Fox Talbot was a British photographer, inventor, archaeologist, botanist, philosopher, philologist, mathematician and politician. He was a member of the English Parliament.
Creator of the calotype process (which had preceded his photogenic drawings), which he patented in 1842, was one of the pioneers of photography.
Isaac Singer was an inventor, an actor, and an entrepreneur. He made important improvements in the design of the sewing machine and was the founder of Singer Sewing Machine Company.
Etienne Lenoir was a Belgian engineer, naturalized French, inventor of the first internal combustion engine.
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and manufacturer of weapons, famous mainly for the invention of dynamite and for creating the awards that bear his name.
The German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, while experimenting with the Hittorff-Crookes tubes and the Ruhmkorff coil to investigate the violet fluorescence produced by the cathode rays. After covering the tube with black cardboard to eliminate visible light, he observed a faint yellow-green glow from a screen with a layer of platinum-barium cyanide, which disappeared when the tube was turned off.
