| Year | Recipient(s) | Awarded For |
| 1790 | Francis Hopkinson | Description of a spring block, designed to assist a vessel in sailing. |
| 1792 | Robert Patterson | An improvement on metalic condutors of lightning-rods. |
| 1793 | William Thornton | A treatis on the elements of written language, illustrating, by a philosophical division of speech, the power of each character, thereby mutually fixing the orthography and orthoepy. |
| 1795 | Nicholas Collin | Description of a speedy elevator. |
| 1804 | Benjamin Smith Barton | Number of the pernicious insects of the United States. |
| 1804 | William Mugford | An account and description of a temporary rudder. |
| 1807 | John Garnett | Description of a new and simple nautical chart, for working the different problems in navagation. |
| 1809 | James Humphryes, Jr. | A model and description of a steering apparatus. |
| 1820 | Josiah Chapman | An improvement in the manufacture of canvas. |
| 1823 | James Ewing | Invention of an improved hydrant. |
| 1825 | Charles D. Brodie | Invention to repair the side of ships under the surface of the water. |
| 1836 | James P. Espy | A theory of rain. |
| 1864 | Pliny Earle Chase | The discovery of certain new relation between the sun and lunar-dirnal, variations of magnetic force and barometric pressure. |
| 1887 | Lewis M. Haupt | The physical phenomena of harbor entrances. Their causes and remedies. |
| 1922 | Paul R. Heyl &: Lyman J. Briggs | The Earth inductor compass. |
| 1952 | James G. Baker | In recognition of his many distinguished contributions to theory and practice in optics, and especially for his design of the super-Schmidt meteor camera. |
| 1953 | Philip Van Horn Weems | Invention of methods and instruments for celestial navigatin. |
| 1956 | Karl von Frisch | Studies of animal sense organs and his analysis of the dances of bees. |
| 1959 | Charles Stark Draper | Pioneer work, culminating in the invention, research and practical development of an inertial navigation system now applied to airplanes, missiles, submarines, and ships without need for visual or radiation references. |
| 1960 | Stuart William Seeley | Work on Shoran, which is now recognized as the basic method of navigation for ships and planes. |
| 1961 | Edward L. Beach | Recognition of his navigation of the U.S. Submarine Triton around the globe. |
| 1966 | W.H. Pickering | Leadership in the exploratino of the Moon and Venus by jet-propelled vehicles. |
| 1971 | Paul M. Muller &: William J. Sjogren | Their discovery of the lunar "mascons" (mass concentrations) leading to the first detailed gravimetric map of the Moon. |
| 1975 | Ralph A. Alphar &: Robert Herman | Their prediction of the black-body radiatin from the early "explosion" of the universe. |
| 1980 | Martin Lindauer | For studies in the field of animal orientation and flight guidance. |
| 1984 | J. Frank Jordan | For his role in the Voyager encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, and their satellites. |
| 1988 | George C. Weiffenbach &: William H. Guier | The highly precise system, the Transite Satellite Navigational System. |
| 1990 | Joseph H. Taylor | For confirming Einsteins' theory of gravitational waves from a binary star system. |
| 1992 | Edward C. Stone | Scientific leader in the Voyager grand tour of the solar system planets. |
| 1994 | Gordon Pettengill | One of the foremost radar astronomers of the past half century, who deserves major credit for the emerging picture of Venus, derived from the data gathered by the Magellan spacecraft. |
| 1997 | Roger L. Easton &: Bradford W. Parkinson | Global Positioning System (GPS). |
| 2000 | S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell | For her discovery of the first four pulsars in 1967, thereby initiating a field of science that has flourished for a third of a century. |
