Images

Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Rivoli (14 January 1797) during Napoleon's Italian Campaign, oil on canvas by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, 1844. Palace of Versailles.

As with many inventions during the Industrial Revolution, the papermaking machine was something of a collaborative affair. This model is of one of the early machines developed by the Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert (1761-1828) in 1799. The...

Battle of Castiglione, 5 August 1796, during Napoleon's Italian Campaign, oil on canvas by Victor Adam, 1836. Palace of Versailles.

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...