Important Inventions and Discoveries
The Static GK section in competitive exams like UPSC, SSC, and Railway includes many important topics. One key area is inventions and discoveries, which often appear in the General Awareness section. Knowing who invented what and when can help you score better in these exams.
To do well, it’s important to study famous discoveries and their inventors across different fields. This will help you answer questions quickly and correctly. With proper preparation, you can easily improve your performance in the Static GK section.
By learning about inventions and discoveries, you’ll not only gain knowledge but also boost your confidence for the exam!
List of Inventions and Discoveries
| Invention/Discovery | Name of the Inventor | Year of Invention |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic Calculator | Wilhelm Schickard | 1623 |
| Air Conditioner | Willis Carrier | 1902 |
| Anemometer | Leon Battista Alberti | 1450 |
| Animation | J. Stuart Blackton | — |
| Atom Bomb | Julius Robert Oppenheimer | 1945 |
| Aspirin | Dr. Felix Hoffman | 1899 |
| Airplane | Wilber and Orville Wright | 1903 |
| Adhesive tape | Richard G. Drew | 1923 |
| Bifocal Lens | Benjamin Franklin | 1779 |
| Barometer | Evangelista Torricelli | 1643 |
| Barbed Wire | Joseph F. Glidden | 1873 |
| Blood Group | Karl Lansdsteiner | 1900s |
| Ball Point Pen | John Loud | — |
| Bicycle Tyres | John Boyd Dunlop | 1888 |
| Pedal Driven Bicycle | Kirkpatrick Macmillan | 1839 |
| Celluloid | Alexander Parkes | 1861 |
| Chloroform | Sir James Young Simpson | — |
| Cine Camera | Wm. Friese-Greene | 1889 |
| Circulation of blood | William Harvey | 1628 |
| Clock Mechanical | Hsing and Ling-Tsan | 1725 |
| Diesel Engine | Rudolf Diesel | 1892 |
| Centigrade Scale | Anders Celsius | 1742 |
| Chlorine | Carl Wilhelm Scheele | 1774 |
| Dynamite | Alfred B. Nobel | 1867 |
| Diesel Engine | Rudolf Diesel | 1895 |
| Electric stove/cooker | William S. Hadaway | 1896 |
| Electroscope | William Gilbert | 1600s |
| Electric Fan | Schuyler Wheeler | 1882 |
| Electric Battery | Volta | 1800 |
| Elevator | Elisha G. Otis | 1852 |
| Electric Motor (DC) | Thomas Davenport | 1873 |
| Electromagnet | William Sturgeon | 1824 |
| Fountain Pen | Petrache Poenaru | 1827 |
| Fluorine | André-Marie Ampère | 1810 |
| Gramophone | Thomas Edison | 1878 |
| Hydrogen | Henry Cavendish | 1766 |
| Helicopter | Igor Sikorsky | 1939 |
| Hovercraft | Christopher Cockerell | 1959 |
| Hot Air Balloon | Josef & Etienne Montgolfier | 1783 |
| Helium | Jules Janssen | 1868 |
| Insulin | Sir Frederick Banting | 1923 |
| Jet Engine | Hans Von Ohain | 1936 |
| Lightning Conductor | Benjamin Franklin | 1752 |
| Locomotive | George Stephenson | 1804 |
| Laser | Theodore Maiman | 1960 |
| Light Bulb | Thomas Edison | 1854 |
| Motorcycle | Gottlieb Daimler | 1885 |
| Microscope | Zacharis Janssen | 1590 |
| Microphone | Alexander Graham Bell | 1876 |
| Machine Gun | Richard Gatling | 1861 |
| Neon Lamp | Georges Claude | 1915 |
| Oxygen | Joseph Priestley | 1774 |
| Ozone | Christian Schonbein | 1839 |
| Piano | Bartolomeo Cristofori | 1700 |
| Printing Press | Johannes Gutenberg | 1440 |
| Parachute | Louis-Sebastien Lenormand | 1783 |
| Polio Vaccine | Jonas Edward Salk | – |
| Periodic Table | Dmitri Mendeleev | 1869 |
| Penicillin | Alexander Fleming | 1928 |
| Pacemaker | Rune Elmqvist | 1952 |
| Petrol for Motor Car | Karl Benz | 1885 |
| Refrigerator | William Cullen | 1748 |
| Radium | Marie & Pierre Curie | 1898 |
| Rubber (vulcanized) | Charles Goodyear | 1841 |
| Rocket Engine | Robert H. Goddard | 1926 |
| Radio | Guglielmo Marconi | 1894 |
| Richter Scale | Charles Richter | 1935 |
| Ship (Turbine) | Charles Parsons | 1894 |
| Steam Ship | Robert Fulton | 1807 |
| Steam Boat | Robert Fulton | 1786 |
| Submarine | Cornelis Drebbel | 1620 |
| Stethoscope | Rene Laennec | 1816 |
| Saxophone | Adolphe Sax | 1846 |
| Sewing Machine | Elias Howe | 1846 |
| Steam-Powered Airship | Henri Giffard | 1852 |
| Soft Contact lenses | Otto Wichterle | 1961 |
| Synthesizer | Dr. Robert Arthur Moog | 1964 |
| Thermometer | Galileo | 1593 |
| Theory of Evolution | Charles Darwin | 1858 |
| Typewriter | Christopher Latham Sholes | — |
| Transistors | John Bardeen, William Shockley & Walter Brattain | 1948 |
| Telephone | Graham Bell | 1874 |
| Valve. Radio | Sir J.A Fleming | 1904 |
| Vacuum Cleaner | Hubert Cecil Booth | 1901 |
| Vitamin A | Frederick Gowland Hpokins | 1912 |
| Vitamin B | Christiaan Eijkman | 1897 |
| Vitamin C | Albert Szent-Gyorgi | – |
| Vitamin K | Henrik Dam | 1929 |
| Vitamin E | Herbert McLean Evans & Katherine Scott Bishop | |
| Windshield wipers | Mary Anderson | 1903 |
| World Wide Web | Tim Berners Lee with Robert Cailliau | 1989 |
| X-ray | Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen | 1895 |
| Xerox Machine | Chester Carlson | 1928 |
List of Important Discoveries
| S. No | Discovery | Discoverer | Year of Discovery |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Structure of DNA | James Watson and Francis Crick | 1953 |
| 2 | Evolution by natural selection | Charles Darwin | 1859 |
| 3 | Laws of thermodynamics | Sadi Carnot, James Prescott Joule, Rudolf Clausius | 1824-1865 |
| 4 | Theory of relativity | Albert Einstein | 1905-1915 |
| 5 | Periodic table | Dmitri Mendeleev | 1869 |
| 6 | Plate tectonics | Alfred Wegener | 1912 |
| 7 | Big Bang Theory | Georges Lemaître | 1927 |
| 8 | Quantum mechanics | Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac | 1900-1930s |
| 9 | Higgs Boson | Peter Higgs and François Englert | 2012 |
| 10 | Black holes | John Michell and Albert Einstein | 1783, 1916 |
| 11 | Exoplanets | Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail | 1992 |
| 12 | Continental Drift | Alfred Wegener | 1912 |
| 13 | Electron | J.J. Thomson | 1897 |
| 14 | Radioactivity | Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel | 1896-1898 |
| 15 | Neutron | James Chadwick | 1932 |
| 16 | Proton | Ernest Rutherford | 1917 |
| 17 | Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation | Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson | 1965 |
| 18 | Gravitational Waves | LIGO Scientific Collaboration | 2015 |
| 19 | Ozone Hole | Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin | 1985 |
| 20 | Greenhouse Effect | Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius | 1824, 1861, 1896 |
| 21 | Dark Matter | Fritz Zwicky | 1933 |
| 22 | Dark Energy | Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess | 1998 |
| 23 | First Supermassive Black Hole | Maarten Schmidt | 1963 |
| 24 | First Black Hole Merger | LIGO Scientific Collaboration | 2015 |
| 25 | First Gravitational Lens | J. H. Oort and F. Zwicky | 1937 |
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