Where inventions come from
Inventions are often credited to the wrong country. Each story shows where an invention first appeared and how it reached everyone else.
20 stories from 6 continents
- Africa · 1
- Asia · 3
- Europe · 8
- North America · 4
- South America · 2
- Oceania · 2
Dolos (breakwater block)
📍 East London, South Africa
These giant concrete 'jacks' that lock together to tame waves were designed in 1963 for the harbour of East London, South Africa. Their Afrikaans name refers to knucklebones, and they now guard coasts around the world.
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Bristle toothbrush
📍 China
Brushes with stiff hog bristles set in bone or bamboo handles were being used in China centuries before William Addis began mass-producing toothbrushes in England around 1780.
Folding fan
📍 Kyoto–Nara, Japan
The folding fan was invented in Japan. In 988 a Japanese monk presented folding fans to the Chinese emperor, and the Chinese long called them 'Japanese fans'. Portuguese traders later brought them to Europe, where Spain made them famous.
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Paper
📍 Northern China (Gansu to Luoyang)
The oldest paper scraps, from the 2nd century BC, were found in China, and Han court official Cai Lun refined papermaking around 105 AD. Egypt's papyrus was a different material.
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Aerosol spray can
📍 Oslo, Norway
Norwegian chemical engineer Erik Rotheim of Oslo applied for the first aerosol spray can patent in 1926. Americans later made spray cans famous with WWII 'bug bombs' that sprayed insecticide against malaria mosquitoes.
Cat's eye (road reflector)
📍 Halifax, England
Cat's eyes were invented by Percy Shaw of Halifax, England, who patented them in 1934 and named them after a cat's eyeshine. Wartime blackouts showed their value and helped spread them across British roads.
Dynamite
📍 Geesthacht (near Hamburg), Germany
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel developed dynamite in 1866–67 at his Krümmel factory on the Elbe near Hamburg, taming nitroglycerin by soaking it into kieselguhr, a porous earth. He patented it in 1867.
Eyeglasses
📍 Tuscany (Pisa–Florence), Italy
Spectacles appeared in Tuscany around 1290: in a 1306 sermon a Pisan friar said the art of making them was not yet 20 years old. The tale that Marco Polo saw glasses in China is a myth; Chinese sources say they were imported.
Hot-air balloon
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
Kaleidoscope
📍 Edinburgh, Scotland
Scottish physicist David Brewster discovered the effect while experimenting with light around 1815 and patented the toy in 1817, naming it from Greek words for 'beautiful form' and 'to look'.
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Lawn mower
📍 Stroud, England
Edwin Budding of Stroud, England, invented the lawn mower in 1830, patenting it as a better way than the scythe to cut grass on sports grounds and large gardens.
Stethoscope
📍 Paris, France
French doctor René Laennec invented it in 1816 at a Paris hospital, after noticing that a rolled-up sheet of paper carried heart sounds to his ear. His first version was a simple wooden tube.
Ferris wheel
📍 Chicago, USA
Engineer George Ferris built the first Ferris wheel, 80 m tall, for Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. It was meant to rival the Eiffel Tower from Paris's 1889 fair.
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Ski chairlift
📍 Sun Valley, Idaho, USA
The world's first ski chairlifts opened in 1936 at Sun Valley, Idaho. A railroad engineer, Jim Curran, designed them by swapping the hooks of a banana-loading conveyor for chairs.
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Snowboard
📍 Muskegon, Michigan, USA
In 1965 Sherman Poppen of Muskegon, Michigan, made the 'Snurfer' (snow + surfer), a binding-free board most consider the snowboard's direct ancestor.
Trampoline
📍 Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, USA
Iowa gymnast George Nissen and his coach Larry Griswold built the first modern trampoline in the mid-1930s, inspired by circus trapeze nets. Nissen named it after trampolín, Spanish for 'diving board'.
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Animated feature film
📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina
The first feature-length cartoon wasn't Snow White (1937) but El Apóstol, made in Buenos Aires in 1917 by Quirino Cristiani from 58,000 frames of cut-out animation. Its only copy was lost in a 1926 studio fire.
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Panama hat
📍 Ecuador (Montecristi to Cuenca)
Panama hats are woven in Ecuador from toquilla palm straw. They got the wrong name because travellers, including Gold Rush prospectors crossing the isthmus, bought them in Panama. UNESCO listed the weaving craft in 2012.
Didgeridoo
📍 Arnhem Land, Australia
Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia, probably in Arnhem Land, developed it centuries before Europeans arrived. The name 'didgeridoo' isn't Aboriginal; it's an imitative English word first printed in 1908.
Ukulele
📍 Honolulu, Hawaii
Madeiran craftsmen who sailed to Hawaii in 1879 turned their little machete guitar into the ukulele in the 1880s, and King Kalākaua made it a royal favourite. The Hawaiian name roughly means 'jumping flea'.