Industrial Revolution Inventors

James Hagreaves

Biography: James Hargreaves was a weaver, carpenter and inventor in Lancashire, England. He was one of three inventors responsible for mechanising spinning.

Inventions: Spinning Jenny

John Kay

Biography: John Kay was the inventor of the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution. He is often confused with his namesake, who built the first "spinning frame".

Inventions: Flying Shuttle

Samuel F. B. Morse

Biography: Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs.

Inventions: Telegraph

Alexander Graham Bell

Biography: Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone.

Inventions: Telephone

John Loudon McAdam

Biography: was a Scottish engineer and road-builder. He invented a new process, "macadamisation", for building roads with a smooth hard surface, using controlled materials of mixed particle size and predetermined structure, that would be more durable and less muddy than soil-based tracks.

Inventions: Road building

Thomas Telford

Biography: Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder.

Invention: Canal builder

Wilbur and Orville Wright

Biography: were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. From 1905 to 1907, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft.

Inventions: Airplane

Henry Bessemer

Biography: Sir Henry Bessemer was an English inventor whose steelmaking process established the town of Sheffield as a major manufacturing centre.

Inventions/Discovery: Steel-making

Thomas Edison

Biography: Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.

Invention: Practical light bulb

George Stephenson

Biography: George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use steam locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830

Invention: Railroad