Inventors Trivia

1. In the 1960s, Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's fast-food chain, created an alternative to beef hamburgers. Unfortunately this menu item lacked substance and sales. What did Kroc name this burger?

From Quiz It Seemed Like A Good Idea

Answer: Hula Burger

Kroc attempted to cater to the Catholic population who refrain from eating meat on Fridays for religious reasons. What menu item did Mr. Kroc come up with? The Hula Burger, of course. It consisted of a ring of pineapple covered with cheese. Needless to say, it didn't go over well. He later came up with the Filet-O-Fish sandwich, a more successful meatless alternative.

From Quiz African American Inventors

Answer: Miriam E. Benjamin

A schoolteacher, Miriam E. Benjamin created the Gong and Signal Chair for hotels. Her ingenious system was a precursor to the flight attendant buttons on airplanes. She was born in 1861 and died in 1947, living through the Civil War and two World Wars.

From Quiz Inventions of the 18th & 19th Centuries

Answer: Abner Doubleday

(The N.Y. Mutuals edged out the Knickerbockers 21-1, in four innings). While what was to later become known as "The National Pastime, baseball was played by troops during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). It would be 30 years before the National League was formed in 1876, and the American League debuted in 1901. The two leagues met in the first World Series in 1903. Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 - January 26, 1893) was a lifetime military man, serving from 1842 until his retirement as a full colonel in 1873. He is recognized for firing the first shot in an unsuccessful attempt to save Fort Sumter from the Confederate troops. Doubleday fought in many Civil War battles (including Gettysburg), and also fought in the American-Indian, and Mexican-American wars as well. A graduate of West Point, Abner Doubleday was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 1893. BTW: (Dr.) James Naismith is the inventor of basketball. Question & information provided by paulmallon

From Quiz 9 for 10 Inventors

Answer: Germany

Felix Hoffman was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. He studied chemistry at an early age and quickly earned his doctorate at the age of 24 in 1893. He synthesized acetylsalicylic acid, popularly called aspirin, in 1897. He was able to stabilize the compound which made available to treat certain conditions such as inflammation and pain. While Hoffman is widely credited as inventing aspirin, the credit is not universal. Arthur Eichengrun, who was Hoffman's boss at Bayer, claimed many years later that he actually invented aspirin and Hoffman was just his lad assistant.

From Quiz Inventors Killed By Their Inventions

Answer: Steamer

Francis Edgar Stanley (1849-1918) was killed while driving a Stanley Steamer automobile. "Stanley Steamers" were early automobiles, with this nickname because of their steam operated engines. Francis Stanley died when he drove his car into a woodpile while attempting to travel past farm wagons that were riding along side by side on the road.

From Quiz The Second Mouse Gets The Cheese

Answer: Powered, controlled flight

Is there any development more hotly disputed than the 'first flight'? The Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum tells us: "On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." However, two years earlier in 1901 the German-born Whitehead claimed to fly for 1.5 miles - the Wright Bothers managed just 40 yards. In 2013, "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" backed Whitehead's claim. In supporting the claim for that first flight at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 14, 1901, "Jane's" refers to photographs, eyewitnesses, and newspaper accounts of the story. In 2014, the State of Connecticut introduced legislation to recognise Gustave Whitehead as "First in Flight." (As you can imagine, that went down like a lead balloon with the states of Ohio and North Carolina.) To offer some balance, in 2014, "Scientific American" published an article entitled "Scientific American Debunks Claim Gustave Whitehead Was "First in Flight". Meanwhile, it is claimed that in March 1902, Richard Pearse flew for 350 yards in New Zealand.

From Quiz English Speaking Inventors

Answer: Canada

The garbage bag was invented by Harry Wasylyk and Larry Hansen in Winnipeg in 1950. The patent was bought by Union Carbide, who sold the bags under the name Glad. All of us who had the job of taking out the trash were "Glad" that they did, as the work of carrying heavy cans to the curb got a whole lot lighter, and there was nothing to bring back to the shed later that day.

From Quiz A Faster Way to Travel

Answer: Turbojet engine

Whittle tried to join the RAF, but was turned down because of his height, so he trained as an engineer instead. For his graduation thesis, he wrote about potential improvements for aircraft design, and although he originally discussed the motorjet engine in his work, it was the turbojet engine for which he became famous. Whittle came up with the idea of substituting a piston for a turbine that extracted power from the exhaust, as it weighed less. The RAF claimed Whittle's idea would not work, but he managed to get sponsorship from the bank OT Falk & Partners, and the company Power Jets was formed. The Gloster E.28/39, aka the Gloster Whittle, was the first British aircraft to use a turbojet engine; it had been built specifically to test Whittle's engine, and it had its first successful test on 15th May 1941. Later versions of the engine were fitted with fans and an afterburner to stop the turbine melting.

From Quiz Right or Wrong Inventors

Answer: Orville Wright

Orville Wright was the first to fly the Wright Flyer, which was designed and built by him and his brother Wilbur Wright. Willis Carrier developed modern air conditioning. Jimmy Doolittle was a pilot, and Glamorous Glennis was the name of the aircraft that was the first to reach Mach 1 speed.

From Quiz Female Inventors and Their Creations

Answer: Windshield wipers

Alabama born Mary Anderson is most noted for inventing the windshield wiper. This came about when Mary was travelling on a trolley car in 1902. Because it was a cold and dismal day, she noticed that the poor driver had to drive with both sides of the car's front window open in order to prevent the window being covered in sleet. On her return home, she set about working on a device to remedy this situation. The windshield wiper was the result, and millions of drivers have driven that much safer and drier (and warmer) ever since.

From Quiz Inventions Which Answered A Prayer

Answer: Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg (1395-1468), for the first time in history, made the prospect of affordable printed material for a wide audience a distinct possibility. Nothing like a good book on a rainy day! More immediately it is generally held to have played a key role in the Reformation. Karl Ferdinand Braun shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Guglielmo Marconi for the development of wireless telegraphy. Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz were involved in the development of the automobile and the petrol engine.

From Quiz Inventors You Have Never Heard of - until now

Answer: Barbie doll

Ruth Handler invented Barbie in 1959 and named the doll after her daughter. Since then, more than a billion have been sold. Barbie was similar to a German doll, Lilli, which was introduced in 1953 and was based on a cartoon character in the "Bild-Zeitung" (newspaper). The "Bild-Lilli Doll", as it was sometimes referred to, was to become the subject of a movie "Lilli - ein Mädchen aus der Großstadt", "Lilli - a Girl From the Big City" in 1958. In 1964 the US corporation Mattel (which had acquired the rights to Barbie) bought the rights to Lilli and production was stopped. By the way, chocolate-coated potato crisps (aka potato chips) are not a joke; an American company produced a limited run in Autumn 2013.

From Quiz You got to be kidding me!

Answer: Repel teenagers

The Mosquito is a teenager repellent. It works by giving out a high pitched, annoying noise, that is audible to teenagers but not to adults. This is because you lose certain ranges of hearing as you get older. The idea behind it was that if an area, such as a shopping mall, was having a problem with gangs of unruly youths gathering then fitting one of his devices would encourage them to move on. He later utilised the same technology to launch mobile telephone ring tones which could be heard by teenagers but not their teachers or parents.

From Quiz US Inventions of the 1890s - If You Can Believe!

Answer: Shredded Wheat

Mr. Perky, who suffered from a gastric ailment, met a man with the same ailment who was eating boiled wheat with cream. This made the lawyer-cum-inventor think about how to make "wheat mattresses". A friend of his and he invented the machine to do so. In 1901 he built a plant in Niagara Falls, NY, called the Natural Food Company. In 1904 it became the Shredded Wheat Company and in 1928 it was bought by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco).

From Quiz Inventing Questions

Answer: Chef

Nicolas Appert was a chef that came up with the idea for canning foods. He sterilized champagne bottles first and then put the food into them before sealing the jars in a hot water bath. By 1890, the United States became the world's leading producer and consumer of canned goods.

From Quiz Nobody Does It Better

Answer: Wisdom Toothbrushes

William Addis was jailed in 1770 for causing a riot. Whilst in jail he decided that the then current method for cleaning teeth (rubbing a rag with soot and salt onto the teeth) wasn't terribly efficient and so spent time creating a 'bristle' brush. He took a small animal bone and then put some holes in it. After that he obtained some bristles, tied them into tufts and threaded the tufts through the holes. When he left jail he set up a manufacturing factory and started mass production of his invention.

From Quiz Meet the Inventors: A to E

Answer: Adhesive tape

Drew was hired by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) to test sandpapers. In an effort to make sandpaper adhesive more affordable, he produced the first model of the scotch tape. Also, 3M went on to sell post-it notes in the 80's, thanks to pioneering and innovative minds like Richard Drew.

From Quiz Ten Ideas That Didn't Pan Out

Answer: Window baby cage

Long before Michael Jackson dangled his child over a balcony, Emma Read invented a metal baby cage that could be attached to a window, allowing the child to be suspended outside the building. As "The World through My Eyes" weblog noted, "little junior will get plenty of fresh air and a six story drop to the ground".

From Quiz Dream the Impossible Dream

Answer: New Zealand

Rutherford was born in 1871 to parents who had emigrated from Britain. He died in 1937 and is buried in Westminster Abbey, London. He was knighted in 1914 and created Baron Rutherford of Nelson in 1931. He was responsible for identifying alpha and beta rays, and is widely credited with being the first man to show that the atom could be split. He trained many men who went on to great success in atomic science, including Chadwick, Cockcroft and Walton.

From Quiz Mothers of Invention - The Distaff Side

Answer: Marjorie Joyner

Marjorie Joyner was the grandaughter of a slave owner and a slave. In 1912 she began studying cosmetology and later worked for Madam C.J. Walker where she devised a machine which could straighten hair.

From Quiz Inventors, Scientists and Inventions

Answer: The theremin.

He was born in Russia in 1896. The theremin was one of the first fully electronic musical instruments to be created. The unusual thing about a theremin is that is it NOT controlled physically by the musician. It was designed to play without actually needing to be touched.

From Quiz The Inventing Quiz

Answer: Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel was born in Sweden and he later moved to the U.S.A where he built and managed a factory. He tried several ways to make nitroglycerin safer and easier to use. He in the end, however managed to mix nitoglycerin with a type of clay to make dynamite. (Ascanio Sobrero discovered nitroglycerin).

From Quiz Wacky Inventions - Real Patents

Answer: "Motorized Ice Cream Cone"

He received US patent 5,971,829 October 29, 1999 for a novelty ice cream cone. It turns the scoop of ice cream so you don't have to. I get the feeling you won't be able to eat the cone.

From Quiz Ten of Those Minor Inventions

Answer: Albert J. Parkhouse

He was an employee of the Timberlake Wire and Novelty company in Jackson Michigan. After hearing many employees complain about insufficient coat hooks he bent a piece of wire into two ovals with each end of the wire twisted to form a hook.

From Quiz Inventions of the Twentieth Century

Answer: John Larson

He was a medical student at the University of California, and made this invention in 1921. It is also called a polygraph.

From Quiz A Few Well-Known Inventors

Answer: artificial heart

A dentist from Seattle, Dr. Barney Clark, was the first person to receive an artificial heart in 1982. A doctor named William DeVries was the doctor who performed the surgery. This heart put in Dr. Barney Clark was a Jarvik-7, which was designed to keep pumping blood forever. Dr. Clark lived 112 days. Dr. Robert Jarvik, who invented the Jarvik-7 is now perfecting the Jarvik-2000, which is an artificial heart the size of a thumb. In the U.S., in 1998, heart specialist Michael DeBakey implanted the first electric heart.

From Quiz A-B-C Of Everyday Inventions

Answer: Wright Brothers

Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful controlled powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903. The twelve second flight covered a distance of 120 feet and an altitude of just ten feet. Richard Pearse, a farmer in New Zealand, may have flown his own plane in late 1902 or early 1903. However, unlike the flight of the Wright Brothers, there were no official witnesses. The locals who lived in the area recall seeing a powered flight by Pearse in March 1903. It lasted several hundred yards and wasn't fully controlled.

From Quiz Who Invented That?

Answer: Henry Waterman

Henry Waterman invented the elevator in hopes it would help transporting barrels of flour.

From Quiz The Office "White-Out"

Answer: Bette Graham

Bette Nesmith Graham was a secretary in Dallas, Texas who, as a "wannabe" artist, mixed paints in her own kitchen to make her now famous correction fluid.

From Quiz Inventions of the 19th century

Answer: Canned food

Although he didn't know why it worked, Appert discovered that food heated and then immediately sealed in jars would stay fresh as long as it wasn't opened. Cans were soon in general use, although they had to be opened with a hammer and chisel as the can-opener wasn't invented until 1855.

This is category 20161
Last Updated Dec 21 2024 5:52 AM

= Top 5% Rated Quiz, Top 10% Rated Quiz, Top 20% Rated Quiz, A Well Rated Quiz
= added recently, = Editor's Pick = FunTrivia Editor = Gold Member
Teachers / educators: FunTrivia welcomes the use of our website and quizzes in the classroom as a teaching aid or for preparing and testing students. See our education section. Our quizzes are printable and may be used as question sheets by k-12 teachers, parents, and home schoolers.

 ·  All questions, answers, and quiz content on this website is copyright FunTrivia, Inc and may not be reproduced without permission. Any images from TV shows and movies are copyright their studios, and are being used under "fair use" for commentary and education.