Inventor | featured news

Norman Joseph Woodland, who was co-inventor of the barcode, has died at the age of 91.

Stephen Quake, a prolific inventor whose application of physics to biology has led to breakthroughs in drug discovery, genome analysis and personalized medicine, has won the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, a prestigious award for outstanding innovators.

The inventor of the television remote control, Eugene Polley, dies of natural causes, aged 96, in a Chicago hospital.

Hubert Schlafly, credited with inventing the teleprompter device that feeds scripts to actors, politicians and newsreaders, dies at the age of 91.

14-year-old William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource freely available to him -- wind. His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands, when he thought of building a windmill to generate electricity and pump much-needed water.