Even the darkest clouds can have a silver lining and like many major crises that have affected the world in the past, the COVID-19 pandemic will bring exciting new innovations say experts including University of North Carolina professor Mahka Moeen. Looking back over history's most trying times, we reveal 30 revolutionary inventions and discoveries that were sparked by grave international emergencies. Click or scroll through to find out what they are.

The second plague pandemic began in 1346 with the Black Death, which claimed 200 million lives in Eurasia and Africa. Surviving members of the lower classes became better off as a result and an unprecedented number of people were able to afford books. The outbreak also massively reduced the population of monks who could transcribe manuscripts by hand, which resulted in a surplus of rags, making paper cheaper, and led to the creation of oil-based inks. These factors fuelled the development of the printing press, which was invented around 1440.

The second plague pandemic recurred regularly until the 19th century. One of the most infamous outbreaks struck London in 1665, wiping out almost a quarter of the city's population. The pestilence prompted scientific pioneer Isaac Newton to self-isolate at his estate in Lincolnshire, where he came up with his groundbreaking theory of gravity while, as legend has it, sitting under an apple tree.

One of the first truly global conflicts, the Napoleonic Wars were fought across all inhabited continents. A slew of innovations came about as a consequence of the hostilities, which raged from 1793 to 1815. They include the world's first ambulances. The horse-drawn vehicles were the brainchild of leading French surgeon Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, who also introduced triage and the mobile army surgical hospital (MASH).

Along with ambulances and other battlefield medicine innovations, the Napoleonic Wars led to the invention of the canning process. In 1810 the French government, which was seeking a way to preserve rations in order to feed its troops all year round, awarded confectioner Nicolas Appert a prize of 12,000 francs for his airtight food preservation process. Appert duly invested his winnings, creating the world's first commercial cannery.

The third cholera pandemic hit London's Soho neighbourhood in 1854, killing 616 people. Physician John Snow investigated the outbreak in depth and worked out its cause: contaminated water from a pump situated in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Snow's findings proved once and for all that the disease lived in water rather than being airborne, and his research provided the foundation for modern epidemiology.

As we have seen, nothing stirs innovation like a global crisis and the aptly named Long Depression, which lasted from 1873 to 1896, was no exception. During this period of worldwide economic downturn a hard-up Thomas Edison turned to his father for financial assistance and used the cash to set up his lab and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey where he invented the world's first commercially successful light bulb.

Read more about the lightbulb and other amazing American inventions

The Long Depression also saw the invention of the modern steam turbine, which made affordable and plentiful electricity possible. The revolutionary contraption was designed and patented in 1884 by Anglo-Irish engineer Charles Algernon Parsons, who was working for Clarke, Chapman and Company, a ship engine manufacturing firm based in Gateshead, northern England.

The flurry of Long Depression innovation continued into the late 1880s and first half of the 1890s. Having developed methyl ether-run fridges and later ones using ammonia, German scientist and engineer Carl von Linde managed to perfect the liquefaction of air in 1895 by compressing and rapidly expanding it, thereby cooling the constituent gases. He went on to patent the process, paving the way for modern refrigeration.

The First World War sparked a number of remarkable innovations. Although the zip fastener was first conceived during the 19th century, the technology wasn't fine-tuned or widely adopted until the global conflict when it was used for flight jackets and money belts worn by US sailors, who lacked pockets in their uniforms.

Synthetic rubber, which boasts a myriad of industrial applications, was first synthesised during the 19th century but wasn't manufactured on a meaningful scale until the First World War when Germany, which was experiencing a shortage of natural rubber due to an Allied blockade, began mass-producing the multitasking material.

Horrified by the extent of disfiguring facial injuries soldiers were suffering during the war, New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies established the first hospital dedicated to the treatment of facial injuries in 1917 and devised ways of grafting skin, muscle and bone, effectively inventing modern plastic surgery. This picture shows sailor Walter Yeo, who was the first person to undergo a modern reconstructive procedure.

Towards the end of the First World War the discovery of blood types and improved refrigeration methods enabled the long-term storage of blood and brought transfusions to the masses, something that wasn't possible before the conflict. In fact, US Army doctor Captain Oswald Hope Robertson set up the world's first blood bank in 1917 on the Western Front. 

While the drone appears to be a recent invention, the first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were actually developed during the First World War. Early examples include the remote-controlled Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane and the Kettering Bug (pictured), which was designed by aviation pioneer Orville Wright together with engineer Charles F Kettering. 

Hailed as one of the most significant innovations of the 20th century, the process of transforming nitrogen in the air into ammonia fertiliser was developed by German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch in 1917. Incredibly, had the duo not invented the process we would only be able to produce two-thirds the amound of food we do now, and the world's population would be much lower.

The Spanish Flu pandemic killed more people than the First World War, wreaking havoc across the globe in 1918. Following the outbreak, British bacteriologist Fred Griffith sought to develop a vaccine and in 1928 conducted the first experiment demonstrating that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information. Griffith's experiment went on to inspire Rockefeller Institute researcher Oswald Avery (pictured), who headed the team which revealed in 1944 that DNA holds the genetic code.

Like its counterpart during the late 19th century, the Great Depression stimulated a rash of innovation. For starters, the mass-production car radio was invented in 1930 by Motorola founders Paul and Joseph Galvin, who needed an affordable product to keep their business going following the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

Entrepreneur Michael Cullen came up with idea of a new type of "monstrous", mostly self-service grocery store while working at Kroger during the 1920s. Cullen opened the world's first supermarket King Kullen in 1930 in the New York borough of Queens. As the Great Depression began to bite, thrift-conscious customers flocked to the outlet and the rest is history.

Another Great Depression-era invention, the process that underlies the photocopier was dreamt up by physicist Chester Carlson during the late 1930s. At the time Carlson like many Americans was “living hand to mouth” and looking for a way to make his fortune. The innovator was eventually awarded a patent for his electrophotography technique in 1942.

The Second World War ushered in a plethora of trailblazing innovations. First up is cyanoacrylate aka Super Glue. The exceedingly strong adhesive was discovered accidentally in 1942 by a team of Eastman Kodak scientists led by Dr Harry Coover who were attempting to make clear plastic gun sights for the war effort.

Arguably, a far more important invention came about in 1943: the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer. The Colossus Mark 1 as it was called was designed in the most part by Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers in Dollis Hill, London and used to crack messages sent and received by German High Command. Shown here is the second version of the computer, the Colossus Mark 2.

How the rich lived during the Second World War

The concept of an aerosol spray can was conceived as far back as 1790 and the first patent for the technology was issued in 1927 to Norwegian inventor Erik Rotheim.  But the first practical application of the innovation was only rolled out in 1943: a pressurised spray can packed with insecticide to protect Allied soldiers against malaria that was developed by USDA researchers Lyle Goodhue and William Sullivan.

While penicillin was famously discovered in 1928 by Scot Alexander Fleming, the world's first antibiotic didn't enter into mass-production until 1944 when Pfizer opened the first commercial plant in Brooklyn, New York. That year the US produced a total of 1,663 billion units of the wonder drug. The following 12 months production skyrocketed, totalling an impressive 6.8 trillion units.

Jet engine technology was in its infancy at the beginning of the Second World War, but by the end of the conflict the innovation was at the vanguard of aviation advancement. The earliest models were developed in Nazi Germany. The first proper jet aircraft was the Heinkel He 178 (pictured), which debuted in 1939. It was followed by the Messerschmitt Me 262. 

In 1945 American physicist Percy Spencer was touring a lab where microwave-generating magnetron tubes (the basic mechanism of radar during the war) were being produced when he noticed a peanut bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued, the scientist conducted several experiments that included creating the world's first microwaved popcorn. Spencer filed a patent for the technology and two years later the very first commercial microwave was launched.

A multitude of important innovations came about during the Cold War including radio-frequency identification (RFID), which nowadays is used in everything from credit cards to library books. The forerunner of the technology was a passive listening device called The Thing. Designed by Soviet inventor Léon Theremin, the bug was hidden inside a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the USA in the Moscow office of the US Ambassador in 1945.

The fierce Cold War rivalry between the USA and USSR led to the so-called Space Race, with both countries accelerating their respective space programmes to outdo the other. The Soviets won the first leg of the race when they launched the world's first artificial satellite – the Sputnik I – in 1957. The technology has revolutionised communications, weather forecasting and more, and today, thousands of artificial satellites orbit our planet.

The new space race, all you need to know

Described by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov as “the most important moment since man emerged as a life form”, the invention of the mighty microchip by Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby at the height of the Cold War in 1958 was a major game-changer. First developed for military purposes, the integrated circuit gave birth to modern computing and these days powers everything from smartphones to air traffic control systems.

Much to the chagrin of the US government, the USSR pulled off a major coup in 1961 when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space. Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes in the Vostok 1 spacecraft. In response, President John F Kennedy committed to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, a feat NASA pulled off in 1969.

The development of the internet also arose due to Cold War concerns as the US military sought a computer communications system lacking a central core to protect against Soviet all-out cyber attacks. As a result, the US Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the late 1960s and it is this network that evolved into the internet as we know it today.

Yet another crucial Cold War innovation, electronic mail was invented in 1965 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The first computer to computer message was relayed via the ARPANET network in 1969, while the first proper email program was created by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, though the technology didn't go mainstream of course until the 1990s.

Now read about the famous inventions their creators regretted