There’s no doubt Great Britain lays claim to some of the greatest scientific discoveries and inventions that have changed the face of modern society.
Now, MailOnline’s interactive map reveals the birthplace of 30 of these famous British marvels, from stainless steel to the jet engine and the electric motor.
Who can forget Alan Turing’s Bombe machine, used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during WWII?
Turing developed the Bombe in 1939 at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire and hundreds were built, marking a crucial contribution to the war effort.
Also on the map is the hovercraft invented by Christopher Cockerell in 1955 and first launched four years later on the the Isle of Wight.
In addition, there’s Sir Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope which revolutionized astronomy and graphene, the ‘wonder material’ from Manchester.
But even the humblest ideas – such as the claw-ended can opener devised by Robert Yeates in Middlesex in 1955 – have changed lives.
MailOnline also takes a closer look at eight of these 30 influential innovations, including cat’s eyes, tarmac and the television.
A wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe. This electro-mechanical device used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during the Second World War
PENICILLIN
Since its accidental discovery, an estimated 500 million lives or more have been saved by penicillin – the first known antibiotic.
In September 1928, Scottish physician Dr Alexander Fleming returned from a family holiday to his lab at London’s St Mary’s Hospital Medical School.
He found mould growing on a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria – but curiously, the mould was stopping bacteria around it from growing.
In contrast, Staphylococci colonies growing further away from the mould were normal – an observation that led him to remark, ‘that’s funny.’
He soon identified that the mould produced a self-defence chemical that could kill bacteria, and named the substance penicillin.
Dr Fleming presented his discovery in a talk the following February, but it received little attention from his peers and its first clinical use wasn’t until the 1940s.
Fleming’s work – which earnt him the Nobel Prize in 1945 – has been described as the ‘greatest victory ever achieved over disease’, paving the way for modern antibiotics.
Alexander Fleming (pictured here in 1951) discovered the first-known antibiotic when a mould of the genus Penicillium accidentally started growing in a Petri dish in his laboratory at the St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which is today part of Imperial College London
Penicillin’s first clinical use wasn’t until the 1940s. Pictured, vintage Penicillin products manufactured in the mid-century by Glaxo
The penicillin mould was accidentally grown by physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming in London in 1928. Pictured, a sample of mould regrown from one of Sir Fleming’s frozen samples in 2020
Before antibiotics, everything from paper cuts to childbirth had the potential to kill someone if they’d been infected by bacteria.
STAINLESS STEEL
There’s no doubt Sheffield lays claim to stainless steel, with the ‘Steel City’ churning out its first batch of the material over a century ago.
So-called due to its resistance to corrosion and rust, stainless steel brought affordable cutlery to the masses.
In August 1913, Sheffield metallurgist Harry Brearley added chromium to molten iron to produce a revolutionary metal that did not rust.
A 1915 report in The New York Times heralded as ‘especially good for table cutlery’ as the polish is maintained after use, even after contact with ‘the most acid foods’.
But outside of cutlery, stainless steel is used to manufacture vehicles, surgical instruments and major industrial appliances like chemical plants and paper mills.
While it will always be synonymous with Sheffield, the three biggest stainless steel makers today are based in China and South Korea.
In August 1913, Sheffield metallurgist Harry Brearley added chromium to molten iron to produce a revolutionary metal that did not rust. Pictured, workers pouring a small casting at Edgar Allen’s Steel foundry, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, 1963
Pictured, a steelworker checks the curve of a steel plate after it has been passed through the rollers, Edgar Allen’s steel foundry, Sheffield, Yorkshire, 1964
TELEVISION
As Roald Dahl wrote, watching TV ‘rots the senses in the head’ and ‘kills imagination dead’, while academic Neil Postman said it ‘requires no skills and develops no skills’.
And it seems no other modern invention quite splits opinion like the television, which existed as a futuristic concept for decades before coming to fruition.
Multiple engineers of the early 20th century conducted critical experiments in image transmission, such as Paul Nipkow from Germany and Vladimir Zworykin from Russia.
However, it was Scotsman John Logie Baird who was the first to demonstrate a working TV – at his workshop at Queen’s Arcade in Hastings.
He produced the the world’s first television images in the arcade in 1923 and gave a demonstration to scientists in Soho, London in January 1926.
As his techniques advanced Baird was able to demonstrate television over a distance of 400 miles, between London and Glasgow.
Baird set up the Baird Television Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic TV transmission, from London to Hartsdale, New York.
John Logie Baird demonstrates his ‘televisor’, a receiver for a mechanical system of television transmission involving a spinning disk. The system was soon overtaken by electronic television after World War II. Note the ghostly image on the left – the first known photograph of a moving image produced by the televisor, as reported in The Times, 28 January 1926 (The subject is Baird’s business partner Oliver Hutchinson)
In 1924, the arcade was the site of Scottish inventor John Logie Baird’s first public demonstration of televised pictures
In 1929, the first television programmes were officially transmitted by the BBC, while the Baird ‘Televisor’ was sold in the UK between 1930 and 1933.
TARMAC
Tarmac, or Tarmacadam to give it its full name, is walked and driven on every day by billions of people worldwide – but its origin is Nottingham.
Consisting of broken stone mixed with tar, the highly-durable and weather resistant material replaced dusty gravel roads in the early 20th century.
At the time, dusty gravel roads were becoming unsuitable for the emerging transport of the day – the motorcar.
Tarmac was invented by Welshman Edgar Hooley, a surveyor for Nottinghamshire County, who was walking in Denby, Derbyshire, in 1901 when he discovered a smooth stretch of road.
He learnt that a barrel of tar had burst on the road, and waste slag had been poured on it to cover it up – giving a smooth, solidified road surface with no dust.
In 1902, Hooley patented the process of adding slag to heated tar, and breaking stones within the mixture to create a smooth, solid surface.
Pictured, tarmac being laid for a new roadway on the Manvers coal prep site in Rotherham, Yorkshire in 1955
He turned Radcliffe Road in Nottingham into the world’s first tarmac road, covering five miles of it with his mixture.
TOOTHBRUSH
As 18th century entrepreneur William Addis showed, a criminal history doesn’t stop you from turning your life around and making a positive difference.
In 1770, the Londoner was sent to Newgate prison for causing a riot, where he came up with the idea for a revolutionary new teeth cleaning method.
Addis had decided that the prevalent method used to clean teeth at the time – crushed soot with a cloth – wasn’t effective enough.
Inspired by the use of a broom to sweep the floor, he saved a small animal bone from a meal, into which he drilled small holes.
Next, he tied some bristles into tufts and passed them the holes in the bone, finally sealing with glue to create the world’s first toothbrush.
After his release, William started a company, Addis, in 1780 to mass-produce his toothbrushes – a firm that still exists today.
William started a company, Addis, in 1780 to mass-produce his toothbrushes – a firm that still exists today
By 1840, toothbrushes were being mass-produced in England, France, Germany, and Japan, while Addis supplied WWI troops with toothbrushes creating a national ‘habit’ of teeth cleaning.
CAT’S EYES
Cat’s eyes are the little reflective road studs that help drivers navigate roads, especially in at night or in foggy road conditions where visibility is low.
These little devices are not electronic, but simply rely on reflecting back the headlights of vehicles at night – a low cost and low maintenance solution.
Considered one of the greatest ever inventions in accident prevention, cat’s eyes were conceived by Halifax man Percy Shaw 70 years ago.
In 1933, Shaw was inspired by the sight of his car headlamps reflected in the eyes of a cat, allowing him to take corrective action and remain on the road.
Percy’s great-niece, Glenda Shaw, told the BBC that he’d been driving home from the pub on a foggy night – so if it ‘wasn’t his habit to frequent the pub’ he’d never have invented them.
He patented the cat’s eye in 1934 and set up a company to manufacture his invention the following year, called Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd, and received an OBE in 1965.
Cat’s eyes use domed glass tubes known as ‘retroreflectors’, which reflect light in a very directional way back to the light source – namely, car headlights
Pictured, 1930s Thermofix vacuum flask
VACCUUM FLASK
The double-walled vessel keeps hot liquids hot and cold liquids cold by reducing heat transfer by way of a vacuum
We have yet another Scottish inventor to thank for an invention that still benefits hot-beverage drinkers of today.
James Dewar, a chemist and physicist from Kincardine, invented the vacuum-insulated flask while working at Cambridge University in 1892.
His legendary double-walled vessel keeps hot liquids hot and cold liquids cold by reducing heat transfer by way of a vacuum.
Vacuum flasks are often referred to the thermos, although this refers to a brand name of vacuum flasks that profited from Dewar’s invention.
The Thermos company, founded in Germany in 1904, patented the vacuum flask and marketed it, so Dewar did not profit from the widespread adoption of his invention.
GRAPHENE
A much more modern innovation is graphene, produced and identified by University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2004.
Graphene is a sheet form of carbon that is just one atom thick and is better at conducting electricity and heat than any other known material.
Graphene has been called a ‘wonder material’ that could revolutionize electronics. Pictured, a petri dish with graphene powder
Konstantin Novoselov (left) and Andre Geim (right) at a 2010 Nobel Prize press conference; the pair took the Physics prize that year for producing and identifying graphene
It is therefore an exciting candidate for electronic circuits that take up less space, weigh less, are bendable and are more efficient than the electronics of today.
One million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair, graphene is the world’s first true two-dimensional (2D) material.
A sheet of A4 paper may look 2D to the naked eye, but actually it’s three-dimensional, because it has a depth of somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 atoms.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for graphene, which hit the headlines as a ‘wonder material’, but since ramping up its use has faced a few barriers, such as high costs and quality control.
Scientists still hope it will soon have applications in a wide range of industries, such as transport, medicine, energy and defence, well as electronics.
‘Combining all of graphene’s amazing properties could create an impact of the scale last seen with the Industrial Revolution,’ University of Manchester says.
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