Invention   
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Science and Inventions - Teaching machines in the classroom c1899. ©Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works
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Menlo Park, New Jersey: Thomas Alva Edison, American electrochemist, technical engineer and inventor, in his laboratory in Menlo Park. Photo, c.1910. Colorized. ©akg-images / The Image Works<br><br>
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Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan: A little girl tries to shake hands with BANDAI's prototype of autonomous robot BN-11 at the 2003 Japan Toy Show in Yokohama. July 31, 2003. ©Tatsuyuki Tayama / Fujifotos / The Image Works
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Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press with movable type. Gutenberg printing the Psalter. Woodcut after drawing by Adolph Menzel (1815-1905), later coloured. From: F.Buelau, Deutsche Geschichte in Bildern, Vol.2, Dresden (C.C.Meinhold) 1862. ©akg - images / The Image Works
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A new medical device. Patients can get shots through the Inject-Safe Bandage which will stop any bodily fluids getting out or contamination getting in. ©Journal-Courier / Steve Warmowski / The Image Works<br>
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Nikola Tesla (1857-1943), Yugoslav physicist. About 1890. ©Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
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Rubik's Ball -- a new mechanical puzzle of the Hungarian inventor, sculptor, and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. Moscow Russia 7/10/2009 ©RIA Novosti / TopFoto / The Image Works
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John Logie Baird (1888-1946), the television pioneer, with his 'Noctovisor' infra-red TV camera, 1929. After a serious illness in 1922, Baird devoted himself to experimentation and developed a crude TV apparatus, able to transmit a picture and receive it over a range of a few feet. The first real demonstration was within two attic rooms in Soho, London, in early 1926, and by 1927 he managed to transmit pictures by telephone line from London to Glasgow. ©SSPL / NMeM / Daily Herald Archive / The Image Works
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Paris, France: Bryon Gysin and his Dream Machine. William S. Burroughs at left. ©Charles Gatewood / The Image Works
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Charles Deane’s diving demonstration at Portsmouth, c 1830. - Coloured drawing from a collection of documents dated c 1797-1847 relating to the work of Simon Goodrich, mechanist to the Navy Board. Shown here is a demonstration of the open diving helmet with air pump, developed by English inventors John and Charles Deane. In 1823 the Deane brothers patented a helmet designed for use in fire-fighting, modifying this five years later into a diving helmet and suit. The helmet is held in place with weights, while air is supplied from the surface through a hose. The diver could communicate with the surface by pulling on a signal line. ©SSPL / Science Museum / The Image Works
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Design for an aerial steam carriage, 1843 (1956). William Henson, a follower of English aviation pioneer Sir George Cayley, patented his proposed Aerial Steam Carriage in 1842. The machine would never have been able to fly as the wings would not have been strong enough to carry the weight of the steam engine needed to power it. The design did however establish several of the features used in modern aeroplanes, including monoplane wings, the fuselage, and tail-unit. A print from Things, a volume about the origin and early history of many things, common and less common, essential and inessential, by Readers Union, the Grosvenor Press, London, 1956. ©The Print Collector / HIP / The Image Works
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One-wheeled motor built by the Italian engineer Cislaghi. 1920 ITALY © Albert Harlingue / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
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Steam machine prototype with its relaxed driver. Also used as a ploughing machine. Late 18th century illustration of modern prophecy. Lithograph. © Lebrecht / The Image Works
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The man with hang-gliders. Concours Lépine. Paris, 1935. 1935 PARIS PARIS ILE-DE-FRANCE FRANCE © Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
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Conveyer belt of the professor Jean-Paul Langlois (1862-1923), French physiologist. Study of a cyclist. 1921. © Boyer / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
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Jethro Tull demonstrating his seed drill, 1701.Oil on canvas mural by Alfred Reginald Thomson, RA, 1955, commissioned by the Science Museum, London, showing the agricultural pioneer, Jethro Tull (1674-1741), demonstrating his most significant invention, the seed-drill. Tull began his investigations into scientific methods of seed cultivation in the late 1600s. In around 1701 he produced his first drill to make channels, drill and cover the seed, sowing three rows at a time. A grooved cylinder rotated against a spring-held tongue, received the seed from the seedbox and dropped it evenly into the ground. Signed with the artist’s monogram on the flank of the horse. ©SSPL / The Image Works
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Germany: Von Ohain's first experimental turbojet, c 1935.Hans von Ohain's first experimental turbojet with his assistant, Max Hahn. German engineer von Ohain (1911-1998) designed the first operational turbojet engine. ©Science Museum/SSPL / The Image Works
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Early Bell telephone and terminal panel, 1877. - Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was born in Scotland but emigrated to the United States, settling in Boston where he began his career as an inventor. On 7th March 1876, he secured a patent for an electrical speech machine, which he called the telephone. After showing the instrument at the American Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in June, news of the invention spread throughout Europe. He was asked to demonstrate the telephone to Queen Victoria (1819-1901) at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. On the evening of 14th January 1878 contact was made with nearby Osborne Cottage and terminals in Southampton and London. This telephone and terminal panel were used at Osborne Cottage. ©SSPL/Science Museum / The Image Works
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SELF-ADJUSTING CLEPSYDRA - The SELF-ADJUSTING CLEPSYDRA is attributed to Ctesibius a mechanical engineer of Alexandria Egypt : the technology involves a dual action of tube and circa 200 BC - ©Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works
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Belleair Buffs, Florida: July 6, 2010. An 86 year old man poses for a portrait with his concept for capturing the escaping oil from the Deep Horizon disaster. The man worked 37 years as an engineer for the federal government and says he has seven patents in his name. His idea was rejected. &quotIt's the NIH factor," he said of why his idea was rejected. &quotIt's Not Invented Here. It's an old engineer term." ©St Petersburg Times / Chris Zuppa / The Image Works
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China: Raising water by means of a shaduf, (1825-1835). The shaduf was invented in ancient times and is a simple device with a bucket attached by a rope to one end of a shaft and, in this version, a weight at the other. The shaft is pivoted on a pole. From Costume Antico et Moderno. (Rome, 1825-1835). ©Oxford Science Archive / HIP / The Image Works
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Crick and Watson's DNA molecular model, 1953 .Detail of a single template. This reconstruction of the double helix model of DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) contains some of the original metal plates used by Francis Crick (b 1916) and James Dewey Watson (b 1928) to determine the molecular structure of DNA. It is constructed out of metal plates and rods, arranged helically around a retort stand, and shows one complete turn of the famous double helix. The metal plates represent the four bases, whose complementary arrangement immediately suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. Crick and Watson made their discovery while working in the medical Research Council Unit at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. ©SSPL / The Image Works
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Germany: The famous radiograph made by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who discovered X-Rays, on 22 December 1895. It is an image of his wife's hand, showing bones and her wedding ring, and is the first x-ray of the human body. ©Topham / The Image Works
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Columbus, Christopher; Navigator and discoverer of America, 1451-1506. Columbus embarks upon his first voyage of discovery (Palos, 3rd August 1492). Copper eng. From: Honorius Philoponus, Nova typis transacta navigatio novi orbis Indiae Occedentalis, Venice, 1621. Coloured at a later date. © akg - images / The Image Works
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Jacksonville, Illinois: April 7, 2009. Illinois School for the Visually Impaired student explores the ridges and raised features of her Visually Impaired Yoga Mat, while instructor, and inventor of the mat helps another student get acquainted with the matís features. ©Jacksonville Journal / Clayton Stalter / The Image Works
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Apple I computer, 1976. This was the first computer made by Apple Computers Inc, which became one of the fastest growing companies in history, launching a number of innovative and influential computer hardware and software products. Most home computer users in the 1970s were hobbyists who designed and assembled their own machines. The Apple I, devised in a bedroom by Steve Wozniak, Steven Jobs and Ron Wayne, was a basic circuit board to which enthusiasts would add display units and keyboards. ©SSPL / The Image Works
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Combined monophasic early contraception pill, 1960. - Pink contraceptive pills (marked 'PD') in a circular blue plastic dispenser. The top transparent plastic disc could be rotated, allowing one pill to be released every day. Before the 1950s, contraceptive pills were too expensive to mass produce because the hormones they contain had to be prepared in the laboratory from animal tissue. It only became economic for pharmaceutical companies to produce them when chemists discovered cheaper sources of the hormones in plants. These were used to make synthetic hormones, which could alter the female menstrual cycle, usually controlled by the body's natural sex hormones, preventing pregnancy. ‘The Pill’ was launched in 1960, and became closely linked with changing sexual attitudes in the ‘swinging sixties’. ©SSPL/Science Museum / The Image Works
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Flying man. Clem Sohn the Man-bird. 1900 © Albert Harlingue / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works
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'Passage from the Second to the Third Gallery in the Great Pyramid', Giza, Egypt, 1802. Exploring the interior of the Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu). Plate 5 from &quotViews in Egypt" by Luigi Mayer, 1802. Thomas Milton (creator);Luigi Mayer; ©Stapleton Collection / Heritage / The Image Works
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Sir Joseph John Thomson, British physicist, 1900. - Sir Joseph J Thomson (1856-1940) studied sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating, he continued to work at Cambridge University and in 1896 began experiments on cathode rays, demonstrating that they were in fact particles with a negative charge and were much smaller than an atom. These particles were later renamed electrons. In 1906, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. ©SSPL/Science Museum / The Image Works
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