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