Timeline of United States inventions (after 1991)

Patent protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.In 1641, the first patent in North America was issued to Samuel Winslow by the General Court of Massachusetts for a new method of making salt.

"[4] On July 31, 1790, Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont became the first person in the United States to file and to be granted a patent for an improved method of "Making Pot and Pearl Ashes.

The quantum cascade laser was co-invented by Alfred Y. Cho, Claire F. Gmachl, Federico Capasso, Deborah Sivco, Albert Hutchinson, and Alessandro Tredicucci at Bell Laboratories in 1994.

[15] 1995 Bose–Einstein condensate 1995 Screenless hammer mill 1995 Scroll wheel 1995 JavaScript 1996 Adobe Flash 1996 Bait car 1997 Virtual reality therapy 1998 HVLS fan 1999 Torino scale 1999 Phase-change incubator 1999 iBOT 1999 Camera phone 2001 iPod

In 2012, otolaryngologist Glenn Green led a team that bioengineered one of the first synthetic tracheas to stabilize the breathing of a struggling baby.