John Milton: 1608-74; Britain, he said, was
'...a nation not slow or dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point that human capacity can soar to.' (Areopagitica, 1644)
Patents: Britain has the world’s longest continuous tradition of time-limited monopolies for inventions in return for written disclosure; most countries’ systems have been based on Britain's, featuring a first to file rule; the earliest patent on the island, though this isn't the earliest in Europe, is dated 1449; this was for a method of making stained glass - for the windows of Eton College
Rainwear: the recorded tradition of keeping dry outdoors on a moist island starts with the renowned hooded woollen cloak known to the Romans as the birrus Britannicus [see Grass]; modern times saw the development of the raincoat in Britain
'The first raincoat manufactured for sale was Fox’s Aquatic Gambroon Cloak, marketed by G. Fox of 28 King Street, Covent Garden in 1821 and “warranted never to get wet when properly made up.” Gambroon was a type of twill material containing mohair, but nothing is known about the waterproofing process.' [Source: Robertson]
The 1820s also saw the rubberized raincoat of Charles Macintosh; this was the first genuinely waterproof waterproof, 1824, and Macintosh can be regarded as the inventor of waterproof fabric; the typical 'Mackintosh' (sic) made from his thick fabric was unshapely, gave off a dubious odour and was prone to stickiness in hot weather
'The first shower-proof material capable of being styled according to the prevailing mode was patented in 1852 by the London firm Bax & Co. of Regent Street, which dispensed with rubber altogether and produced a chemically treated wool fabric they called by the name of Aquascutum- compounded from two Latin words meaning “water-shield.” The Aquascutum raincoast won a considerable reputation during the winter campaign of 1854-55 in the Crimean War…' [Source: Robertson]
Thomas Burberry’s ‘gabardine’ fabric raincoat appeared in 1910; it was based on yarn waterproofed before weaving; on the Western Front in the First World War it became the ‘trench coat’ style icon; Leslie Cohen’s Pakamak of 1949 was a cross between the trench coat and a plastic bag
'Lightweight tailored rainwear: The classic modern light raincoat is made of proofed poplin, originally produced by the English textile company P. Frankenstein, the subsidiary of which, Paul Blanche of Manchester (reputedly the wettest city in Britain), began making it up into high-fashion rainwear in 1950.' [Source: Robertson]
Peter Storm introduced a foldaway cagoule in 1954; in terms of footwear, it took developments in rubber manufacturing for ‘Wellington’ boots to enter at the double in the 1840s; Samuel Fox invented the steel-ribbed folding umbrella in 1852; the U-section ribs of this were inspired by the U-shaped girders of Thomas Telford’s bridge across Menai Strait to Anglesey
[see Fashion]
Stocking frame: William Lee, 1589; this was the first practical knitting machine
Lace machine: invented in Nottingham by John Leaver in 1805
Mercerized cotton: lustre, thread strength and dye affinity enhanced by chemical treatment: John Mercer, 1850
English Longbow: used by massed archers this was a battle-winning weapon, whose usefulness lasted into the early modern era, when it was supplanted by the musket; in its day the English longbow, made from yew, was a revolution in military affairs, ending the impregnability of mounted French knights in chain mail; the longbow probably arose in the Welsh borderlands around AD 1000 and should therefore more properly be called the ‘Welsh longbow’, though man-sized bows had been around since Neolithic times; the English longbow ultimately accrued 500 years of significance [see Agincourt]; its last use in battle was at Tippermuir, Scotland, during the English Civil War; the English longbow is not to be confused with the ‘English long ball’, a hoof upfield in football and rugby, from deep, gifting possession back to the opposition [see Sport & leisure]
Buck shot, perfectly spherical: William Watts achieved this in 1783, using molten lead falling in air into water, down what was to become known as a ‘shot tower’
Firearms: chemical ignition was first used by Alexander Forsyth in 1805; this was a replacement for the flintlock, which involved a flint striking metal to produce a spark; in chemical ignition sparks arise from chemicals after percussion; this development led in the 1820s to percussion caps plus separate bullet and powder; then came the all-in-one round; the first machine gun was that of James Puckle in 1718 [Source: Robertson]; a tripod-mounted brass barrel was served by a circular multi-cylinder revolving chamber, which was loaded with roundshot and turned with a crank; Puckle's weapon was an advance on muzzle-loaders of the time; the first breech-loading rifle was that of Patrick Ferguson (1744-1780); the first fully automatic machine gun was invented in London in 1884 by the American Hiram Maxim; cordite as a smokeless propellant was invented in 1889 by Frederick Abel and James Dewar (who also invented the vacuum flask in 1892)
Solid-fuel rocket: William Congreve, 1804; the ancients may well have had solid-fuel rockets, so this counts as a reinvention for the modern age
Safety fuse: William Bickford, 1831; less hazardous detonations
Torpedo: Robert Whitehead, 1866; the first aircraft-launched torpedo to sink an enemy ship did so in 1915 and was British; the motor torpedo boat was invented in Britain in the mid-1900s
Tank: invented in Britain during First World War and commissioned by Winston Churchill (1874-1965); first used in battle in 1916; Mother Mk I was the mother of all tanks; caterpillar tracks – i.e. continuous belted tread – had been invented in Britain in 1907, by David Roberts (they had also been thought up by aviation pioneer George Cayley, many decades previously); the Centurion is longest serving main battle tank in history, at 50 years; nautical terminology – hatch, turret, hull, deck – arises from the fact that tank was developed by the British Admiralty rather than the British Army; Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had wanted ‘land ships’ to withstand the hail of bullets in No Mans Land between the trenches – and that’s what he got, revolutionizing land warfare; the first tank with a revolving turret was the Vickers Medium Mark I [Source: Robertson/Shell]
Mills bomb: used in the First World War, this was the first segmented grenade; the Tommies nicknamed them ‘pineapples’
Armed robots used in warfare: the first were British company QinetiQ's Talan Sword robots, armed with machine guns, deployed by the US Army in Iraq in 2007
Fog horn: demonstrated in 1844 by J N Taylor, London; it had a range of 6 miles [Source: Robertson/Shell]
Pencil: this was invented in Britain in the early 1500s, based on graphite mined in Borrowdale [see Graphite]; the pencil rubber (eraser) was invented by Joseph Priestley, around 1770 [Source: Robertson]
Stereotype (printing): William Ged, 1725; uneconomic to keep metal type set for second printing, so Ged took a plaster mould and then cast the whole page in metal
Pen first made of steel: Samuel Harrison, 1780
Typewriter: the world's first patent for a typewriter was that of Henry Mill (c1683-1771) in 1714, which described a 'Machine for Transcribing Letters'; the inventor seems to have built an actual machine and it seems to have worked - yet the world had to wait another century and half for a commercially available typewriter, from Denmark
Stapler: this was patented by CH Gould of Birmingham in 1868 [Source: Robertson/Shell]
Microphone: invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1827; the radio microphone was invented by Reg Moores in 1949 [see Radio microphone]; Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) had many other achievements to his credit, including the first understanding of stereo (two eyed) vision, that enables humans to judge distance; he invented a boxed mirror device that swapped round what the eyes saw, giving an effect like an impressionist painting; he is also famous for the Wheatstone bridge, for the measurement of electrical resistance, and he was a pioneer in the development of the telegraph [See Telegraph]
Tape recorder: the first, the Blattnerphone, was demonstrated in
Refrigeration: Jacob Perkins, an American in Britain, filed the first patent for vapour-compression refrigeration in 1834
Elastic band: patented in London by Stephen Parry, 1845
Bicycle: the early 1800s forerunner from the Continent was a push bike; the first known attempt to link the rider’s legs to a drive wheel was that of Kirkpatrick MacMillan, 1839, via treadles; a key development was the tensioned spoke wheel; this had been invented by aviation pioneer George Cayley (1773-1857), who had developed it in the early 1800s to replace the compession spoke wheel; Cayley had reinvented the wheel to allow an aircraft to land with rolling undercarriage, but the tensioned spoke wheel found its first major use in the bicycle; William Stanley developed the steel-wired spider wheel in 1849; the wire spoke wheel was first used by James Starley, ‘Father of the Bicycle Industry’; James Starley’s Ordinary of 1870 was the iconic and perilous penny farthing; the modern bicycle was born in 1885, however, with the Rover Safety Bicycle, designed by John Starley, James’s nephew; this was a low-mount equal-wheeled diamond-framed bicycle, with pedals and a chain drive attached to the rear wheel, freeing up the font one for steering, plus sprung saddle; tensioned spoke wheels were used; a solid rubber tyre was replaced by the air-inflated rubber (pneumatic) tyre of John Boyd Dunlop, 1888 – a reinvention, as Robert William Thomson had got their first in 1845; the wire-reinforced tyres of Charles Welch followed in 1890; cycling changed dress, notably for women, and made society more freewheeling; cyclists it was who rediscovered the open road in late 1800s, not the later motorists, after the railways had largely eliminated the need for long-distance horse-drawn passenger coaches; note, though, that horse transport overall did not peak in the 1800s but in the first decade of 1900s, with economic development calling for ever more urban horse-buses, horse-trams and horse-carriages, prior to the ascendancy of motor vehicles and electric trams after the First World War; the bicycle has had another great age with the arrival of the poor megacity in the last quarter of the 1900s, with around 100m bicycles being produced worldwide annually, compared with 40m cars; these bicycles are made to essentially the same design as that culminated in Britain in the late 1800s; the first solar-powered bicycle appeared in 1983; it was an electrically assisted machine, with a top speed of 23mph; it was the brain child of Alan Freeman of McLaren supercar: the MP4-12C supercar is for road use; it is based on F1 motor racing technology and is built at a factory in Woking, Surrey; it was first demonstrated in 2011; this was exactly three centuries after Britain produced the world's first motor car, as described in the next notice; British car production currrently stands at around 1.5m vehicles per year
First motor cars: the first mechanically propelled vehicle was demonstrated in 1711 by Christopher Holtum (d1749); an advertisement appeared in The Tatler of 11 January 1711 describing a 'Chariot, in which a Man may travel without Horses'; the longest ad appeared in the British Mercury on 19 February 1711, with no less than seven ads published in The Daily Courant, Britain's first daily newspapers and one of the world's earliest, in the period 13 January - 7 March 1711; the vehicle was reported as being driven around London's Covent Garden at 5 or 6 miles an hour; it could reverse and it had a distance-measuring device (i.e. odometer); a later advertisement in The Daily Courant said that the Chariot could be used as an invalid carriage in a ‘Park or Garden’, perhaps indicating that the demonstration model was a small affair; it was claimed that a 'Person of Quality' had purchased a machine 'which is to go on 4 Wheels, and swing in the Nature of a large Coach'; this implies that the demonstration machine was a three wheeler, a configuration which simplifies steering – as in (i) the steam vehicle of the Frenchman Cugnot of 1769 (see later), (ii) the world’s first electric car of Briton David Salomen’s in 1874 and the world’s first practical electric car of another Briton, Magnus Volk, 1887 [Source: Robertson/Shell; see Electric power] and (iii) the petrol-engined motorised tricycle of Karl Benz of Germany, of 1885, that is usually regarded as the first modern car; Holtum's machine could be used with horses, the advertisement continued, to turn a pair into the equivalent of six, making it a four horse power affair; Holtum filed no patents and there is no record of him in the transactions of the Royal Society, yet his technical prowess is indicated by the initial newspaper announcement, which claimed that he was the 'first Author of Alarum for a Pocket-Watch' [see Timekeeping]; Holtum's name is on a longcase clock from the time of William III (reigned 1689-1702) as 'Christopher Holtum, Church Lawford' [Source: The Estates Gazette, Volume 222(2), 1514, 1972] and there are other examples of clocks with his name and this workplace on them; Church Lawford is a village in Warwickshire; there is a record of his marrying Ann Garfield of Church Lawford in 1710; the picture is thus of an out-of-town clockmaker, in his first year of married life and indeed shortly after the birth of his first child, producing a pioneering road vehicle which he demonstrates in the capital over a couple of months, advertising the fact repeatedly, with an evolving positive message [see More 17]; what might have made Holtum’s contraption tick?; clockwork propulsion is suitable only for toys, so a steam engine seems indicated, yet the use of such a device with horses would be problematic and in any case early examples were cumbersome low pressure affairs; this is true of the bulbous monstrosity that powered what is usually described as the first mechanically propelled road vehicle, of 1769, that of Frenchman Nicholas Cugnot, a big-wheeled tricycle; one small steam engine is recorded, however, that of pioneering engineer Edward Somerset (1601-67), 2nd Marquess of Worcester, who lived in the neighbouring county to Holtum in the previous generation [see Steam engine]; yet that was a pumping engine, like those of the later Savery, with moving valves but no pistons and wheels; Newcomen provided a piston driven steam engine in 1712; the fact that Holtum, the putative first motorist, does not figure at all in the history of the steam engine in itself perhaps suggests that his chariot was not steam powered; in 1803 Richard Trevithick & Andrew Vivian produced the London Steam Carriage, which really was driven by a steam engine; it was designed and built in Cornwall and fitted with a high-riding carriage body in London; the London Steam Carriage could travel at 10 mph; the world's first gas-turbine car was demonstrated in 1950; it was the Rover Jet I, built in Coventry; the world's first supersonic car was the jet-propelled Thrust SSC, built by Richard Noble at Farnborough, Hants, and piloted by Andy Green in 1997; the car travelled at 763 mph, yielding just 0.04 mpg
Acknowledgement: Keith Sinfield, the author of More 17 on the First Car, is thanked for sharing his research on Christopher Holtum
First car powered by internal combustion engine: Samuel Brown, 1826; Brown produced a horseless carriage with a 4 horse power gas vacuum engine; this was a true three-stroke internal combustion piston engine fuelled by coal gas; on test in 1826, his vehicle climbed Shooters Hill in Blackheath, London; Brown thus invented the ‘motor car powered by internal combustion engine’ decades before other automobile pioneers; the world’s first rudimentary example of an internal combustion engine had been Samuel Morland’s use of gunpowder to drive water pumps in the 1600s; Britain was also first with a working compression ignition engine [see Diesel engine]
First motor bus: in 1801 Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) built a motorised passenger-carrying vehicle, powered by a steam engine; the Camborne Road Locomotive or Puffing Devil could carry 8 passengers; in 1824 a steam coach was built by Timothy Burstall & John Hill; it featured four-wheel drive, weighed over 7 tons and had a top speed of 4 mph; the world's first true buses plied their trade in Cheltenham from February to June in 1831; these were three steam-propelled passenger vehicles made by Goldsworthy Gurney (who also invented concrete foundations and theatrical limelight); a more enduring regular service of horseless carriage was that of Walter Hancock, 1833; The Enterprise was steam powered and had 14 seats for passengers; Hancock’s London buses travelled 4,200 miles in total carrying 12,761 passengers at up to 20 mph; Hancock had demonstrated a 10-seater steam-driven bus in London in 1831, Infant, but it had not been licensed to carry passengers; the first double-decker bus appeared in Victorian London in 1847 [Source: Robertson/Shell]; the first inter-city bus service was inaugurated between London and Clacton in Essex in 1898 [Source: Robertson]
Hancock's steam-powered bus, London 1833
First lorry: 'The first motor truck in the sense of a practical self-propelled goods wagon capable of carrying (as opposed to drawing) freight was built by John Yule in 1870 for transporting large marine boilers from his works at Rutherglen, Loan, Glasgow, Scotland, to the Glasgow docks, a distance of 2 miles.' [Source: Robertson]; it was powered by a steam engine
Universal joint for power transmission: Robert Hooke, 1676
Pneumatic tyre: John Boyd Dunlop's air-inflated rubber tyre of 1888 was a (welcome) reinvention, with Robert William Thomson having got their first in 1845; the wire-reinforced tyres of Charles Welch followed in 1890; tyre development was spurred by the need of cyclists for a better ride, yet the pneumatic tyre was to facilitate the later private motoring revolution too
Safety glass: this was pioneered by John Crewe Wood, who fitted it to his own car in 1905 [see Glass]
Windscreen wiper: Gladstone Adams filed a patent in 1911, though the inventorship of this indispensable piece of automotive technology is subject to debate, with earlier examples of similarly manual contrivances available [Source: Robertson]; Adams is also said to have invented the trafficator, the forerunner of the indicator, and reinvented the sliding rowing seat [see Rowing]
'The first windshield wiper manufactured for sale, the pivoted "Gabriel" operated by pulling a string, was advertised in the 1912 catalog of London auto-parts dealer Brown Bros. at 15s ($3.60).' [Source: Robertson]
Fog lamp
Electrically heated windscreen
Electric self-starter: customer H J Dowsing fitted one to the Arnold Sociable he bought in 1896; this make was the first petrol-driven motor car to go into series production in Britain, from 1896 onwards
Four wheel brakes: the first production car with braking on four wheels was provided by Scottish manufacturer Argyll in 1910; the front brakes were operated by a pedal, the rear ones by a lever
Disc brakes: used in England in the 1890s; also Frederick William Lanchester, 1902
ABS brakes: a British invention first used in aircraft
Synchromesh gears:the first all synchromesh gearbox was provided on an Alvis of 1933
Toll roads: invented in Britain in 1260
One-way system: ancient Pompei had an example, but the first one-way system in the modern era was established in Britain:
'The first one-way streets were introduced in London by an act of Commons Council passed in August 1617...The traffic order embraced seventeen narrow and congested lanes into Thames Street, including Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London began in 1667. It remained in force for the following two centuries.' [Source: Robertson]
London saw another one-way scheme, in 1800, when traffic on Albemarle Street was only allowed to travel in a single direction because of the overwhelming popularity there of scientific lectures at the Royal Institution
Traffic lights: J P Knight, 1868
Traffic islands: the first is said to have been built in London in 1864; it was paid for by one Colonel Pierpoint who was afraid of being knocked down on his way to and from his Pall Mall club; when it was finished, the good fellow dashed across the road to admire his creation – and was killed by a cab; the first roundabout – defined as a one-way gyratory built for road management not to circumvent a monument – was introduced in Letchworth Garden City in 1909; the inventor of the mini-roundabout was Frank Blackmore, with the first appearing in Peterborough in 1969; Blackmore developed the concept further with the painted traffic island, first used at Benfleet, Essex, in 1970; this was ‘over-runnable’ by traffic, making it easier for larger vehicles to manoeuvre the junction; 'Magic Roundabouts' - large roundabouts surrounded by mini satellites - are to be found in Swindon and Hemel Hempstead; safer than crossroads, according to research, the British roundabout now exists worldwide in many tens of thousands
Car insurance:
'The first automobile insurance was introduced by General Accident Co. of London on 2 November 1896...' [Source: Robertson; see Insurance]
Catseyes for road safety: Percy Shaw, 1933
Sub-surface-draining asphalt
Car tracker anti-theft device: Automobile Association, 1993 [Source: Robertson/Shell]
Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost: reckoned the best car in the world; hand built from 1906; every part had been designed by Henry Royce, who along with longitude genius John Harrison and mechanical engineer Henry Maudsley, is among British engineering’s inspirational perfectionists; Royce built his first car in 1904; in 1906, together with C S Rolls, he formed Rolls-Royce Limited, which became renowned not only for cars but also for aeroengines
Mini: the Morris Mini-Minor of 1959 was designed by Alex Issigonis, who had previously designed the Morris Minor, itself launched in 1948 and in production until 1971; the iconic Mini was a small car with a transverse engine, front wheel drive and a monocoque chassis; it became the bestselling British car ever and in redesigned form it was still rolling out of its Cowley factory in Oxford in the 21st century
Other famous vehicles: Land Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Bentley, Morgan, Lotus etc
Driving on the left: said to be so that riders on London Bridge could draw their swords with the right hand; Britain is not alone, with 57 other countries doing likewise
Private garage: the world's first was probably the 'motor stables' built by David Salomons at his house in Tunbridge Wells in Kent in 1895 or thereafter [see next entry]; another early builder of a purpose-built lodging for his cars was W W Barrett of Southport in Lancashire, in 1898/9; Barrett is also credited with inventing the first practical jack for lifting cars [Source: Robertson]
Motor show: David Salomons, of private garage and first electric car fame [see First motor cars], also laid on the world's first motor show, 1895; five vehicles were demonstrated
Motor museum: the world's first was opened in 1912 in Oxford Street, London, by Edmund Dangerfield; a couple of the original exhibits can be found to this day at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, Hampshire, which traces its origins to the 1950s
[see Land & water speed records, Motorsport]
Sopwith Camel: fighter legend of the First World War (1914-18) which together with the equally superlative SE5 turned the air war above the trenches of the Western Front in favour of the Allies; yet the accolade of the top fighter aircraft might have to be bestowed on another British machine, one only introduced in 1917:
Harrier Jump Jet: first vertical take off and landing fighter, 1960s; designed by Gordon Lewis & Ralph Harper
Radar: rendered practical by Robert Watson-Watt, 1935, a descendant of James ‘steam engine’ Watt; the word radar derives from radio detection and ranging; radar works by recording radio waves that have been reflected from the object under observation; the first full exploitation in air defence was during the Second World War in the Battle of Britain of 1940; it helped the RAF to prevail over the enemy; radar development was aided by the invention of the cavity magnetron.
Alan Turing: 1912-54; his 1936 concept of a universal Turing machine is the basis of the computer; the academic study of computing dates from his work in this period; Turing helped to crack the German Enigma and Lorenz codes in Second World War at Bletchley Park – the greatest intelligence triumph of all time – and then helped Freddie Williams build the first stored-program computer to operate, in Manchester, 1948; this was capable of key task of conditional branching, in which operations are carried out only if some condition is met; a now-legendary paper of Turing’s appeared in 1950 on the creation of a ‘machine that thinks’; that same year saw the building of the Pilot Ace (Automatic Computing Engine), a small-scale programmable computer, based on Turing’s ideas; being compact and flexible, and for a time the fastest computer in the world, it was the precursor of the modern personal computer (PC); Alan Turing is regarded as the father of the computer and of artificial intelligence [see 
Sewing machine: 'The first sewing machine was patented by Thomas Saint, cabinetmaker...of London, on 17 July 1790. The specification...was remarkable for its anticipation of so many features that later became basic in commercially developed machines. These included the perpendicular action, patented later by Isaac Singer; the eye-pierced needle and the pressing surfaces designed to hold the cloth taut...and the overhanging arm that constitutes a basic characteristic of modern sewing machines.' [Source: 
Jubilee clip: Lumley Robinson, 1921; for fastening hoses to pipes, this is a clip tightened by a screwdriver via a worm drive; 2 billion were made in the twentieth century, with production continuing in the twenty-first
Meccano: 1901; model construction system, still in production in the 21st century)
Flush toilet: John Harison, a godson of Elizabeth I, invented this godsend in 1597, and the queen was delighted with it; London watchmaker Alexander Cumming invented the ‘S’ bend to retain residual water and prevent back-venting of sewer gases, filing the first patent for the modern flush toilet in 1775; an improved design was produced by Joseph Bramah in 1778; the modern flush toilet was finally developed around 1820 by Albert Giblin; George Jennings designed and installed the world’s first modern public convenience for the Great Exhibition of 1851; he charged one penny; this is the probable origin of the British phrase ‘to spend a penny’; a Vacant/Engaged bolt for toilet doors was first manufactured in 1883 by C Cross & Co. of Herne Hill, under A Ashwell's patent [Source: 
