Inventions Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking that produced the first nuclear weapons.

Run by the United States with the United Kingdom and Canada during the Second World War, under General Leslie Groves with J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of the Los Alamos laboratory, it produced the first atomic bomb, tested at Trinity in July 1945, and the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was named after the Manhattan Engineer District of the US Army Corps of Engineers, not because it was a real estate venture, an art auction or a theme park in New York.

Answer: A

The Penny Post was the idea of Rowland Hill.

In his pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability (1837), the English teacher and reformer Rowland Hill argued for a single low rate of postage, paid in advance by the sender, whatever the distance. The Uniform Penny Post began in Britain in January 1840, and the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp, followed in May 1840. Cheap, fast letters transformed communication.

John McAdam devised the macadam road surface, George Stephenson built early railway locomotives such as the Rocket, and Samuel Morse developed the electric telegraph and Morse code. All improved communication or transport, but none devised the Penny Post.

Answer: C

Paper was invented in China.

Chinese tradition credits Cai Lun, a court official of the Han dynasty, with making paper from bark, hemp, rags and fishing nets around 105 CE, though simpler papers existed earlier in China. The technique spread to the Islamic world in the eighth century and from there to Europe.

Egypt used papyrus, made from strips of reed, which is a different material. Greece and India wrote on papyrus, parchment, palm leaves and birch bark before paper reached them.

Answer: D

The crescograph was invented by Sir J. C. Bose.

Jagadish Chandra Bose built the crescograph in the early twentieth century to measure the growth of plants. It magnified their tiny movements many thousands of times, and he used it to show that plants respond to stimuli such as light, heat and chemicals.

C. V. Raman is known for the Raman effect in light scattering, Albert Einstein for relativity, and Isaac Newton for the laws of motion and gravitation. None of them invented the crescograph.

Answer: C

Edward Asselbergs invented instant mashed potato.

The Canadian food scientist developed the dehydrated potato flake in 1962 while working for the Department of Agriculture at Ottawa. Solanum tuberosum is the potato's botanical name, and Walter Raleigh is credited with bringing it to Europe.

Answer: D

It was the pay telephone.

William Gray installed the first coin-operated telephone at the Hartford Bank in Connecticut in 1889. It was post-pay: the caller spoke first and paid afterwards.

Answer: A

J.B. Dunlop invented the pneumatic rubber tyre.

The Scottish veterinary surgeon, living in Belfast, made it in 1888 for his son's tricycle by wrapping an inflated rubber tube in canvas. Robert Thomson had patented the idea in 1845 but it had been forgotten.

Answer: A

The Biro brothers invented it.

Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian journalist, and his brother Gyorgy, a chemist, patented the ballpoint in 1938, using the quick-drying ink of newspaper presses in a pen tipped with a rolling ball. In much of the world the pen is still called a biro.

Answer: C

Television is credited to him.

Vladimir Zworykin invented the iconoscope camera tube in 1923 and the kinescope picture tube in 1929, which together made all-electronic television possible. He worked at Westinghouse and then RCA.

Answer: C

Branston is in Staffordshire.

Crosse and Blackwell began making the pickle at a factory in the village near Burton upon Trent in 1922, and the name stayed with the product even after production moved to Bury St Edmunds.