John Harrison was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker. He invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought after device for solving the problem of establishing the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea, thus revolution...

John Smeaton was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer, an...

Matthew Boulton was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on th...

James Watt was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. W...

Abraham-Louis Breguet or Bréguet, born in Neuchâtel in Switzerland, was a horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking in France. He is the founder of Swiss luxury watch brand Bréguet. Breguet became a membe...

Sébastien Érard was a French instrument maker of German origin who specialised in the production of pianos and harps, developing the capacities of both instruments and pioneering the modern piano. Érard's grand piano action (English pate...

Thomas Telford was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. Apprenticeship as a stonemason laid the basis for Telford's move via Edinburgh to London, where he worked on Somerset House...

Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. He also designed a new type of steam warship. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to desig...

Richard Trevithick was a British inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall, UK. His most significant contribution was to the development of the first high-pressure steam engine. He also built the first full-scale working railway steam loco...

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet was a prolific English engineer and one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underl...

Giovanni Battista Belzoni — Italian showman, engineer and explorer of Egyptian antiquities. His quest for adventure brought him to England in 1803 and by means of his gigantic physique, earned a living in circuses in England, Spain and Port...

George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. Self-help advocat...

William Tierney Clark was an English civil engineer particularly associated with the design and construction of bridges. He was among the earliest designers of suspension bridges. He designed the first suspension bridge to span the River...

Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the...

The Reverend Dr Robert Stirling was a Scottish clergyman, and inventor of the stirling engine. He invented what he called the Heat Economiser (now generally known as the regenerator), a device for improving the thermal/fuel efficiency of a...