Images

A photograph of a macadamised road taken in the 1850s. The macadamised road, that is, a hard and relatively smooth road surface made using two layers of stones (one aggregate layer and a top layer of very small stones), was first made on...

A Donkin tin can. The commercially viable tin can that preserved food was invented in 1811 by Bryan Donkin (1768-1855). Donkin built on the ideas of others to perfect a cheap and safe canning process. The idea was that soldiers, mariners...

Portland cement silos in Washington, USA. Portland cement was a fast-setting cement invented in 1824 by the Yorkshireman Joseph Aspdin (1778-1859). Aspdin created the cement through experimentation when he discovered that a heated mixture...

A 19th-century advertisement for a lawnmower. The lawnmower was invented by Edwin Budding in England in 1830. The machine replaced the much slower and more expensive process of cutting grass by hand using a scythe. Budding was inspired by...

A model of the pedal bicycle invented by the Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1812-1878) in 1839. There had been earlier two-wheeled vehicles, but these were not powered by turning the pedals with one's feet. Macmillan's bicycle...

A hypodermic syringe made by Coxeter and Son of London c. 1860. Syringes were used in antiquity, but the true hypodermic syringe for injecting precisely measured liquids using a hollow needle was invented by the Scotsman Alexander Wood (1817-1884...

A map illustrating the gradual process of disintegration known as the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. During the Migration Period (a period of accelerated movement of peoples across Europe between the 5th and 9th centuries, also known as...

A cotton gin (machine), invented by Eli Whitney (1765-1825) in the United States in 1794 during the Industrial Revolution. The machine was used to clean raw cotton and separate it from sticky seeds by pulling the cotton balls through a comb...

The Education of Achilles, oil on canvas by Auguste-Clément Chrétien, 1861.

A sculpture of Chiron and Achilles by Rinaldo Rinaldi, 1817. Cortile della Ca' d'oro, Venice.