The City of Nottingham is renowned for the amazing inventions of its brilliant residents. These life-improving creations include:

The VCR

The first Video Cassette Tape Recorder was invented in Nottingham. It was named Telcan back then, short for “television in a can”, and had the capacity to record videos for 20 minutes in black and white.

MRI

English physicist and University of Nottingham professor Sir Peter Mansfield revolutionised medical technology with his discoveries regarding Magnetic Resonance Imaging. He was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Paul Lauterbur, for this watershed moment in the field of modern medicine. The first MRI equipment was only large enough to stick your finger. Eventually, it grew in size and is now used by doctors around the world to detect stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, brain tumours, dementia and developmental anomalies, among others.

Ibuprofen

It’s hard to imagine not having this non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) when you’re feeling feverish and suffering from all sorts of body pain. Dr. Stewart Adams made this over-the-counter wonder drug capable of soothing a variety of physical agonies, from punishing hangovers to atrocious migraines to the most-dreaded toothache, in Nottingham.

Tarmac

One day in 1901, Notts county surveyor Edgar Hooley was walking in Denby when he spotted a smooth area near an ironworks. Upon enquiry, he found out that a barrel of tar had been spilled when it fell off a dray. To hide the mess, someone had poured waste slag on it. Noting its solidifying effect, Hooley patented the process in 1902, which involves heating tar and adding slag and stones into the mixture. Having mastered the procedure, Hooley began to tarmac roads, and Nottingham’s Radcliffe road became his first project.

Traffic Lights

We’ve been so used to the idea of traffic lights, acting as routine fixtures in our daily commute that it’s pretty much difficult to envision a time without their multicoloured guidance. But in 1866, when Nottingham high school student John Peake Knight has had enough of seeing deadly road accidents, he devised a plan to make the streets safer for everyone and developed the world’s first traffic lights. This was placed close to London’s House of Commons. Its earliest appearance was in the form of a revolving gas-powered lantern equipped with red and green lights.

Tap Water

Another daily commodity that has originated from Nottingham is running water. In the early 1800s, thousands of people died from cholera and typhoid epidemics due to the poor condition of water supply. When Nottingham found itself amidst a large-scale population explosion between 1720 and 1830, leaving its crammed residents with insufficient and contaminated water supply, Trent Waterworks Company engineer Thomas Hawksley stepped in and designed the country’s first high-pressure water system. It supplied potable water by turning the taps. He was only 25 years old at the time of his breakthrough invention yet it allowed him to solve many countries’ water distribution and storage problems.

HP Sauce

Whether you call it Wilson’s gravy, red sauce or brown sauce, the original recipe of the HP sauce was developed by a Nottingham grocer named Frederick Gibson Garton. In 1895, he registered the name H.P. Sauce after the Houses of Parliament because of word of mouth that a restaurant near it had started serving the sauce.

Raleigh Bicycles

Known as one of the world’s oldest bicycle companies, it was founded in 1885 by Woodhead and Angois. And if there’s anything more famously labelled as “Made in Nottingham”, it’s Raleigh bikes. Its historic models include the Amazon, Arena, Boxer, Chopper, Cyclone, Executive, Gran Prix, Lizard, Marathon, Memphis, Mustang, RSW14, RSW16 and Winner, among others. Although the last framed bike ? which proudly called out Nottingham as its place of origin ? rolled out in 2002, a design and distribution centre still stands in Eastwood today.