What would we do without the inventions that we use every day? When did they come into being? Who first conceived of them, and how did they become a reality? The Greatest Inventions of All Time uses original and contemporaneous material from The National Archives to look at some of the most important inventions of all time, and how they came into being.

The book delves into the original sources that tell us about inspirational inventors and their inventions. Revealing the mind-boggling capacity for human resourcefulness, it uses documents such as inventors' correspondence, patents, sketches and photographs to tell the stories behind some of the objects we use on a daily basis.