Who invented the fountain pen?
Answer: B
Lewis E. Waterman invented it.
The insurance salesman patented a fountain pen with a capillary feed in 1884, which admitted air as ink flowed out and so prevented flooding.
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What did Ernest Rutherford discover?
Answer: C
Rutherford discovered the proton.
He identified it in 1919 by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles and detecting hydrogen nuclei - the first artificial transmutation. He had earlier discovered the nucleus itself, in 1911.
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Who invented the personal computer?
Answer: D
Steve Wozniak is credited with it.
He designed and hand-built the Apple I in 1976, and then the Apple II, the first personal computer sold as a finished consumer product with colour graphics and a keyboard. Ted Hoff designed the first microprocessor and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
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Who invented the first successful gramophone, using a flat disc rather than a cylinder ?
Answer: D
Correct answer: Emile Berliner
Edison’s phonograph of 1877 recorded on a cylinder. Emile Berliner’s gramophone of 1887 used a flat disc, which could be stamped in quantity from a master, and that manufacturing advantage settled the format for the next century.
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Who invented the electric battery, the voltaic pile ?
Answer: A
Correct answer: Alessandro Volta
Volta stacked discs of zinc and copper separated by brine-soaked cloth in 1800, producing the first steady electric current. He built it to refute Galvani’s claim that the electricity in his frog experiments was animal in origin.
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In which year did the first commercial mobile telephone network begin?
Answer: B
The first commercial network opened in 1979.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone launched it at Tokyo that year. Martin Cooper of Motorola had made the first handheld mobile call in 1973, ringing his rival at Bell Labs from a New York pavement.
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Who invented the first practical ballpoint pen ?
Answer: A
Correct answer: Laszlo Biro
The Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro patented a workable ballpoint in 1938, having noticed that newspaper ink dried quickly and would not clog. His name is still the common word for the pen in Britain, India and much of the Commonwealth.
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Inert gases were discovered by
Answer: B
William Ramsay discovered the inert gases.
With Lord Rayleigh he isolated argon in 1894, and then helium, neon, krypton and xenon - a whole new group of the periodic table. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904.
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The theory of Evolution was produced by
Answer: D
Charles Darwin produced it.
On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, proposing that species change through natural selection acting on inherited variation. Alfred Russel Wallace reached the same conclusion independently, which is what prompted Darwin to publish.
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Air conditioner was discovered by
Answer: D
Willis Carrier invented air conditioning.
He designed it in 1902 not for comfort but to control humidity at a Brooklyn printing works, where damp paper was spoiling colour registration. Cooling the air to condense moisture was the means; comfort cooling followed.
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