Inventions Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Abraham Lincoln is the only one.

He received patent number 6,469 in 1849 for a device to lift boats over shoals using inflatable chambers, having twice been aboard vessels that ran aground. It was never manufactured.

Answer: C

Wigs were first used in Egypt.

Egyptians shaved their heads against lice and the heat and wore wigs of human hair or plant fibre, both for protection from the sun and as a mark of rank. The practice goes back to about 2700 BC.

Answer: D

George Westinghouse invented the railway air brake.

His system of 1869 used compressed air to apply brakes on every carriage at once, instead of relying on brakemen running along the roofs. The later fail-safe version applied the brakes automatically if the train parted.

Answer: D

He invented the pacemaker.

Paul Zoll demonstrated in 1952 that a stopped heart could be restarted and kept beating by electrical impulses delivered through the chest wall. The implantable pacemaker followed at the end of that decade.

Answer: D

Various authors have credited the invention of the thermometer to Cornelius Drebbel, Robert Fludd, Galileo Galilei or Santorio Santorio. The thermometer was not a single invention, however, but a development.
Galileo Galilei also discovered that objects (glass spheres filled with aqueous alcohol) of slightly different densities would rise and fall, which is nowadays the principle of the Galileo thermometer (shown). Today such thermometers are calibrated to a temperature scale.

Answer: D

Nikolaus Otto invented it.

He built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1876 - intake, compression, power and exhaust - a cycle still called the Otto cycle and used in almost every petrol engine.

Answer: B

Sir William Grove invented the fuel cell.

The Welsh judge and scientist showed in 1839 that combining hydrogen and oxygen over platinum electrodes produced electricity and water - the reverse of electrolysis. He called it a gas battery.

Answer: C

James Hargreaves invented it.

The Lancashire weaver built the spinning jenny about 1764, letting one worker spin eight threads at once and later many more. Spinners rioted and broke into his house, and he moved to Nottingham.

Answer: A

George Pullman invented the sleeping car.

He built the Pioneer in 1864, with folding upper berths and seats that made into beds. Its use in the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 made his name.

Answer: C

Henry Bessemer invented the steel converter.

His process of 1856 blew air through molten pig iron to burn off the carbon, making steel in minutes rather than days and cutting its price by some four-fifths. It made the age of steel possible.