Notable Inventions of the 1940s

Dates for inventions are often controversial. Inventions are often invented by several inventors around the same time, or may be invented in an impractical form many years before another inventor improves the invention into a practical form. Where there is ambiguity, the date of the first working version of the invention is used here. 

1940s: spread betting: Charles K. McNeil

1941: Computer: Konrad Zuse

1941: Velcro: George de Mestral

1942: Bazooka Rocket Gun: Leslie A. Skinner C. N. Hickman

1942: Nuclear reactor: Enrico Fermi

1942: Undersea oil pipeline: Hartley, Anglo-Iranian, Siemens in Operation Pluto

1942: Frequency hopping: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil

1943: Aqua-Lung: Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan

1944: Electron spectrometer: Deutsch Elliot Evans

1944: Fire balloon in Japan

1945: Slinky: Richard James and Betty James

1945: Nuclear weapons (but note: chain reaction theory was made in 1933)

1946: Microwave oven: Percy Spencer

1946: Mobile Telephone Service: AT&T and Southwestern Bell

1946: Bikini: Louis R?ard

1947: Transistor: William Shockley, Walter Brattain, John Bardeen

1947: Polaroid camera: Edwin Land

1948: Long Playing Record: Peter Carl Goldmark

1948: Holography: Dennis Gabor

1949: Atomic clocks

1949: Radiocarbon dating: Willard Libby

Comments (1)

Show/Hide comment form