swap_horiz Elias Howe Alternatives

1

Samuel Morse

Samuel Morse was an American painter and inventor who co-developed Morse code and sent a public telegraph message from W...

Communication American 19TH Century Code

8.7 Great

2

George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse was an American inventor and industrialist who promoted alternating-current power systems in the Uni...

American 19TH Century Electric Railway

8.7 Great

3

Joseph Marie Jacquard

Joseph Marie Jacquard was a French weaver whose 1801 Jacquard loom used punched cards to automate complex textile patter...

French 19TH Century Textile Loom

8.7 Great

4

Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus McCormick was an American inventor and manufacturer associated with the mechanical reaper, patented in 1834, which...

American 19TH Century Agriculture Machine

8.3 Great

5

Norbert Rillieux

Norbert Rillieux was a Louisiana Creole engineer who built the first industrially practical multiple-effect evaporator f...

American 19TH Century Evaporation Industrial

8.2 Great

6

Robert Fulton

Robert Fulton was an American engineer whose steamboat Clermont began commercially successful service on the Hudson Rive...

American Submarine 19TH Century Transport

8.2 Great

7

Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt was an American inventor who patented a practical revolving firearm in 1836 and built Colt's Patent Fire-Arm...

American Manufacturing 19TH Century Firearms

8.2 Great

8

Granville Woods

Granville Woods was an American inventor with more than 50 patents, notably an 1887 railway telegraph that let moving tr...

American 19TH Century Electric Railway

8.1 Great

9

Lewis Howard Latimer

Lewis Howard Latimer was an American draftsman and inventor whose 1882 carbon-filament process improved incandescent lam...

American Light 19TH Century Electric

8.1 Great

10

Isaac Singer

Isaac Singer was an American inventor who improved and commercialized the sewing machine, receiving a key U.S. patent in...

American Manufacturing 19TH Century Home

8.1 Great

11

William T. G. Morton

William T. G. Morton was an American dentist who publicly demonstrated ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospita...

American 19TH Century Medical Anesthesia

8.1 Great

12

Elisha Gray

Elisha Gray was an American inventor and Western Electric co-founder who filed a telephone caveat on February 14, 1876,...

Communication American 19TH Century Telephone

7.8 Good

13

Crawford Long

Crawford Long was an American physician who used ether anesthesia in Georgia in 1842 for surgery, years before ether's p...

American 19TH Century Medical Anesthesia

7.8 Good

14

John Wesley Hyatt

John Wesley Hyatt was an American inventor who patented celluloid in 1869, creating a commercially important early plast...

American 19TH Century Plastic Materials

7.7 Good

15

Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins was an American inventor who received an 1834 British patent for a vapor-compression refrigeration system...

American Steam 19TH Century Mechanical

7.6 Good

16

John Gorrie

John Gorrie was an American physician who patented an ice-making machine in 1851, an important step toward mechanical re...

American 19TH Century Medical Refrigeration

7.5 Good

17

Margaret E. Knight

Margaret E. Knight was an American inventor whose 1871 patent covered a machine for making flat-bottomed paper bags at i...

American Manufacturing 19TH Century Machine

7.3 Good

18

Maria Beasley

Maria Beasley was an American inventor whose 1882 life raft patent improved maritime safety and whose machines also made...

Safety American 19TH Century Life Raft

7.3 Good

19

Andrew Jackson Beard

Andrew Jackson Beard was an American inventor who patented automatic railroad-car coupler improvements in 1897 after los...

Safety American 19TH Century Railway

7.2 Good

20

Sarah Boone

Sarah Boone was an American dressmaker whose 1892 patent improved the ironing board with a narrow, curved form for sleev...

American 19TH Century Home Laundry

6.5 Fair