The World Wide Web, lawnmowers and mackintosh raincoats are usually considered essential by most Britons.

But a surprising number have no idea these great inventions – and many more – were actually devised in the UK, a study says.

Approximately 20 per cent of Britons thought Bill Gates was the man who invented the Web when, in fact, it was British-born Sir Tim Berners-Lee who developed it in 1989 while working at physics laboratory CERN, as a means by which scientists could automatically share information.

Other discoveries we didn’t know originated in Britain were the jet engine, developed by Sir Frank Whittle in 1930, and the unravelling of the DNA helix by the Briton Francis Crick and American James Watson in 1953.

Even the light bulb, which was created by Joseph Swan in 1880, came from these shores.

Meanwhile, 88 per cent were not aware the cat flap was, allegedly, invented by Sir Isaac Newton so his cat, Spithead, could come and go as he pleased while the great man carried out experiments.

And as a nation we are also responsible for the little-known Halifax Gibbet, which went on to become the French Revolution’s most feared method of execution, the guillotine. 

When it comes to other ground-breaking discoveries, modern Britons seem to be similarly confused.

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee delivers a speech during an event marking 30 years of the invention in 2019 

Pictured: The NeXT computer used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to design the World Wide Web

 A whopping 20 per cent credited the US with pioneering in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, whereas the team behind the discovery was British: Jean Purdy, Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. Shockingly, 78 per cent had never heard of Ms Purdy, who helped bring the first ‘test-tube-baby’ into the world on July 25, 1978.

The study of 2,000 Britons was commissioned by Netflix to mark the launch of the film Joy, which landed on the streaming service yesterday and tells the story behind the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 1978 and the ten-year journey to make it possible.

The film’s director Ben Taylor said: ‘Like so many people, prior to making the film, I wasn’t aware that in vitro fertilisation was a British invention.