December Calendar of Historic Inventions and Birthdays

Portrait of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian physicist, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, by Justus Sustermans (1597-1681), 1636, oil on canvas
DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / Getty Images

Some of the most famous inventions, patents, trademarks, and copyrights also occurred in December. Read further to discover what famous inventor has the same December birthday as you or what historical invention was created on that day in December.

December Inventions

December 1

  • 1948: "Scrabble," the board game, was copyright registered.
  • 1925: Mr. Peanut was trademark registered.

December 2

  • 1969: Patent #3,482,037 was granted to Marie V. B. Brown for a home security system.

December 3

  • 1621: Galileo perfected his invention of the telescope.
  • 1996: James and Jovee Coulter patented a glow-in-the-dark glove.

December 4

  • 1990: Patent #4,974,982 was granted to Thomas Nielson for a keyring pocket pen.

December 5

  • 1905: Chiclets gum was trademark registered.

December 6

  • 1955: The Volkswagen car was trademark registered.

December 7

  • 1926: KEEBLER was trademark registered.

December 8

  • 1970: Count Chocula was trademark registered.

December 9

  • 1924: Wrigley's gum was trademark registered.

December 10

  • 1996: BED IN A BAG was trademark registered.

December 11

  • 1900: Ronald McFeely obtained a patent for a shoemaking machine.

December 12

  • 1980: The Computer Software Act of 1980 defined computer programs and clarified the extent of protection afforded to computer software by law. Software was now considered an invention and could be patented.

December 13

  • 1984: Artificial heart recipient William Schroeder suffered his first stroke.

December 14

  • 1926: TILT-A-WHIRL, the famous theme park ride, was trademark registered.

December 15

  • 1964: Patent #3,161,861 was granted to Kenneth Olsen for magnetic core memory (first used in a minicomputer).

December 16

  • 1935: The movie "A Tale of Two Cities" was copyright registered.

December 17

  • 1974: The one-millionth trademark registered was issued to Cumberland Packing Corp. for a simple G clef and staff design used on Sweet'n Low.

December 18

  • 1946: The first television network dramatic serial, "Faraway Hill," ended after a two-month run.

December 19

  • 1871: Mark Twain received the first of his three patents for suspenders.

December 20

  • 1946: "The Yearling," a movie based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was copyright registered.
  • 1871: Albert Jones of New York, New York, patented corrugated paper.

December 21

  • 1937: Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was copyright registered.

December 22

  • 1998: "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" trademark was registered.

December 23

December 24

  • 1974: Charles Beckley received a patent for a folding chair.

December 25

  • 1984: L.F. Holland patented an improved trailer or mobile home.

December 26

  • 1933: Edwin Armstrong was granted a patent for a two-path FM radio.

December 27

  • 1966: The words from the theme song for "Star Trek" were copyright registered. 

December 28

  • 1976: Patent #4,000,000 was issued to Robert Mendenhall for a process for recycling asphalt compositions.

December 29

  • 1823: Charles Macintosh, the Scottish inventor, patented the first waterproof material in 1823. The Mackintosh raincoat was named after him.

December 30

  • 1997: Volker Reiffenrath's high-multiplexed, supertwist liquid display was patented.

December 31

  • 1935: A patent for the game Monopoly was received by Charles Darrow.

December Birthdays

December 1

  • 1743: German chemist Martin H. Klaproth discovered uranium.
  • 1912: Architect Minoru Yamasaki designed the World Trade Center.

December 2

  • 1906: Peter Carl Goldmark developed color TV and LP records.
  • 1946: Gianni Versace was a famous Italian fashion designer.

December 3

  • 1753: English inventor Samuel Crompton invented the mule-jenny spinning machine.
  • 1795: Rowland Hill invented the first adhesive postage stamp in 1840.
  • 1838: American meteorologist Cleveland Abbe was considered the "Father of the Weather Bureau."
  • 1886: Swedish physicist Karl M.G. Siegbahn invented the Rontgen spectroscope and won the Nobel Prize in 1924.
  • 1900: Austria biochemist Richard Kuhn, who worked with vitamins, won the Nobel Prize in 1938.
  • 1924: John Backus invented FORTRAN, a computer language.
  • 1937: English shoe manufacturer Stephen Rubin invented the Reebok and Adidas line of shoes.

December 4

  • 1908: American biologist A.D. Hershey researched bacteriophages and won the Nobel Prize in 1969.
  • December 5
  • 1901: German physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote the theory of uncertainty and won the Nobel Prize in 1932.
  • 1903: English physicist Cecil Frank Powell discovered the pion and won the Nobel Prize in 1950.
  • December 6
  • 1898: Swedish sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal won the Nobel Prize in 1974.
  • 1918: Harold Horace Hopkins invented the endoscope.
  • 1928: Bert Geoffrey Achong was a noted electron microscopist.

December 7

  • 1761: Madame Tussaud invented the wax museum.
  • 1810: German scientist Theodor Schwann was the co-originator of cell theory.
  • 1928: Linguist Noam Chomsky founded transformational grammar.

December 8

  • 1765: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.
  • 1861: Georges Melies was the first filmmaker to film a fictional story.

December 9

  • 1868: German physicist and chemist Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1919.

December 10

  • 1851: Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System for libraries.

December 11

  • 1781: David Brewster invented the kaleidoscope.

December 12

  • 1833: Matthias Hohner was the German manufacturer of harmonicas.
  • 1866: Swiss chemist Alfred Werner won the Nobel Prize in 1913.

December 13

  • 1816: Eric Werner von Siemens was a German artillery officer and inventor of the electric elevator.

December 14

  • 1909: Edward Lawrie Tatum was an American molecular geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in 1958.

December 15

  • 1832: French engineer and architect Alexandre Gustave Eiffel is best known for the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
  • 1852: Scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity and won the Nobel Prize in 1903.
  • 1861: Charles Edgar Duryea was an auto inventor who built the first auto in the United States.
  • 1863: Arthur D. Little was an American chemist who invented rayon.
  • 1882: Helena Rubinstein was a noted American cosmetic manufacturer.
  • 1916: Maurice Wilkins was an English physicist who researched DNA and won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

December 16

  • 1882: German physicist Walther Meissner discovered the Meissner effect.
  • 1890: Harlan Sanders invented Kentucky Fried Chicken.
  • 1917: English science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was an inventor and also wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey."

December 17

  • 1778: English chemist Humphry Davy is best known for his discovery of elements such as potassium and sodium.
  • 1797: Joseph Henry was an American inventor and pioneer of electromagnetism.
  • 1908: Willard Frank Libby was the inventor of the carbon-14 atomic clock and won the Nobel Prize in 1960.

December 18

  • 1856: English physicist Joseph John Thomson discovered the electron and won the Nobel Prize in 1906.
  • 1947: Eddie Antar founded the Crazy Eddie Electronics Store.

December 19

  • 1813: Irish chemist and physicist Thomas Andrews discovered the ozone.
  • 1849: Henry Clay Frick built the world's largest coke and steel operation.
  • 1852: American physicist Albert Michelson won the Nobel Prize in 1907.
  • 1903: Geneticist George Snell won a Nobel Prize in 1980 and was an authority on tissue transplantation. 
  • 1903: English biologist Cyril Dean Darlington discovered hereditary mechanisms.
  • 1944: Anthropologist Richard Leakey is a noted paleontologist whose significant finds include the remains of "Turkana Boy," a 1.6 million-year-old Homo erectus skeleton.
  • 1961: American physicist Eric Allin Cornell won a Nobel Prize in 2001 for the "achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates."

December 20

  • 1805: Thomas Graham founded colloid chemistry.
  • 1868: Industrialist Harvey S. Firestone founded Firestone Tires.

December 21

  • 1823: French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre was most famous for his studies of the anatomy and behavior of insects.

December 22

  • 1911: Grote Reber invented the first parabolic radio telescope.
  • 1917: English physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley won the Nobel Prize in 1963 for discoveries concerning the "ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane."
  • 1944: British scientist Mary Archer specializes in solar power conversion.

December 23

December 24

  • 1818: Physicist James Prescott Joule discovered the principle of conservation of energy.
  • 1905: Howard Hughes founded Hughes Aircraft and invented the Spruce Goose.

December 25

  • 1643: Isaac Newton was a British physicist, mathematician, and astronomer most known for his discoveries in the field of gravity.

December 26

  • 1792: English inventor Charles Babbage invented the calculating machine.
  • 1878: Isaiah Bowman was the co-founder of the "Geographical Review."

December 27

  • 1571: German astronomer Johann Kepler discovered elliptical orbits.
  • 1773: George Cayley founded the science of aerodynamics and invented gliders.

December 28

  • 1895: Auguste Lumiere and Louis Lumiere were twin brothers who opened the first commercial cinema.
  • 1942: Physicist Paul Horowitz founded the META project and won the Sloan Award in 1971-73.
  • 1944: American scientist Kary Mullis developed the polymerase chain reaction or PCR technique.

December 29

  • 1776: Charles Macintosh patented waterproof fabric.
  • 1800: Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanization process for rubber.

December 30

  • 1851: Asa Griggs Candler invented Coca-Cola.
  • 1952: Larry Bartlett invented a photographic printer.

December 31

  • 1864: American astronomer Robert G. Aitken was the first to discover binary stars.
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Your Citation
Bellis, Mary. "December Calendar of Historic Inventions and Birthdays." ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/today-in-history-december-calendar-1992495. Bellis, Mary. (2021, February 16). December Calendar of Historic Inventions and Birthdays. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/today-in-history-december-calendar-1992495 Bellis, Mary. "December Calendar of Historic Inventions and Birthdays." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/today-in-history-december-calendar-1992495 (accessed March 28, 2024).