Inventions Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Archimedes is credited with it.

The Archimedes screw, a helix inside a cylinder, raises water when turned, and was used to drain ships and irrigate fields. The screw as a fastener came much later, but the helical principle is his.

Answer: A

Thomas Alva Edison.

He did not invent the idea of the electric lamp but produced the first commercially practical one in 1879, with a carbonised filament in a high vacuum that burned for over forty hours. Joseph Swan in England developed one independently at the same time.

Answer: A

It was 1850.

John Lawrence Smith devised the inverted microscope, with the objective below the stage and the light source above, so that specimens in liquid in a dish could be examined from beneath. It is now standard in cell culture work.

Answer: A

Samuel Hahnemann founded it.

The German physician set out the principle that like cures like in 1796, and the practice of extreme dilution followed. He named the system homoeopathy, from the Greek for similar suffering.

Answer: D

All of these took part.

The DVD was agreed in 1995 when two rival formats - the MultiMedia CD of Sony and Philips and the Super Density disc of Toshiba, Panasonic and others - were merged into a single standard under pressure from the computer industry.

Answer: A

William Harvey discovered it.

He showed in 1628 that the blood moves in a circle, pumped by the heart through arteries and returning by veins, and argued it from the volume the heart moves in an hour - far more than the body could manufacture.

Answer: B

Louis Braille invented it.

Blinded at three by an accident in his father's workshop, he adapted a military night-writing code and by 1824, aged fifteen, had devised the six-dot cell that bears his name. It was not adopted in his own school until after his death.

Answer: B

Louis Breguet is among those credited.

His Gyroplane No. 1 lifted a man off the ground in 1907, though steadied by helpers, and Paul Cornu flew free the same year. The first practical helicopter was Igor Sikorsky's VS-300 of 1939.

Answer: C

It was the electric train.

Joshua Lionel Cowen built a battery-powered flat car in 1901 to move goods in a shop window. Shoppers wanted the train instead, and Lionel became the best-known maker of toy trains in America.

Answer: B

Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine.

His injected vaccine of 1955 used killed virus, and he refused to patent it, asking who could patent the sun. Albert Sabin's oral vaccine, using live attenuated virus, followed and is the one used in mass campaigns.