Massachusetts; EMI, Hayes, England | United States and United Kingdom | United States; United Kingdom | Plain X-rays flatten the body into one shadow; doctors could not see slices of soft tissue such as the brain. | A computer combines many X-ray views into cross-sections; Cormack worked out the mathematics and Hounsfield built the machine, separately. | X-ray imaging; Programmable digital computer | 2 | Q32566 | |
| 131 | Kevlar fiber | Materials and manufacturing | Invention | 1965 | 1965 | Stephanie Kwolek | DuPont laboratory, Wilmington, Delaware | United States | United States | Light materials strong enough to stop bullets or reinforce tires did not exist. | Kwolek's fiber is five times stronger than steel by weight and is used in body armor, cables and helmets. | Bakelite (synthetic plastic) | 1 | Q207344 | |
| 132 | Oral rehydration therapy | Medicine | Technique | 1968 | 1968 | David Nalin; Richard Cash; Dilip Mahalanabis | Dhaka, East Pakistan, and Kolkata, India | Bengal | Bangladesh; India | Cholera and diarrhea kill by draining the body of water and salts; intravenous drips were scarce in poor and crowded places. | A cheap drink of water, sugar and salts saves millions of lives; it was proved in clinical trials and refugee camps in Bengal. | 2 | Q1381652 | ||
| 133 | Microprocessor | Computing | Invention | 1971 | 1971 | Federico Faggin; Ted Hoff; Stanley Mazor; Masatoshi Shima | Intel, Santa Clara, California (for Busicom of Japan) | United States and Japan | United States; Japan | Each calculator or controller needed its own custom set of chips. | A whole processor on one chip made personal computers, phones and embedded devices possible. | Integrated circuit (microchip) | 1 | Q5297 | |
| 134 | Global Positioning System (GPS) | Computing | System | 1973 | 1973 | Bradford Parkinson; Roger L. Easton; Ivan A. Getting | United States Department of Defense | United States | United States | Ships, planes and soldiers needed to know their exact position anywhere, in any weather. | Timing signals from satellites let a receiver compute its location; it now underpins navigation, mapping and network timing. | Rocket; Programmable digital computer | 3 | Q18822 | |
| 135 | Mobile (cellular) phone | Communication | Invention | 1973 | 1973 | Martin Cooper | New York City; Tokyo | United States and Japan | United States; Japan | Phones were tied to wires and places; people wanted to call from anywhere. | Cellular networks reuse radio frequencies across small cells, letting billions of people carry a phone; in many countries it became the first phone people ever had. | Telephone; Radio; Transistor | 3 | Q17517 | |
| 136 | World Wide Web | Computing | System | 1989 | 1989 | Tim Berners-Lee; Robert Cailliau | CERN, near Geneva | Switzerland–France border | Switzerland; France | Scientists' documents sat on many incompatible computers; there was no simple way to link and find them. | Linked pages addressed by URLs and viewed in a browser made the internet usable by everyone; CERN released it royalty-free. | Internet | 3 | Q466 |
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Last checked against sources: November 7, 2026.
Last changed: November 7, 2026. This is when we last changed the data or its description. It doesn’t mean the data runs up to that date.
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