List of English inventions and discoveries

English inventions and discoveries are objects, processes or techniques invented, innovated or discovered, partially or entirely, in England by a person from England.

Often, things discovered for the first time are also called inventions and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two.

Nonetheless, science and technology in England continued to develop rapidly in absolute terms.

Furthermore, according to a Japanese research firm, over 40% of the world's inventions and discoveries were made in the UK, followed by France with 24% of the world's inventions and discoveries made in France and followed by the US with 20%.

[1] The following is a list of inventions, innovations or discoveries known or generally recognised to be English.

Jethro Tull , improved the seed drill in 1701
The spinning jenny , invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves
Sir Tim Berners-Lee , invented the World Wide Web in 1989
Sir Francis Galton , developed fingerprint classification method, 1888
John Harington , invented the modern flushing toilet , 1596
Edward Jenner , invented the smallpox vaccine , the first successful vaccine to be developed, in 1798
Florence Nightingale , pioneered modern nursing , from 1860 onwards
Sir Hiram Maxim , invented the machine gun in 1884
Thomas Wedgwood , copied images chemically to permanent media by 1800
Myles Coverdale , produced first complete printed English Bible , 1535
Michael Faraday , made key discoveries relating to electricity , 1820s–1840s
Sir James Chadwick , awarded 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932
John Dalton , developed modern atomic theory , 1803
Humphry Davy : isolated various substances using electrolysis ; identified them as elements ; identified elemental nature of chlorine and iodine , 1807–1813
Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution published in 1859
George Boole , whose Boolean algebra (1854) laid the foundations of the Information Age
Henry Maudslay , a founding father of machine tool technology
W. G. Grace (1848–1915); 1598 saw the earliest definite reference to cricket
The Aerial Steam Carriage , performed the world's first powered flight in 1848
The de Havilland Comet , the first commercial jet airliner , produced in 1949
The London Underground , opened 1863
The Hansom cab , invented by Joseph Hansom in 1834
Hovercraft , invented by Sir Christopher Cockerell in 1955
Prime meridian , established at Greenwich , 1851