I enjoyed writing the first article on Where Did It Come From so I decided to continue it with things that were were invented from 1801 to 1899, since I covered most of the older things that I wanted to in the first article.

We all know that Edison invented the first light bulb, but he didn't invent the first electric light. This may be news to some people out there but it is true. Sir Humprehey Davy invented the first electric arc light in 1801. Davy was an English chemist and a famous inventor.

The stethoscope is older than one would suspect. It was invented in 1819 by Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec in France. Dr. Laennec is also known as the father of thoracic medicine.

Engine

We are all familiar with car engines. I don't mean that we could fix one, I only mean we know that our cars are powered by one. Most cars use the internal combustion engine. We know that they existed at the turn of the 19 century, but the basic theory that brought them into being was created in 1824 by Sadi Carnot in France. Notice the last name Car + not. He was a physicist and published a famous work on the subject called Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu. Without this work we may not have been motoring around today.

Camera

Do you like to take photographs? I do. Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a Frenchman, though that if this was possible it would be great. He wrote his ideas in a letter to his brother in 1793. The letter was discovered in Russia in 1946. By 1816 he produces the first paper negatives but they were not permanent. By 1826 he had produced the first preserved photograph and the art of photography was born. In 1839 Louis Daguerre improved the process and invented the daguerreotype. Most people think that he invented photography.

The computer has to be a recent invention, doesn't it? Well not really. Charles Babbage in England, in 1835, began work on what he called the analytical engine. It was a fantastic mechanical computer. He also invented many other devices such as the cowcatcher, the device that goes in front of the steam engine to scoop up cows so they don't get killed, dynamometer, a standard gague for all railroads, uniform postal rates, flashing lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals and the heliograph ophthalmoscope.

We all take pneumatic tires for granted but before 1845 there were none. Robert Thompson invented the first one that year but rubber was not up to the standard.

Bet you didn't know that linoleum was invented over 160 years ago. It was invented by Michael Nairn in Scotland in 1847. His family business was manufacturing sail cloth. He decided to manufacture floor coverings that were hard wearing. He died before the business took off.

Your refrigerator was invented a lot further back in time than you might suspect. It was invented in 1850 even though it didn't get common usage until almost 100 years later. Alexander Twining and James Harrison, New Englanders, invented it

Slot Machine

Here is a fact that you will all enjoy. The first slot machine was invented in 1857 in Britain. I suspect the first crooked slot machine came along right after that.

Did you ever get caught at a light and began to get very angry since the light seemed to take forever to change? You can blame J. P. Knight from Britian.He invented the first traffic signal in 1858. The first constructed roads were invented about 4,000 BC in the ancient city of Ur, so it took almost 6,000 years to come up with a traffic control device.The first signals were installed in England at the intersection of George and Bridge St. in 1868. This was near the House of Commons in London.

Work was begun on the first modern submarine in 1881 by John Holland in the USA.

Telephone

The telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, or so most say. The inventor is disputed however by many people. The other contenders are the German Philipp Reis, Bourseul a Frenchman who wrote a paper on the theory of electric pulsations, Daniel Drawbaugh fought a court battle with Edison over the telephone saying he invented it but he lost. Antonio Meucci was recognized by the US Congress as the inventor of the telephone. Meucci invented the talking telegraph in the 1840s.

Pesticide was invented by the French in 1880.

The first artificial fiber was not invented by DuPont in the 1940s but by Sir Joseph Swann, in England, in 1883. He invented a cellulose fiber that was harmless (not flammable). It was the precursor of rayon.

Zipper

In 1891 the zipper was invented. This is said to truly be a marvel of engineering. Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, seems to have invented it but never did follow through. It wasn't until over forty plus years later that Whitcomb Judson first marketed a zipper and became known as it's inventor.

In 1895 Cesare Lombroso figured out that he could give a lie detector test by measuring someone's pulse and blood pressure.

The tape recorder is a lot older than most people suspect. It was invented in 1899 by Vladermar Poulsen of Denmark. It recorded sounds and voices on a steel wire. In 1888 a paper had been written by Oberlin Smith, an American scientist, discussing the possibility of storing sounds on a magnetized wire.