Renaissance & Elizabethan Inventions and Inventors Timeline
1450: Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press with movable type in Germany
1510: Leonardo da Vinci designs a horizontal water wheel
1510: Peter Henlein invents the pocket watch
1513: Urs Graf invents etching
1537: Tartaglia's gunner's quadrant for aiming cannon, 1st firing tables
1540: Toriano invents a mandolin-playing automaton
1543: John Dee creates a wooden beetle that can fly for an undergraduate production - one of the first robots
1550: John Dee, 'the guiding spirit' of the English school of mathematicians wrote a notable preface to the first edition in English of Euclid's Elements of Geometry
1565: Conrad Gesner of Switzerland invents the pencil
1568: Bottled beer is invented in London
1569: Gerard Mercator invents Mercator map projection
1582: Pope Gregory XIII invents the modern, Gregorian calendar
1583: Leonard and Thomas Digges invent the telescope
1589: William Lee invents the knitting machine
1590: Dutchmen, Hans & Zacharias Janssen invent the compound microscope
1591: Sir John Harington invents the flush toilet in England
1593: Francis Bacon invented the frozen chicken
1593: Galileo invents a water thermometer
1600: William Gilbert publishes treatise "On the Magnet". William Gilbert is referred to as the father of the science of electricity and magnetism
The first telescope was invented by Hans Lippershey (c1570-c1619). The telescope was introduced to astronomy in 1609 by Galileo Galilei
