The US has produced some of the world's most important inventions, but which are the most significant to come out of each part of the country? Read on as we take a look at the most notable inventions that have emerged from each state and the District of Columbia, according to experts at the MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas. 

Arkansas-born cinematography pioneer Miller Reese Hutchison is credited with inventing the method of adding synchronized sound to film, filing a patent for his Phonofilm process in 1923. His innovation heralded the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, in 1927 and changed cinema forever.

Plenty of important things have been invented in California, but Apple's iPhone has been deemed the state's most impactful innovation. The game-changing smartphone was developed under the watchful eye of the late Steve Jobs in Cupertino from 2005 to 2007.

A simple invention from Georgia that had a profound impact on the Antebellum South, the cotton gin was patented in 1794 by Eli Whitney.  The mechanical device, which separates cotton fibers from seeds, triggered a major cotton boom and contributed to the growth of the slave trade. Sadly, while Whitney is often given credit for the invention he actually took the idea from an enslaved man named Sam, whose father had invented a cotton seed-removing comb.

Like pacemaker inventor Earl Bakken, biophysicist Norman Holter transformed the treatment of heart disease when he invented the first portable heart monitor at his research lab in Helena. Holter developed the device in the 1950s and launched it in 1962.

The idea for the first credit card came into being in 1949 when businessman Frank McNamara was dining with clients in New York and realized he'd left his cash at home. Unable to pay the bill, McNamara vowed to create a charge card to stop it ever happening again. His Diner's Club card was launched the following year and the rest is history.

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, invented the first working airplane and pulled off the first controlled, sustained flight on 17 December 1903, near Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The first military submarine was engineered by Horace Lawson Hunley and used by the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Hunley died on the vessel in 1863 when it lost power and sank during a military exercise.

The computer operating system that changed the world, Microsoft Windows was developed in the mid-1970s by a team led by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Microsoft's Redmond HQ, and is the first operating system with a click interface and pull-down menus and icons.

Known as the 'Space Suit Father', innovator Siegfried Hanson developed the early Mark I space suit during the 1950s, playing an important role in the 20th-century Space Race, which began in August 1955 and continued up until the early 1990s.

A humble but key invention that makes all the difference to farmers and gardeners, the modern-day shovel handle was created by George C Choate of Wyoming Station, Albany County in the late 1870s and patented in the state in 1879.

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