Famous London Inventors
Famous London Inventors
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Here are my top 10 London inventors. My list includes some celebrities but some who really deserve a bit more of the limelight. There are so many to choose from we should not really stop at 10. How many of these have you heard of?
- Alexander Cumming invented the U-Bend water trap to keep toilets from smelling.
- Humphry Davy’s miners’ safety lamp allowed deep coal seams to be exploited giving a kick start to the industrial revolution.
- Michael Faraday’s experiments yielded not just the electric motor, but also the generator and transformer - and thus our electricity-based way of life.
- Antibiotics were developed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain from Alexander Fleming’s chance observation that mould prevented the growth of bacterial cultures.
- John Harrison’s lifesaving clocks for navigators and his ideas from the 18th century have led to a new super accurate mechanical clock in the 21st century.
- Body Scanners first developed by Godfrey Hounsfield have revolutionised medicine.
- The achromatic microscope lens invented by Joseph Jackson Lister spurred a new understanding of biology and particularly microbiology.
- Christopher Merret combined glass making knowledge with secondary fermentation and has a claim to be the father of Champagne.
- Aniline Dye discovered accidentally by William Perkin started a chemical industry.
- William Playfair invented the pie chart and other popular forms of graph
