Whatever Possessed Them to Call it That? Quiz

Answer: Hotmail

Hotmail was launched in 1996. It was the brainchild of Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was one of the Internet's first well known webmail services. Just over a year after it was launched, it was bought by Microsoft for a reported $400 million. It is now known as Windows Live Hotmail.

Essentially, Hotmail provides you the user to access your emails via the internet, as opposed to accessing them via a proprietorial email hosting system.

Answer: A combination of "Velour" with "Crochet"

George de Mestral was a Swiss inventor. One day back in 1948, so the story goes, he went for a walk in the mountains, and came back to find his clothes covered in burrs. He immediately took some of these burrs and put them under his microscope. He saw that they actually had thousands of little hooks that clung to the fabric of his trousers.

The path from that discovery to his invention of a fastener which had hooks on the one side (crochet) and a fuzzy, loose fabric on the other (velour) is fairly easy to imagine from that point onwards. The idea was patented in 1955, and de Mestral set up his company, Velcro Industries, to mass produce the product.

Answer: Susan Hoover

Murray Spangler had dust allergies. So being a bit of an inventor, he developed a "suction sweeper" to clean up his home. He persuaded a friend, Susan Hoover, to try out his invention in her own home. Her husband, Boss Hoover, came home to see her trying out this strange contraption - and he was so impressed that he set up a factory to mass produce these "suckers" under his own brand name.

But it was his wife, Susan, who tried it out first.

Answer: Polyvinyl Chloride

Rather boringly, PVC takes its name from the chemical properties which constitute it. After Baumann first developed it, and another German, Friedrich Klatte, improved it in 1913, it remained nothing more than an interesting chemical experiment until an American, Waldo Seman, accidentally fell upon in 1926. Working as a researcher for the B.F. Goodrich Company, Seman was actually looking for a polymer that could bond rubber to metal.

Instead, he came upon a material which is now the second most utilized plastic in the world.

Answer: After a Burmese farmer's daughter

George Hansburg patented the Pogo Stick in 1919. His story, as laid down in the corporate history of SBI Industries (the company he set up to make and distribute the phenomenon), runs as follows;

Hansburg was travelling through Burma when he met a poor farmer. The farmer had a daughter called Pogo. Pogo wanted to go to temple every day to pray, but she had no money to buy shoes to make the intrepid walk each day. So her father created a "jumping stick" for her, which allowed Pogo to make the daily trip, navigating her way through the mud, rocks and animal droppings. When Hansburg returned home, he made his own jumping stick, following the same principles the poor Burmese farmer had utilised.

Answer: International Business Machines

IBM first appeared as the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896 in Broome County, New York. It was founded by Herman Hollerith. It was incorpproated as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (or CTR for short) in 1911, achieving a listing on the New York Stock Exchange 5 years later. By this time, it was operating in quite a few countries on the American continent, and in 1917 its Canadian and South American subsidiaries were given the name International Business Machines. In 1924 a gentleman called Thomas J Watson took control of the organization, and changed the whole company name to IBM.

One of Mr Watson's many well known quotes is " Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops." I wonder what he'd make of the world of computer development today?

Answer: A street in Nottingham

Quite simply, Sir Frank bought into a small bicycle manufacturing company based in Raleigh Street in Nottingham, England. When the company started becoming larger, Sir Frank named it after the street where it had all started.

Sir Frank had made his fortune on the stock market, "retiring" at the age of 24! He went on a world trip, and whilst in Hong Kong, he contracted a serious illness. His doctor gave him 6 months to live - but prescribed cycling as a palliative to his illness. Sir Frank bought his bicycle from Messrs Woodhead, Angois and Ellis, a small firm based in Raleigh Street in Nottingham. After overcoming his illness against the odds, Sir Frank bought the small company, which at the time produced 3 bicycles a week.

By 1896, having moved premises numerous times, the company was the biggest producer of bicycles in the world - and they are still going strong to this day.

Answer: A Latin verb meaning "I roll"

It was the famous Swedish pop group Abba who used their initials to name their "brand"! Those adept in Latin can skip this next bit! "Volvere" is the infinitive form of the Latin verb "roll". The word "revolver" finds its roots here - a handgun with a rotating drum. "Volvere", when expressed in the first person singular, becomes "Volvo" - I roll.

The Directors who came up with the name felt that it was a simple statement about the company's product, whilst also expressing a broader symbolic connection to the whole way in which the company operated.

Hence the name "Volvo" was born.

Answer: James Naismith

James Nesmith was a PE Instructor at Springfield College in Massachusetts when he was attributed with the invention of basketball in 1891. The mind boggles slightly, doesn't it ? I have a vision of this PE instructor climbing a ladder attaching a basket with the bottom ripped out of it .. as I say, the image is quite amusing!

Pick the names carefully out of the cast of "Cold Feet" and the line up of the Monkees, and you'll find James Nesbitt, John Thomson and Robert Bathurst along with Mike Nesmith, Dave (Davy) Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork. It was Mike Nesmith's mum, Bette Nesmith Graham, who was responsible for inventing liquid paper.

Answer: Pepsi Cola

I forgot to tell you they were Cola nuts, didn't I? You will curse me or thank me, depending what you want from life I suppose - an easy 10 points, or a bit of a mental challenge.

Bradham eventually launched the drink commercially in 1903 as "Pep Cola", which was soon changed to Pepsi Cola. He enjoyed a couple of decades of success before the company went bankrupt in 1923, due to fluctuating sugar prices. The company lay dormant until 1931, when the name and the recipe was bought by the Loft Candy Company. The revived product struggled, and they tried to sell the brand to a competitor - but the Coca-Cola company refused to even offer a bid for what they felt was a poor product. Would they do the same today, I wonder?