igned at Woodley Aerodrome in Berkshire by Miles Aircraft, was an advanced design of aircraft which had the innovation of the flying tail or all-moving tail also known as a stabilator; this would solve the problem of stability and aircraft control at supersonic speeds, and its design was taken wholesale into the American Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft.
On 3 May 1830 the world's first passenger train service, the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway (6 miles) built by George Stephenson, began, hauled by the locomotive Invicta and introduced world's first railway season ticket in 1834. Maidenhead Railway Bridge, known for its flat arch, was built in 1839 with 39-metre spans. The Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment, in Chertsey, developed Chobham armour.
UK-Belgium 5 laid in 1986 from Kent was the world's first optical fibre submarine cable, and is 36 miles long. The world's first submarine telephone cable was laid between England and France in 1891 by HMTS Monarch, enabling London-Paris calls from April 1891. On 3 December 1992, Neil Papworth of Reading, an engineer from Sema Group Telecoms at Vodafone in Newbury sent the world's first text message from his computer to an Orbitel 901 handset of Richard Jarvis, Vodafone's technical director. The first public automatic telephone exchange in the UK was at Epsom telephone exchange from 18 May 1912, and was introduced as standard across the UK's 6,700 telephone exchanges in 1922, lasting for around 70 years; it could handle up to 500 lines, and was the Strowger design and made by Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company of Liverpool. The world's first automatic telephone exchange had opened in La Porte, Indiana in November 1892.
The BritNed 1000MW power supply submarine cable from Isle of Grain to Rotterdam, was built in 2009. The HVDC Cross-Channel (2000MW) submarine cable was built 1986. This is the world's highest capacity submarine HVDC cable; it goes from France and lands near Folkestone, with the large transformer station (built by GEC) squeezed between the CTRL and the M20 in Aldington and Smeeth, made of eight 270kV cables.
Royston Instruments of Byfleet developed the world's first multi-channel flight data recorders in 1965. Although the Comet is generally accepted as the world's first production-run jet airliner, the first jet airliner ever built (individual) was a Nene-powered Vickers VC.1 Viking on 6 April 1948 from Wisley Airfield; the world's first turboprop airliner would fly from there on 16 July 1948 by Mutt Summers. In 1939 at Cowes (Northwood) John Godeck invented the plan position indicator method of radar display as most commonly known ever since; the site became Plessey Radar in 1965, and currently is run by BAE Systems. Sperry Gyroscope in Bracknell produced the guidance systems for Britain's 1960s space rockets.
The tallest freestanding structure in the region is the chimney of Grain Power Station at 801 ft; it is the second-tallest chimney in the UK after Drax power station.
George Albert Smith developed the first colour film process, known as Kinemacolor, in 1906 at Southwick, West Sussex. George E. Davis from Slough, is the founding father of chemical engineering. Wiggins Teape, later ARJO Wiggins Fine Papers, had the largest paper research centre in Europe at Butlers Court in Beaconsfield; built in 1891 and vacated in 2009.
The National Fruit Collection is the largest collection of fruit trees in the world, at Brogdale, and is next to the M2 at the A251 junction in Ospringe. Scalextric was invented by Fred Francis in 1956, who founded Minimodels in Havant; initially the model cars had been clockwork; it was made from 1967 at Triang in Margate. The world's first Mars Bar was made in Slough in 1932; it was modelled on the Milky Way, popular at the time in the USA. Twix was introduced at Slough in 1967, with production moving to eastern France (Mars Chocolat France at Haguenau in Alsace) in 2005. The Ford GT40 was developed by Ford Advanced Vehicles at Slough in the mid-1960s.
Enid Blyton lived in Beaconsfield, where she wrote Noddy. 