Inventions from the 1920s to the 1950s Quiz

Answer: 1920s

At the University of Toronto, Sir Frederick G. Banting, Charles H. Best, and J. J. R. Macleod made the discovery of insulin in 1921. James B. Collip refined it subsequently. One of the greatest medical discoveries ever made, millions of lives have been saved by insulin therapy.

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas. It makes it easier for the body to absorb and store sugar. Before insulin was discovered, diabetes was frequently the cause of mortality. When the first human test was conducted, a 14-year-old boy, Leonard Thompson, who had diabetes and would have died from the disease, was spared. Leonard's dangerously elevated blood sugar levels decreased in less than a day, but he continued to have elevated ketones and developed an abscess at the injection site.

After the scientists worked around the clock to better refine the extract, Leonard received another injection on January 23, 1922. This time, it worked perfectly, and there were no noticeable negative effects as Leonard's blood sugar levels returned to almost normal. For the first time ever, having type 1 diabetes did not automatically result in death.

Frederick Banting and Charles Best received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1923 for their efforts to treat diabetes, popularly referred to as the "sugar disease."

Answer: 1920s

Sticking plasters are something we often take for granted. What should we do if we cut ourselves with a piece of paper or something sharp? Take out a plaster from the first aid box.

It all began when Josephine, Earle Dickson's wife, frequently cut herself in the kitchen. Dickson held a position at Johnson & Johnson. He combined adhesive tape and gauze, two of the company's goods, by first layering a long piece of surgical tape, then placing a strip of gauze in the middle with crinoline-coated adhesive strips that were easy to peel off to expose the adhesive, making it simple to cover a cut with the strip and gauze. The concept worked.

After Dickson showed his boss the invention, the company president, James Wood Johnson, was informed, and a new product was created and would be known as Band-Aid in the USA.

Answer: 1920s

Otto Frederick Rohwedder was born on July 28, 1880, in Davenport, Iowa, United States, and passed away on November 8, 1960. In 1928, Otto created the first bread-cutting machine. It was a ten-foot-long metal box with several sharp blades inside for wrapping and slicing bread. After experimenting, he determined that half-inch slices would be the perfect bread thickness.

After he applied for patents, he sold his first bread-slicing machine to his old buddy Frank Bench, a baker located in Chillicothe, Missouri. On July 7, 1928, his was the first bakery to use Otto Frederick Rohwedder's idea to offer pre-cut bread.

This creation gave rise to the well-known expression "the best thing since sliced bread," which serves as a barometer for useful innovations. Sliced bread changed baking and eating customs around the world by bringing convenience and uniformity to homes.

Answer: 1930s

Where would rock and roll be today without the electric guitar? The acoustic guitar, compared to other musical instruments, was very quiet and difficult to hear when being played with other instruments. So the guitar needed something to increase the volume. A few ideas had been tried, but were not really what the guitarists wanted. Paul H. Tutmarc developed a pickup by combining wire coils and magnets, an innovative technique that had never been attempted before. By using this technique, the guitar's volume was raised by amplifying the vibrating of the strings.

A few years later, two more creative individuals used wire and magnets to make their own versions of the electric guitar. John Dopyera and George Beauchamp would design the first instrument that started to resemble the electric guitar we know today. However, because of its unusual design, this Hawaiian-style guitar gained the moniker "the frying pan.".

Adolph Rickenbacker was given the guitar design, and he went on to make Rickenbacker guitars -the first company to produce electric guitars which were affordable for the public. The first person to make a guitar with a solid body, composed of a single piece of wood carved to fit the standard guitar shape, was Les Paul. He showed Orville Gibson his creation, but Gibson was undecided about it. However, Leo Fender, a different designer, found the design and functionality appealing. Seeing that it was a brilliant idea, he started selling the "Esquire," the first electric guitar of the modern era, in 1949. Shortly after the guitar began to sell, its name was changed to "Telecaster," which is now a very well-known brand.

Answer: 1930s

Edwin Howard Armstrong was born on December 18, 1890, and passed away on February 1, 1954. Armstrong was an American electrical engineer and inventor who developed and patented FM radio in 1933. FM stands for frequency modulation. FM provided much higher audio quality, particularly for listening to music, compared to AM, meaning amplitude modulation. Another advantage of FM transmissions is that they are less vulnerable to common interference.

Armstrong gave the FCC an official demonstration of his FM system on June 17, 1936. In the same year, he launched America's first FM radio station, W2XMN, in Alpine, New Jersey as a demonstration outlet. The Federal Communications Commission is an independent body of the US government that oversees wire, satellite, cable, radio, and television communications nationwide.

Answer: 1930s

In Burlington, Iowa, Wallace Hume Carothers was born on April 27, 1896, and he passed away on April 29, 1937. The first synthetic polymer fibre, nylon, was commercially produced in 1938 thanks to the efforts of Carothers. The first nylon product to be released commercially was a toothbrush with nylon bristles in 1938.

Wallace Carothers Ph. was employed by the E. I. DuPont de Nemours Co. in 1928 to carry out independent research in whatever branch of chemistry he desired. Building long-chain polymers that resembled those in nature piqued his curiosity. When he and his colleagues started their investigation, they had no specific product in mind. All they wanted was to learn as much as they could about huge molecules. The discovery of polyesters and polyamides was made possible by the efforts of Carothers and his colleagues. When DuPont chose the polyamides, nylon was created. Presented to the public in the shape of women's stockings during the 1939 World's Fair, it was the first fibre made wholly in a laboratory. The first nylon stockings were sold on May 15, 1940.

Answer: 1940s

Earl Tupper established Tupperware in 1942 in Leominster, Massachusetts. In 1946, the American firm released its first items for general sale. The invention made it possible to store food and many useful things in the kitchen. Tupperware kept your sandwiches fresh and airtight, making it an excellent choice for a lunch box.

Housewives would frequently host Tupperware parties in order to receive commission on sales. The women had the opportunity to make new friends as well.

Answer: 1940s

We now think of the word bikini as just a bathing suit. However, the swimsuit is named after the coral reef Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, in the South Pacific. It was also where the first hydrogen bomb test was conducted by the US.

There was no model that Louis Reard could find to show off the bikini. Not a single fashion model was prepared to wear his bikini in public. He was then given the opportunity to employ "Micheline Bernardini," a nude dancer, who gladly performed in it for the entire globe. On July 5, 1946, Micheline debuted the bikini, as Reard called the two-piece swimsuit, during the Piscine Molitor poolside fashion show in Paris, France.

Despite being created in the late 1940s, the bikini did not become widely popular until 1953, when French actress Brigitte Bardot wore a floral two-piece outfit on the beach during the Cannes Film Festival.

Answer: 1940s

The Frisbee was invented by Walter Frederick Morrison and Warren Franscioni, although at the time it was known under a different name. The 1948 plastic toy manufactured by Fred Morrison and Franscioni was first marketed under the name "Flyin' Saucer."

Following years of selling his flying discs at fairs and exhibitions, Fred Morrison struck a deal in 1957 with Wham-O Manufacturing, a toy firm. Wham-O Manufacturing later changed the name and registered the trademark name "Frisbee." The name of Frisbee came from a company that made pies, the "Frisbie Baking Company." As the story goes, the owners of the company heard that students at some colleges had a nickname for the discs and were known as the "Frisbee.".

Answer: 1950s

Kenneth Wood was born on 4 October 1916 and passed away on 19 October 1997. Wood was a entrepreneur, and engineer from England. The Kenwood Chef food mixer bears Wood's name. He founded the Kenwood Manufacturing Company. The business was established in 1947 in the UK town of Woking. The A100 toaster, created by Kenneth Wood and introduced to the market in 1947, was the first product made by Kenwood. The first Kenwood Chef Kitchen machine was introduced at the Ideal Home Exhibition three years later, in 1950.

Answer: 1950s

In 1948, Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin (known as Spud) founded the company Wham-O. Richard and Spud were co-inventors of the Hula-Hoop. When an Australian was visiting California in 1957, he casually said that in his native country, kids used to spin bamboo hoops around their waists during physical education. Both the partners could see the potential for this to become a toy, so they went about creating what we now know as the Hula-Hoop. The partners created a hollow-out tube made from plastic.

The Hula-Hoop was an instant success, selling over 25 million hoops in just two months, and by the end of the year, the company had sales of $45 million.

Answer: 1950s

Australian scientist David Ronald de Mey Warren was born on 20 March 1925 and passed away on 19 July 2010. Warren is most renowned for creating and developing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, popularly referred to as the "Black Box.".

Warren worked in the Aeronautical Research Laboratories of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Melbourne from 1952 until 1983. He was researching the 1953 crash of the Comet, the first commercial jet airliner in history, when he had the concept for the cockpit voice recorder.

Warren's idea was useful for everyday line service since it made easy erasure and rerecording possible with its reliance on magnetic recording media. Warren's idea of recording the pilots' voices in the cockpit gave instrument data in flight recorders a unique perspective, and it has proven to be very helpful in accident investigations. Although we still use the term black boxes, they are in actual fact orange.

A black box needs to be able to resist 3,400 Gs, or 3,400 times the force of gravity, or roughly 310 mph, in order to be approved for installation in an aeroplane. Additionally, it must withstand flames for an hour at temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Furthermore, the beacon must be able to send out a signal once every second for 30 days when submerged in 20,000 feet of saltwater.