Inventions Questions and Answers

Answer: B

It was created in 1958-59.

Jack Kilby built the first working integrated circuit at Texas Instruments in September 1958, on germanium with wire connections. Robert Noyce at Fairchild produced a silicon version months later with the connections printed on - the design the industry adopted.

Answer: A

Elisha G. Otis invented it.

His device of 1852 used a wagon spring that engaged ratchets on the guide rails the moment rope tension was lost. He demonstrated it at the New York Crystal Palace in 1854 by having the rope cut while standing on the platform.

Answer: C

Michael Faraday invented the electric generator.

His discovery of electromagnetic induction in 1831 - that a changing magnetic field induces a current - led at once to the disc dynamo. Every power station since works on the principle.

Answer: D

Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed it.

Their 1974 paper set out TCP, later split into TCP and IP, which lets networks of different kinds carry one another's traffic. That is what turned a collection of separate networks into an internet.

Answer: B

It became widely available in the 1950s.

Broadcasting had begun before the war but was suspended during it. Sets became affordable in the 1950s: the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and the growth of American networks put television into most homes in the industrial countries within the decade.

Answer: A

Johannes Gutenberg invented it.

At Mainz in the 1440s he combined movable metal type cast in a hand mould, an oil-based ink and a screw press adapted from wine-making. His Bible of about 1455 was the first substantial book printed in Europe with movable type.

Answer: C

King C. Gillette invented it.

He patented the disposable double-edged blade in 1904, having reasoned that a fortune lay in something the customer used once and threw away. The razor was sold cheaply and the blades dear - the model many industries have used since.

Answer: A

Edwin H. Armstrong invented FM radio.

He demonstrated frequency modulation in 1933, which gave far better sound and immunity to the static that ruined AM reception in storms. RCA obstructed it for years, and Armstrong took his own life in 1954 in the middle of the litigation.

Answer: B

Alfred Nobel patented it.

Nitroglycerine was too unstable to handle safely; in 1867 he found that absorbing it in kieselguhr made it manageable, and patented the result as dynamite. The fortune it earned endowed the Nobel Prizes.

Answer: C

The United States developed it.

The Manhattan Project tested the first device at Alamogordo on 16 July 1945, and bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month. The Soviet Union followed in 1949, Britain in 1952, France in 1960, China in 1964 and India in 1974.