The 1910s produced a remarkable wave of inventions that reshaped daily life, warfare, and industry. From the moving assembly line to the modern zipper, heat-resistant bakeware to the first electric traffic light, this decade laid the groundwork for the modern world. Many of these breakthroughs were accelerated by World War I, while others emerged from kitchens, factories, and newspaper offices.
The Moving Assembly Line (1913)
Henry Ford’s moving assembly line, introduced in 1913 at his Highland Park plant in Michigan, transformed manufacturing forever. Before the assembly line, workers needed 12.5 hours to build a single Model T chassis. After the system was running, that dropped to just 93 minutes. The concept was simple: instead of workers walking to the car, the car moved to the workers on a continuous belt, with each person handling one specific task. This slashed costs so dramatically that the Model T became affordable for ordinary families, and the assembly line model spread to virtually every manufacturing industry within a generation.
Neon Lighting (1910)
French engineer Georges Claude debuted his neon tube lighting at the Paris Motor Show in December 1910. Claude had figured out how to pass electrical current through sealed glass tubes filled with neon gas, producing a vivid reddish-orange glow. He quickly filed a patent, and within a few years neon signs began appearing on storefronts and theaters. By the 1920s and 1930s, neon would define the look of urban nightlife from Paris to Times Square.
The Automobile Self-Starter (1911)
Before 1911, starting a car meant hand-cranking the engine, a physically demanding and genuinely dangerous task that caused broken wrists and worse. Charles F. Kettering, working at the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), invented the electric self-starter in 1911. Cadillac was the first automaker to install it. The self-starter did more than add convenience. It made driving accessible to people who lacked the strength to crank an engine, significantly broadening the car-buying market.
The First Electric Traffic Light (1914)
On August 5, 1914, the American Traffic Signal Company installed electric red and green lights at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Suspended 15 feet above the intersection, the signal brought order to what had been a notoriously dangerous crossing. Earlier traffic signals had used semaphore arms or gas-powered lights, but Cleveland’s electric version proved far more reliable and visible. The red-green system stood the test of time and became the foundation for every traffic light you see today.
Industrial Ammonia Production (1913)
The Haber-Bosch process, scaled up for industrial use at a BASF plant in Oppau, Germany, may be the most consequential invention of the decade. Chemist Fritz Haber had demonstrated in the lab that nitrogen from the air could be combined with hydrogen to produce ammonia. Engineer Carl Bosch figured out how to do it at massive scale. Ammonia is the essential ingredient in synthetic fertilizer, and a 2008 study in Nature Geoscience estimated that without the Haber-Bosch process, roughly half the world’s current population wouldn’t have enough food. As Cornell environmental scientist Benjamin Houlton put it: “Nitrogen is the key that unlocked the global food system.”
Heat-Resistant Glass Bakeware (1915)
Corning Glass Works had been producing temperature-resistant borosilicate glass for railroad lantern globes when someone realized the same material could go from oven to table without cracking. In 1915, Corning introduced the first 12 Pyrex products to consumers: covered casserole dishes, pie plates, custard cups, loaf pans, au gratin dishes, and oval baking dishes. Before Pyrex, home cooks relied on heavy metal or ceramic pans that heated unevenly and couldn’t handle sudden temperature changes. Pyrex didn’t just add a product to the kitchen, it changed how people thought about cooking and baking at home.
The Modern Zipper (1913-1917)
Swedish-American engineer Gideon Sundback perfected the “separable fastener” during the mid-1910s. He filed his patent on August 27, 1915, and it was granted on March 20, 1917. His design used interlocking metal teeth that could be opened and closed with a single slider, a major improvement over earlier, unreliable fastener designs. Boot maker B.F. Goodrich was among the first to use the device commercially, and the company is credited with coining the word “zipper.” It took another decade or two before zippers replaced buttons on trousers and jackets, but the core technology was a product of the 1910s.
The Modern Brassiere (1914)
On November 3, 1914, New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob was awarded a patent for the “Backless Brassiere.” She had fashioned the prototype from two silk handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon with the help of her maid, creating a lightweight alternative to the rigid, whale-boned corsets that had dominated women’s undergarments for centuries. Jacob eventually sold her patent, and the bra industry grew rapidly through the 1920s as women embraced more active lifestyles and less restrictive clothing.
The Gas Mask (1914-1915)
When poison gas appeared on the battlefields of World War I, Dr. Cluny Macpherson, Principal Medical Officer of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, invented the first practical gas mask. While stationed at Gallipoli, he fashioned a prototype from a captured German helmet, creating a hood-like covering that filtered toxic chemicals before they reached the lungs. Gas masks became standard military equipment within months, and the underlying filtration technology eventually found civilian applications in industrial safety and emergency response.
Military Weapons of World War I
The 1910s saw rapid development in weapons technology, driven by the demands of trench warfare. John Browning designed the M1917 machine gun in 1917, a water-cooled weapon that became a staple of American forces on the Western Front. That same year, John T. Thompson began designing the Thompson submachine gun, a compact automatic weapon that took three years to develop (1917-1919). Though it arrived too late for the war, the Thompson became one of the most iconic firearms of the 20th century. The first military tanks also rolled onto battlefields during this decade, debuting at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 as a British solution to the deadly stalemate of trench warfare.
The Crossword Puzzle (1913)
On December 21, 1913, journalist Arthur Wynne needed to fill a spare space in the New York World newspaper. He created what he called a “Word-Cross,” a diamond-shaped grid of interlocking words with numbered clues. Readers loved it. The puzzle became a weekly feature, the name eventually flipped to “crossword,” and within a decade publishers were printing entire books of them. More than a century later, crossword puzzles remain one of the most popular word games in the world, with millions of daily solvers across print and digital formats.