List of Taiwanese inventions and discoveries

This is a list of inventions by people who were born in Taiwan or current citizens of Taiwan.

Inventions and discoveries

Bubble tea

• Bubble tea is a drink that contains flavored tea and tapioca pearls. It was invented in the early 1980s by Taiwanese street food vendors.^[1] Bubble tea vendors serve the beverage cold inside a translucent plastic cup with an over-sized straw wide enough for the tapioca bubbles.^[2] The drink is popular throughout Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Southeast Asia and the United States.^[1]
• Connect6 is a game similar to Gomoku invented by I-Chen Wu, a computer science professor at National Chiao Tung University. The player who obtains six or more stones in a row wins.^[3]
• A universal crossed molecular beam apparatus for studying chemical reactions was developed by the Taiwanese chemist Yuan T. Lee.^[4] In 1986, Lee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Dudley R. Herschbach and John Polanyi "for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes."^[5]
• The integrated laptop projector was first developed and showcased by Asus, a Taiwanese computer manufacturer, in 2008. The built-in projector debuted at Computex Taipei 2008, an annual computer expo.^[6] Competitors such as HP in 2010 and Fujitsu in 2011 have since released similar products.^[7][8]
• Instant noodles were invented by Go Pek-Hok, who later adopted the name Momofuku Ando when he immigrated from Taiwan to Japan. Ando created a method for deep-frying and drying noodles that could later be cooked using boiling water. He founded the Nissin Foods company, which in 1971 introduced instant noodles marketed as Cup Noodles that were packaged in Styrofoam cups.^[9]
• The optimistic concurrency control method was first proposed by Taiwanese computer scientist H. T. Kung and American John T. Robinson in 1981.^[10]
• Woodball is a sport invented by Weng Ming-hui and Kuang-chu Young in 1990. In the game, a mallet is used to pass a ball through a series of gates. The Olympic Council of Asia made the sport a program of the Asian Beach Games in 2008.^[11] The International Woodball Federation is based in Taipei, Taiwan.^[12]

References

1. Martin, Laura C. (2007). Tea: The drink that changed the world. Rutland: Tuttle Publishing. p. 219. ISBN 9780804837248.
2. Lovegren, Sylvia (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-973496-2.
3. Wu, I-Chen; Huang, Dei-Yen (2006). "A New Family of k-in-a-Row Games". A New Family of k-in-a-Row Games 4250: 180–194. doi:10.1007/11922155_14.
4. Lin, M.C.; Lin, S.H.; Neumark, D.M. (September 4, 1997). "Y.T. Lee Preface". The Journal of Physical Chemistry A 101 (36): 6339–6340. doi:10.1021/jp971954n.
5. "The dynamics of chemical reactions - a fascinating new field of research". Nobel Prizes. Nobel Foundation. October 15, 1986.
6. Herrman, John (June 5, 2008). "ASUS Laptop With Built-In Projector Raises PowerPoint Threat to "Critical"". Gizmodo.
7. Stevens, Tim (January 21, 2010). "HP launching tablets and notebooks with integrated pico projectors this year?". Engadget.
8. Robinson, Mark (April 22, 2011). "Fujitsu Notebook Ditches Optical Drive, Packs Pico Projector". Wired.
9. Laudan, Rachel (2013). Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History. University of California Press. pp. 310–311. ISBN 978-0-520-95491-5.
10. Kung, H.T.; Robinson, John T. (June 1981). "On optimistic methods for concurrency control". ACM Transactions on Database Systems 6 (2). doi:10.1145/319566.319567.
11. "MOFA honors inventor of woodball". Taipei Times. July 6, 2007.
12. "Historical innovation". International Woodball Federation. International Woodball Federation.