Inventors & Inventions

A place for fun, learning, and exploration in the world of electricity and its technologies

Inventors & Inventions "If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" Sir Isaac Newton
Although this list represents the most famous inventors in the electric/electronic field, it is only a small subset of the great minds that have brought us to our current level of understanding, and the technology we enjoy today.
Inventor		Contribution
William Gilbert	1544 - 1603	investigated magnetism & static electricity
Otto von Guericke	1602 - 1686	invented first electrostatic generator
Francis Hauksbee	1666 - 1713	studied electrostatic repulsion, first mercury vapor light
Emilie du Chatelet	1706 - 1749	studied infrared emission & measured conservation of energy (leading towards E=MC² equation)
Benjamin Franklin	1706 - 1790	studied electrical charges & labeled them "positive" & "negative", and a whole lot more!
Luigi Galvani	1737 - 1798	discovered electrical effects between different metals, and in biological cells
Alessandro Volta	1745 - 1827	developed the forerunner of the electric battery
André Marie Ampère	1775 - 1836	established a measurable relationship between electricity and magnetism
Hans Christian Oersted	1777 - 1851	developed experiments in electromagnetism
Carl Friedrich Gauss	1777 - 1855	experimented with electrical charges and magnetism, and established a method for measuring magnetic fields
Georg Simon Ohm	1789 - 1854	his work led to the mathematical relationship between voltage, current, and resistance called "Ohm's Law"
Michael Faraday	1791 - 1867	developed measurement methods in capacitance & electromotive force
Joseph Henry	1797 - 1878	discovered electromagnetic self-inductance, and invented the electromagnetic relay - leading to the telegraph. the henry, or H, is a unit of inductance
James Prescott Joule	1818 - 1889	developed theories on conservation of energy, thermodynamics, and resistance heating
Sir William Thompson	1824 - 1907	(a.k.a. Lord Kelvin) studied thermodynamics & proposed an absolute temperature scale
James Clerk Maxwell	1831 - 1879	developed a set of differential equations known as "maxwell's Equations", which describe electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with matter
Alexander Graham Bell	1847 - 1922	one of several inventors of the telephone. also invented the photophone which transmitted sound over light waves
Thomas A. Edison	1847 - 1931	not enough room here! (click to read)
Nikola Tesla	1856 - 1943	developed an alternating current system of generators, motors, and transmission lines - the same system we use today! also a whole lot more that's still ahead of its time!
Heinrich Hertz	1857 - 1894	best known for the hertz, or Hz. (a unit of frequency), he also made discoveries in electromagnetic transmission and the photoelectric effect, and developed the spark-gap transmitter and dipole antenna
Lee de Forest	1873 - 1961	invented the audion vacuum tube which amplified weak electric signals
Guglielmo Marconi	1874 - 1937	built upon earlier ideas and patents to develop a widely used radio system
Philo Farnsworth	1906 - 1971	An American inventor considered to be the father of the television system
William Shockley	1910 - 1989	co-invented the solid-state transistor with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, leading to the creation of Silicon Valley
Jack Kilby	1923 - 2005	patented the first integrated circuit while at Texas Instruments, then later patented the portable calculator
Robert Noyce	1927 - 1990	further developed the integrated circuit to include more transistors on a silicon substrate
Gordon Moore	born 1929	co-founded Intel in 1968 & known for "Moore's Law" which observes that integrated circuit complexity doubles every 2 years

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