English inventions and discoveries are objects, processes or techniques invented, innovated or discovered, partially or entirely, in England by a person from England. Often, things discovered for the first time are also called inventions and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two. Nonetheless, science and technology in England continued to develop rapidly in absolute terms. The trend continues. According to a Japanese research firm, the UK generated over 40% of the world's inventions and discoveries that in the past 50 years became internationally recognized and/or applied, followed by France with 24% and the US with 20%.

England was a leading centre of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th century.Gascoin, J. "A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the Scientific Revolution", in Lindberg, David C. and Westman, Robert S., eds (1990), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge University Press. p. 248. . As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Famous English engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges, revolutionising public transport and modern-day engineering. Thomas Newcomen's steam engine helped spawn the Industrial Revolution.

Inventions and discoveries of the English include the jet engine; the first industrial spinning machine; the first computer and the first modern computer; the World Wide Web along with HTML; the first successful human blood transfusion; the motorised vacuum cleaner; the lawn mower; the seat belt; the hovercraft; the electric motor; steam engines; and theories such as the Darwinian theory of evolution and atomic theory. Newton developed the ideas of universal gravitation, Newtonian mechanics, and calculus, and Robert Hooke his eponymously named law of elasticity. Other inventions include the iron plate railway, the thermosiphon, tarmac, the rubber band, the mousetrap, "cat's eye" road marker, joint development of the light bulb, steam locomotives, the modern seed drill and many modern techniques and technologies used in precision engineering.

The following is a list of inventions, innovations or discoveries known or generally recognized to be English.

Agriculture

1701: Seed drill improved by Jethro Tull (1674–1741). 18th century: of the horse-drawn hoe and scarifier by Jethro Tull 1780s: Selective breeding and artificial selection pioneered by Robert Bakewell (1725–1795). 1842: Superphosphate or chemical fertilizer developed by John Bennet Lawes (1814–1900). 1850s: Steam-driven ploughing engine invented by John Fowler (1826–1864). 1901: First commercially successful light farm-tractor invented by Dan Albone (1860–1906). 1930s onwards: Developments in dairy farming systems pioneered by Rex Paterson (1902–1978).

Ceramics 1748: Fine porcelain developed by Thomas Frye (c. 1710–1762), of Bow porcelain factory, London.Frye's epitaph, describing him as "the inventor and first manufacturer of porcelain in England" published in Supplement to The Gentleman's Magazine for the Year 1764, p. 638. Cf. Frye's rivals at Chelsea porcelain factory. 1770s: Jasperware developed by Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795). 1789–1793: Bone china created by Josiah Spode (1733–1797). 1813: Ironstone china invented by Charles James Mason (1791–1856).

Clock making

Anglo-Saxon times: type of candle clock invented by Alfred the Great (849–899). c. 1657: Anchor escapement probably invented by Robert Hooke (1635–1703). c. 1657: Balance spring added to balance wheel by Robert Hooke (1635–1703).A. R. Hall, "Horology and criticism: Robert Hooke", Studia Copernicana, XVI, Ossolineum, 1978, 261–81 c. 1722: Grasshopper escapement invented by John Harrison (1693–1776); Harrison created the H1, H2, H3 & H4 watches (to solve the longitude measurement problem). c. 1726: Gridiron pendulum invented by John Harrison (1693–1776). c. 1755: Lever escapement, the greatest single improvement ever applied to pocket watches, invented by Thomas Mudge (1715–1794). 1761: First true Marine chronometer perfected by John Harrison (1693–1776). 1923: Self-winding watch invented by John Harwood (1893–1964). 1955: First accurate atomic clock invented by Louis Essen (1908–1997). 1976: Coaxial escapement mechanism invented by George Daniels (1926–2011).

Clothing manufacturing 1589: The stocking frame, a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry, invented by William Lee (1563–1614). 1733: The flying shuttle, a key development in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution, invented by John Kay of Walmersley (1704-c. 1779).

1759: The Derby Rib machine (for stocking manufacture) invented by Jedediah Strutt (1726–1797). 1764: The spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves (c. 1720–1778). 1767: Spinning frame invented by John Kay of Warrington. 1769: The water frame, a water-powered spinning frame, developed by Richard Arkwright (1732–1792). 1775–1779: Spinning mule invented by Samuel Crompton (1753–1827). 1784: Power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823). 1790: Sewing machine invented by Thomas Saint. 1808: The bobbinet, a development on the warp-loom, invented by John Heathcoat (1783–1861). 1856: Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye, discovered by William Henry Perkin (1838–1907). 1941: Polyester invented by John Rex Whinfield (1901–1966).

Communications Pre-1565: The pencil invented in Seathwaite, Borrowdale, Cumbria, using Grey Knotts graphite. 1588: Modern shorthand invented by Timothy Bright (1551?–1615). 1661: The postmark (called the "Bishop Mark") introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop (1611–1691/2). 1667: Tin can telephone, a device that conveyed sounds over an extended wire by mechanical vibrations, invented by Robert Hooke (1635–1703). 1714: Patent for an apparatus regarded as the first typewriter granted to Henry Mill (c. 1683–1771). 18th century: The Valentine's card first popularised. 1822: The mechanical pencil patented by Sampson Mordan (1790–1843) and John Isaac Hawkins (1772–1855). 1831: Electromagnetic induction & Faraday's law of induction. Began as a series of experiments by Michael Faraday (1791–1867); later became some of the first experiments in the discovery of radio waves and the development of radio. 1837: The first commercially successful electric telegraph developed by Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) and Sir William Fothergill Cooke (1806–1879). 1837: Pitman Shorthand invented by Isaac Pitman (1813–1897).

1840: Uniform Penny Post and postage stamp invented by Sir Rowland Hill (1795–1879). Hill's assistant, Sir Henry Cole, is also often credited with the invention of the first postage stamp, the "Penny Black." 1843: The Christmas card introduced commercially by Sir Henry Cole (1808–1882). 1873: Discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith (1828–1891). Smith's work led to the invention of photoelectric cells (solar panels), including those used in the earliest television systems. 1879: The first radio transmission, using a spark-gap transmitter (achieving a range of approximately 500 metres), made by David E. Hughes (1831–1900). 1888: The world's first moving picture film produced by Louis Le Prince (1841 – vanished 16 September 1890) of Roundhay Garden, Leeds Bridge. 1897: The world's first radio station was located at The Needles Batteries on the western tip of the Isle of Wight; it was set up by Marconi. 1899: The world's first colour motion picture film produced by Edward Raymond Turner (1873–1903). 1902: Proposition by Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) of the existence of the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, a layer of ionised gas that reflects radio waves around the Earth's curvature. 1912: Development of radio communication pioneered by William Eccles (1875–1966). 1914: The world's first automatic totalisator invented by English-born George Julius (1873–1946). 2 December 1922: Mechanical scanning device (a precursor to modern television) demonstrated in Sorbonne, France by Englishman Edwin Belin. 1930: The Plessey company in England began manufacturing the Baird Televisor receiver: the first television receiver sold to the public. 1931: Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo invented at EMI in Hayes, Middlesex by Alan Blumlein (1903–1942). 1933: The 405-line television system (the first fully electronic television system used in regular broadcasting) developed at EMI in Hayes, Middlesex by Alan Blumlein (1903–1942), under the supervision of Sir Isaac Shoenberg. 1936: The world's first regular public broadcasts of high-definition television began from Alexandra Palace, North London by the BBC Television Service. 1930s: Radar pioneered at Bawdsey Manor by Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973) and Englishman Henry Tizard (1885–1939). 1945: The concept of geostationary satellites for the use of telecommunications relays popularised by Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008). 1964 onwards: Use of fibre optics in telecommunications pioneered by Englishman George Hockham (1938–2013) and Chinese-born Charles K. Kao. Late 1960s: Development of the long-lasting materials that made liquid crystal displays possible. Team headed by Sir Brynmor Jones; developed by Scotsman George Gray and Englishman Ken Harrison in conjunction with the Royal Radar Establishment and the University of Hull, who ultimately discovered the crystals used in LCDs. 1970: The MTV-1, the first near pocket-sized handheld television, developed by Sir Clive Sinclair (1940–2021). 1973: First transmissions of the Teletext information service made by the British Broadcasting Corporation. 1992: Clockwork radio invented by Trevor Baylis (1937–2018). 3 December 1992: The world's first text/SMS message ("Merry Christmas") sent over the Vodafone GSM network by Neil Papworth (born 1969). 2016: Holographic TV device created by the BBC.

Computing

1822: The Difference Engine, an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions, proposed by Charles Babbage (1791–1871). 1837: The Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, designed by Charles Babbage (1791–1871). 1842: The person regarded as the first computer programmer was Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), only legitimate child of the poet Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth.Ada Lovelace Biography, biography.com. 1842: First programming language, the Analytical Engine order code, produced by Charles Babbage (1791–1871) and Ada Lovelace (1815–1852). 1854: Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic, conceived by George Boole (1815–1864). 1912: Argo system, the world's first electrically powered mechanical analogue computer, invented by Arthur Pollen (1866–1937). 1918: The flip-flop circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory (Random-access memory) in computers, invented by William Eccles (1875–1966) and F. W. Jordan (1882–?). 1936–1937: The Universal Turing machine invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954). The UTM is considered to be the origin of the stored programme computer used in 1946 for the "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears John von Neumann's name: the Von Neumann architecture. 1939: The Bombe, a device used by the British to decipher German secret messages during World War II, invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954). 1943–1944: The Colossus computer – the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer – invented by Tommy Flowers (1905–1988). 1946–1950: ACE and Pilot ACE invented by Alan Turing (1912–1954). 1947: Assembly language - first assembeler created by Kathleen Booth and Andrew Donald Booth, and documented in Coding for A.R.C.