English physicist Joseph Swan receives a patent for bromide paper, which becomes the standard material for printing photographs

Thomas Edison develops a long-lasting carbon filament light bulb (traditionally 40 hours) and is able to light his Menlo Park laboratory with 30 bulbs

London's new Savoy Theatre is the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity

US entrepreneur James 'Buck' Duke wins exclusive rights in a machine that can manufacture 100,000 cigarettes a day

A German physiologist, Adolf Fick, grinds a pair of lenses to fit snugly in contact with a patient's eyeballs

German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal achieves the first of many guided flights in a glider, from a hill near Potsdam

Frank Hornby patents in Liverpool his Meccano construction system for children

George Westinghouse demonstrates the advantages of AC (Alternating Current) when he provides 100,000 lights for the Chicago World's Fair

21-year-old Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in transmitting a radio signal more than a mile at his home near Bologna

Otto Lilienthal dies when a wing fractures on his glider and he crashes from a height of 17 metres

22-year-old Guglielmo Marconi takes out a patent in Britain for the invention of radio

Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in transmitting a wireless telegraph message across the English Channel

Marconi equips two ships to send radio reports to New York on the progress of the yachts racing for the America's Cup

Ferdinand Zeppelin's first dirigible makes its test flight from a floating hangar on the Lake of Constance

Wilbur and Orville Wright test a biplane glider at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina

Orville Wright travels 40 yards in the first successful powered flight, at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina

US inventor King C. Gillette receives a patent for a disposable safety razor

The first boat to be powered by a combustion engine, the 125-ton vessel Venoga, is launched on Lake Geneva

US inventor Lee De Forest patents the Audion, a sensitive vacuum-tube radio receiver

Samuel Simon, working in Manchester, takes out a patent for the use of silk to support a stencil

Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger patents cellophane, a flexible transparent film made from cellulose

US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun

US aeroplane designer Glenn Curtis demonstrates the potential of the first successful flying boat, The Flying Fish

The first sea-going diesel-powered ship, the Selandia, is constructed and launched in Denmark

The Corning Glass Company launches Pyrex, a new range of heat-resistant kitchen ware made from borosilicate glass