Who synthesized the first wholly artificial gene?
Answer: A
Har Gobind Khorana did.
He and his team synthesised a complete functional gene, the yeast alanine transfer RNA gene, in 1970 - the first artificial gene. He had already shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in medicine for work on the genetic code.
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What is the name of the CalTech seismologist who invented the scale used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes?
Answer: A
Charles Richter.
He devised the scale at the California Institute of Technology in 1935 with Beno Gutenberg. It is logarithmic: each whole number is a tenfold increase in wave amplitude and about thirty-two times the energy.
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Who developed the idea of Crop Rotation?
Answer: B
It was 'Turnip' Townshend.
Charles Townshend, second Viscount Townshend, popularised the four-course Norfolk rotation of wheat, turnips, barley and clover in the 1730s. It ended the need to leave land fallow, since clover restored nitrogen and turnips fed cattle through winter.
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What Karl Benz invented?
Answer: A
Karl Benz invented the petrol-powered automobile.
His Patent-Motorwagen of 1885, a three-wheeler with a single-cylinder four-stroke engine, was patented in January 1886 and is reckoned the first true motor car. His wife Bertha made the first long road journey in it in 1888.
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Ralph Samuelson was only eighteen when he invented this sporting item in 1922. What was it?
Answer: C
He invented water skis.
Ralph Samuelson reasoned in 1922 that if one could ski on snow one could ski on water, and after trying barrel staves and snow skis he made a pair of pine boards and was towed behind a boat on Lake Pepin, Minnesota. He never patented the idea.
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Who was the first American female to patent her invention, a method of weaving straw with silk?
Answer: D
Mary Kies was the first.
She received a United States patent in 1809 for a method of weaving straw with silk or thread, used in making bonnets. Napoleon's embargo had cut off European straw hats, so the technique found a ready market.
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Who invented Electric Generator?
Answer: B
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.
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What furniture item was invented by California furniture designer Charles Prior Hall in 1968?
Answer: C
It was the waterbed.
Charles Prior Hall made it in 1968 as a design student's project in San Francisco, having first tried filling a mattress with cornstarch and then with jelly. The courts later held his patent invalid, since Robert Heinlein had described a waterbed in a novel of 1961.
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What Elisha Otis invented?
Answer: A
Elisha Otis invented the safety brake used in modern elevators.
Hoists already existed but were unsafe if the rope broke. His device of 1852 used a spring that engaged ratchets on the guide rails the moment tension was lost. He demonstrated it at the New York Crystal Palace in 1854 by having the rope cut while he stood on the platform.
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What 'game' was first produced by the Southern Novelty Company in Baltimore, Maryland in 1892?
Answer: C
It was the Ouija board.
Elijah Bond patented it in 1891 and the Kennard Novelty Company, later the Southern Novelty Company of Baltimore, produced it. The name is usually said to combine the French and German words for yes.
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