Inventions Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Paul Muller discovered the insecticidal action of DDT.

The Swiss chemist found it in 1939. DDT saved millions of lives from typhus and malaria, and won him the Nobel Prize in 1948; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring later exposed its effect on birds, and it was banned for agricultural use.

Answer: C

Anton van Leeuwenhoek is credited with it.

The Delft draper ground single lenses of extraordinary quality, reaching magnifications of about 270 times, and was the first to see bacteria, protozoa and spermatozoa. The compound microscope was the work of Janssen and Hooke.

Answer: C

J.E. Lundstrom invented them.

He patented the safety match in Sweden in 1855, separating the red phosphorus onto the striking surface. Earlier matches used white phosphorus, which caused the jaw disease called phossy jaw among factory workers.

Answer: C

Charles Goodyear invented vulcanised rubber.

He found in 1839, by accident, that rubber heated with sulphur became elastic over a wide range of temperature instead of melting in heat and cracking in cold. He died in debt, and the tyre company took his name long afterwards.

Answer: A

George Stephenson invented the railway engine.

He built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington in 1825 and the Rocket, which won the Rainhill trials in 1829 and set the pattern for the steam locomotive. He also fixed the standard gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches.

Answer: B

Sir John Ambrose Fleming invented it.

He patented the thermionic valve, or diode, in 1904, which let current pass one way only and so could rectify radio signals. Lee de Forest added a third electrode two years later, making amplification possible.

Answer: D

Sir Richard Arkwright invented the spinning frame.

Patented in 1769, the water frame spun cotton strong enough to be used as warp, which the jenny's yarn was not. Because it needed water power it had to be housed in a mill, and so created the factory system.

Answer: D

It was 1903.

Wilbur and Orville Wright flew at Kitty Hawk on 17 December 1903, covering 37 m in twelve seconds on the first of four flights that day. Their achievement was controlled flight, through wing-warping for roll.

Answer: A

Archimedes discovered them.

His principle, that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of fluid displaced, is said to have come to him in his bath while testing whether a crown was pure gold.

Answer: A

Sir Humphry Davy discovered sodium.

He isolated it in 1807 by passing a current through molten caustic soda, and potassium by the same means days earlier. Electrolysis gave him six new elements within two years.