Which British inventions and discoveries should you know for the Life in the UK test?

Which British inventions and discoveries should you know for the Life in the UK test?

Learn the list of 20th century inventions in the history chapter, plus a few older ones from the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian age. Each item has a person, a field and often a year, so you can learn them in small groups.

Which discoveries come from the 17th to 19th centuries?

Isaac Newton showed that gravity applies to the whole universe, and he found that white light is made up of the colours of the rainbow. Both ideas are still important in science.

In the 18th century, new ideas in politics, philosophy and science spread. This is called the Enlightenment, and many of its great thinkers were Scottish. James Watt's work on steam power helped the Industrial Revolution. Britain was the first country to industrialise on a large scale, and machines and steam were the reason. Richard Arkwright improved the carding machine and ran efficient factories. The Bessemer process allowed steel to be made in large amounts, and this helped shipbuilding and the railways.

In the Victorian age, George and Robert Stephenson, father and son, were pioneers of the railway engine. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the Great Western Railway, bridges, tunnels and ships. The Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, showed objects from many countries, but most were made in Britain.

Which inventions of the 20th century should you know?

It helps to sort them by field instead of by date.

Communication and computing:

• Television, by John Logie Baird, in the 1920s. The first broadcast was in 1932, between London and Glasgow.
• The Turing machine, an idea from the mathematician Alan Turing in the 1930s. It was a theory, not a physical machine, and it influenced the modern computer.
• The World Wide Web, by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The first transfer of information was on 25 December 1990.
• The cash machine, by James Goodfellow, in the 1960s. The first one was used in Enfield, north London, in 1967.

Radio waves and space:

• Radar, by Sir Robert Watson-Watt. He suggested that radio waves could find enemy aircraft, and the first successful test was in 1935.
• The radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, by Sir Bernard Lovell, who moved from radar to astronomy. It was for many years the biggest in the world and still works.

Transport:

• The jet engine, by Sir Frank Whittle, an RAF engineer, in the 1930s.
• The hovercraft, by Sir Christopher Cockerell, in the 1950s.
• Concorde, built with France. It first flew in 1969, carried passengers from 1976 and was retired in 2003.
• The Harrier jump jet, which can take off straight up.

Medicine and biology:

• Penicillin, found by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and developed into a drug by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.
• Insulin for diabetes, with John Macleod, a Scot, as co-discoverer.
• The structure of DNA, found in 1953 through work in London and Cambridge. Francis Crick was one of the Nobel Prize winners.
• IVF, begun by Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. The first baby was born in Oldham in 1978.
• Dolly the sheep, in 1996, the first mammal to be cloned. Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell led the team.
• The MRI scanner, co-invented by Sir Peter Mansfield, which gives clear pictures of organs without surgery.

How can you keep them apart?

Some pairs look alike. Radar and the radio telescope both use radio waves, but the telescope looks at space. Insulin and penicillin are both medicine, but insulin treats diabetes and penicillin treats infections caused by bacteria. Concorde and the Harrier are both aircraft, but Concorde is a passenger plane built with France, and the Harrier takes off vertically.

Notice how many of the people were Scottish. Baird, Watson-Watt, Macleod and Fleming all appear in the list. This is a handy hook if you like to link facts to a place.

Another trick is to learn the years as a timeline. The 1920s for television, 1928 penicillin, 1932 first broadcast, 1935 radar, 1953 DNA, 1967 cash machine, 1969 Concorde, 1978 IVF baby, 1990 the web, 1996 Dolly.

Take the free practice test to see which of these you still mix up. Read about famous people and the Empire and the Industrial Revolution too, and find them all in the history chapter.

Check yourself

Cover the page and write the list of inventions for one field, with the person for each.

Pick the three dates in the timeline that you forget most. Write them on a card and look at them again tomorrow.