The following is a list and timeline of innovations as well as inventions and discoveries that involved British people or the United Kingdom including the predecessor states before the Treaty of Union in 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. This list covers, but is not limited to, innovation and invention in the mechanical, electronic, and industrial fields, as well as medicine, military devices and theory, artistic and scientific discovery and innovation, and ideas in religion and ethics.

Factors that historians note spurred innovation and discovery include the 17th century Scientific Revolution and the 18th/19th century Industrial Revolution.Walker 1993, pp. 187-8. Another possible influence is the British patent system which had medieval origins and was codified with the Patent Law Amendment Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 83).;

14th century 1326 Rectangulus. The rectangulus was an astronomical instrument made by Richard of Wallingford around 1326. Dissatisfied with the limitations of existing astrolabes, Richard developed the rectangulus as an instrument for spherical trigonometry and to measure the angles between planets and other astronomical bodies

16th century

1589 Stocking frame; the mechanical stocking frame knitting machine was invented by John Lee, an English inventor. Its principle of operation remains in use today.

17th century

1605 Bacon's cipher, a method of steganography (hiding a secret message), is devised by Sir Francis Bacon.

1614 John Napier publishes his work Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio introducing the concept of logarithms which simplifies mathematical calculations.Ernest William Hobson. John Napier and the invention of logarithms, 1614. The University Press, 1914.Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston: his lineage, life, and times by Mark Napier

1620 The first navigable submarine is designed by William Bourne and built by Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel.

1625 Early experiments in water desalination are conducted by Sir Francis Bacon.

1657 Anchor escapement for clock making is invented by Robert Hooke.

1667 A tin can telephone is devised by Robert Hooke.

1668 Sir Isaac Newton invents the first working reflecting telescope.

1698 The first commercial steam-powered device, a water pump, is developed by Thomas Savery.

18th century

1701 An improved seed drill is designed by Jethro Tull. It is used to spread seeds around a field with a rotating handle which makes seed planting a lot easier.

1705 Edmond Halley makes the first prediction of a comet's return. 1712 The first practical steam engine is designed by Thomas Newcomen. 1718 Edmond Halley discovers stellar motion.

1730 The Rotherham plough, the first plough to be widely built in factories and commercially successful, is patented by Joseph Foljambe.

1737 Andrew Rodger invents the winnowing machine.

1740 The first electrostatic motors are developed by Andrew Gordon in the 1740s.

1744 The earliest known reference to baseball is made in a publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. It contains a rhymed description of "base-ball" and a woodcut that shows a field set-up somewhat similar to the modern game—though in a triangular rather than diamond configuration, and with posts instead of ground-level bases.Block (2005), pp. 139, 140, 151, 164, 178, 179, et seq.; See Wikisource edition of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.

1753 Invention of hollow-pipe drainage is credited to Sir Hugh Dalrymple who died in 1753. 1761 The marine chronometer is invented by John Harrison; enabling accurate nautical navigation and effectively establishing Greenwich as the de facto universal prime meridian. 1765 James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which was a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialisation of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. James Small advances the design of the plough using mathematical methods to improve on the Scotch plough of James Anderson of Hermiston.

1767 Adam Ferguson (1767), often known as 'The Father of Modern Sociology', publishes his work An Essay on the History of Civil Society.Willcox, William Bradford; Arnstein, Walter L. (1966). The Age of Aristocracy, 1688 to 1830. Volume III of A History of England, edited by Lacey Baldwin Smith (Sixth Edition, 1992 ed.). Lexington, Massachusetts. p. 133. .

1776 Scottish economist Adam Smith, often known as 'The father of modern economics', publishes his seminal text The Wealth of Nations.M Skousen (2007). The Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, And John Maynard Keynes p3,5,6.E. K. Hunt (2002). History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective, p.3. The Watt steam engine, conceived in 1765, goes into production. It is the first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric.

1779 Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, which improved the industrialised production of thread for textile manufacture. The spinning mule combined features of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright's water frame.

1781 The Iron Bridge, the first arch bridge made of cast iron, is built by Abraham Darby III.

1783 A pioneer of selective breeding and artificial selection, Robert Bakewell, forms the Dishley Society to promote and advance the interests of livestock breeders.

1786 The threshing machine is invented by Andrew Meikle.

1798 Edward Jenner invents the first vaccine.

19th century

1802 Sir Humphry Davy creates the first incandescent light by passing a current from a battery, at the time the world's most powerful, through a thin strip of platinum.

1804 The world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey is made by Richard Trevithick's steam locomotive.

1807 Alexander John Forsyth invents percussion ignition, the foundation of modern firearms.

1814 Robert Salmon patents the first haymaking machine.

John Loudon McAdam develops the Macadam road construction technique.

1822 Charles Babbage proposes the idea for a Difference engine, an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".

1823 An improved system of soil drainage is developed by James Smith.

1824 William Aspdin obtains a patent for Portland cement (concrete).

1825 William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet.

1828 A mechanical reaping machine is invented by Patrick Bell.Journal of the Society of Arts, Volume 6 By Society of Arts (Great Britain)

1831 Electromagnetic induction, the operating principle of transformers and nearly all modern electric generators, is discovered by Michael Faraday.

1835 Scotsman James Bowman Lindsay invents the incandescent light bulb.

1836 The Marsh test for detecting arsenic poisoning is developed by James Marsh.

1837 Charles Babbage describes an Analytical Engine, the first mechanical, general-purpose programmable computer. The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, the first commercially successful electric telegraph, is designed by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke.

1839 A pedal bicycle is invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan.

1840 Sir Rowland Hill reforms the postal system with Uniform Penny Post and introduces the first postage stamp, the Penny Black, on 1 May.

1841 Alexander Bain patents his design produced the prior year for an electric clock.An account of some remarkable applications of the electric fluid to the useful arts by Alexander Bain

1842 Superphosphate, the first chemical fertiliser, is patented by John Bennet Lawes.

1843 SS Great Britain, the world's first steam-powered, screw propeller-driven passenger liner with an iron hull is launched. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it was at the time the largest ship afloat. Alexander Bain patents a design for a facsimile machine. Ada Lovelace recognizes the potential of the analytics engine as a general purpose computer and invents computer programming.

1846 A design for a chemical telegraph is patented by Alexander Bain. Bain's telegraph is installed on the wires of the Electric Telegraph Company on one line. Later, in 1850, it was used in America by Henry O'Reilly.Alexander Bain of Watten: genius of the North Robert P. Gunn Caithness Field Club, 1976

1847 Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic, is introduced by George Boole in his book The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. Tom Smith invents the Christmas cracker.

1851 Improvements to the facsimile machine are demonstrated by Frederick Bakewell at the 1851 World's Fair in London.

1852 A steam-driven ploughing engine is invented by John Fowler.

1853 Scottish physician Alexander Wood develops a medical hypodermic syringe with a needle fine enough to pierce the skin.

1854 The Playfair cipher, the first literal digraph substitution cipher, is invented by Charles Wheatstone and later promoted for use by Lord Playfair.

1868 Mushet steel, the first commercial steel alloy, is invented by Robert Forester Mushet. Thomas Humber develops a bicycle design with the pedals driving the rear wheel. The first manually operated gas-lamp traffic lights are installed outside the Houses of Parliament on 10 December.

1869 A bicycle design is developed by Thomas McCall.

1873 Discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith. This led to the invention of photoelectric cells (solar panels), including those used in the earliest television systems.

1876 Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone in the U.S. The first safety bicycle is designed by the English engineer Harry John Lawson (also called Henry). Unlike the penny-farthing, the rider's feet were within reach of the ground, making it safer to stop.

1878 Demonstration of an incandescent light bulb by Joseph Wilson Swan.

1883 The Fresno scraper, which became a model for modern earth movers, is invented in California by Scottish emigrant James Porteous.

1884 The light switch is invented by John Henry Holmes, Quaker of Newcastle. Reaction steam turbine invented by Anglo-Irish engineer Charles Algernon Parsons.

1885 The first commercially successful safety bicycle, called the Rover, is designed by John Kemp Starley. The following year Dan Albone produces a derivative of this called the Ivel Safety cycle.

1886 Walter Parry Haskett Smith, often called the Father of Rock Climbing in Britain, completes his first ascent of the Napes Needle, solo and without any protective equipment.

1892 Sir Francis Galton devises a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science.

1897 Sir Joseph John Thomson discovers the electron. The world's first wireless station is established on the Isle of Wight.

20th century

1901 The first wireless signal across the Atlantic is sent from Cornwall in England and received in Newfoundland in Canada (a distance of 2,100 miles) by Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi. The first commercially successful light farm tractor is patented by Dan Albone.

1902 Edgar Purnell Hooley develops Tarmac.

1906 The introduction of , a revolutionary capital ship design.

1907 Henry Joseph Round discovers electroluminescence, the principle behind LEDs.

1910 The first formal driving school, the British School of Motoring, is founded in London. Frank Barnwell establishes the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow, having made the first powered flight in Scotland the previous year.

1916 The first use in battle of the military tank (although the tank was also developed independently elsewhere).

1918 The Royal Air Force becomes the first independent air force in the world.Royal Air Force 90th Anniversary History of the RAF