Primary
The Wright brothers made the first flight in an engine-powered aeroplane in 1903.
Did You Know? Inventions and Discoveries
Short facts about famous inventions and discoveries and the people behind them, from Arab scholars to modern inventors.
62 facts3 stages
Tip for school assemblies: pick 5 to 7 facts from different subjects and start each one with "Did you know that...".
Facts for Primary students
Primary
Alexander Graham Bell was granted the patent for the telephone in 1876.
Primary
Thomas Edison developed a practical, long-lasting light bulb in 1879.
Primary
Paper was invented in China about 2,000 years ago.
Primary
The magnetic compass was invented in China.
Primary
Karl Benz built the first practical petrol-powered car in 1885.
Primary
In 1817 Karl Drais invented the 'running machine', a two-wheeled bicycle without pedals.
Primary
The idea for Velcro came from plant burrs that stuck to a dog's fur on a walk.
Primary
The microwave oven was discovered by chance when a chocolate bar melted in an engineer's pocket near radar equipment.
Primary
Nicéphore Niépce took the oldest surviving photograph in the 1820s.
Primary
John Logie Baird demonstrated the first television system in 1926.
Primary
In the 12th century al-Jazari designed water clocks and self-moving machines, described in a book in 1206.
Primary
Abbas ibn Firnas tried to fly with a pair of wings in Córdoba in the 9th century.
Primary
The zip fastener was invented in the late 19th century and took its modern form in 1913.
Primary
Marconi sent radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean in 1901.
Primary
Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine, against smallpox, in 1796.
Primary
In the 10th century al-Zahrawi invented many surgical tools and drew them in his book 'al-Tasrif'.
Primary
Ibn al-Haytham explained how the camera obscura works, the idea behind the camera.
Primary
The French doctor René Laennec invented the stethoscope in 1816.
Primary
Sticky notes came from a weak glue that was first thought to be a failed experiment.
Primary
People have used the arak twig (miswak) to clean their teeth since ancient times.
Facts for Middle school students
Middle school
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928.
Middle school
James Watt improved the steam engine in the 1760s and 1770s, helping to power the Industrial Revolution.
Middle school
Samuel Morse developed Morse code for the telegraph in the 1830s and 1840s.
Middle school
Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895.
Middle school
Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered the elements polonium and radium in 1898.
Middle school
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867 and left his fortune to found the Nobel Prizes.
Middle school
The safety elevator invented by Elisha Otis in the 1850s made skyscrapers possible.
Middle school
Willis Carrier invented modern air conditioning in 1902.
Middle school
Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain developed the jet engine in the 1930s.
Middle school
The barcode was patented in 1952, and the first product was scanned in a shop in 1974.
Middle school
Martin Cooper made the first call from a handheld mobile phone in 1973.
Middle school
The ballpoint pen spread thanks to the Hungarian journalist László Bíró, who patented it in 1938.
Middle school
Alessandro Volta built the first electric battery in 1800.
Middle school
Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831, the principle behind electric generators.
Middle school
Louis Pasteur developed pasteurisation in the 1860s to kill germs in food and drinks.
Middle school
Al-Jazari described machines that used a crank mechanism to turn circular motion into straight-line motion.
Middle school
Insulin was first used to treat people with diabetes in 1922.
Middle school
The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched in 1957.
Middle school
The inventors of the blue LED won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, because it made energy-saving white lighting possible.
Middle school
Windmills were used in Persia more than a thousand years ago to grind grain and pump water.
Middle school
The first lasting telegraph cable across the Atlantic began working in 1866.
Facts for Secondary students
Secondary
The transistor was invented at Bell Labs in 1947 and is the foundation of modern electronics.
Secondary
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit (the chip) in 1958 and 1959.
Secondary
Theodore Maiman built the first laser in 1960.
Secondary
Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current systems that deliver electricity to our homes today.
Secondary
Watson and Crick described the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, using Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images.
Secondary
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the CRISPR gene-editing tool.
Secondary
MRI scanners use powerful magnets and radio waves to take pictures inside the body.
Secondary
The first human heart transplant was carried out in 1967.
Secondary
The Haber–Bosch process, developed in the early 20th century, makes ammonia, the basis of fertilisers that feed billions of people.
Secondary
The Global Positioning System (GPS) became fully operational in 1995.
Secondary
Chester Carlson invented the photocopier process in 1938.
Secondary
The scholar Ibn Sahl described the law of light refraction in 984 CE, centuries before it was credited to Snell.
Secondary
Jabir ibn Hayyan is credited with developing laboratory methods such as distillation and crystallisation.
Secondary
The first commercial jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet, began regular flights in 1952.
Secondary
The first touchscreen was invented in the 1960s.
Secondary
Bell Labs made the first practical silicon solar cell in 1954.
Secondary
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn designed the TCP/IP protocols that the internet runs on, in the 1970s.
Secondary
The world's first nuclear power plant to supply an electricity grid started in 1954 in Obninsk, Russia.
Secondary
Charles Kao won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering work on sending light through optical fibres.
Secondary
The first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) was born in 1978.