Three years later in 1984, three French engineers named Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte, and Jean Claude André filed a patent for the Stereolithography process. But who invented 3D printing? 1984 – 87: Early History of 3D printing & invention of Stereolithography Instead, we had to wait several more years for the birth of 3D printing. Writing as Daedalus in the 3rd October 1974 edition of New Scientist.

A joke invention, but this one turned out to work!” - Dr Adrian Bowyer, Founder of the RepRap movement, which will become important further on in 3D printing’s history. “He basically invented stereolithography with a laser, and invented it as a joke. However, Dr Kodama didn’t fulfil the patent application before his deadline and was never granted the patent.īefore this however, there were rumblings and references made to a stereolithography-like process in earlier research paper dating back to the 60s and 70s, and in a 1974 New Scientist column, David Jones, writing under the name Daedalus, actually published a satirical piece that jokingly described the SLA process.

3d printing inventor