Inventors You Should Know Trivia Quiz

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 17, 1706. He had 16 brothers and sisters, and had very little formal education, having to leave school at the age of 10 to work for his father. Young Ben loved to read, and gained great knowledge through reading lots of books.

Among his many inventions were the lightning rod, which draws lightning to the ground to keep our homes and other buildings safe; bifocal glasses, which help people who suffer from both near and far-sightedness; the glass harmonica (or armonica), a musical instrument composed of spinning glass bowls which makes hauntingly beautiful music; and the Reaching Device (or Long Arm), which was a piece of wood with two "fingers" on the end. By pulling on a cable, the fingers could grip a book from a high shelf, so you would not need to climb up to it.

Ben Franklin never took out any patents on his inventions, believing that they should be shared freely.

Answer: Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, into a family known for teaching people to speak clearly, and his father invented a system which aided deaf people to speak. Bell's mother Eliza and wife Mabel were both deaf, and much of his success came from his interest in assisting the deaf with communication.

In 1876, Bell was the first to patent the telephone, working in partnership with Thomas Watson. The telephone was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and astonished all who witnessed it. He established the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, and in 1915 was invited to make the first transcontinental phone call. From New York, he called his former associate Watson, who was in San Francisco, California.

Among other things, Bell is also credited with improving early metal detectors, developing one that would make sounds in the presence of metal. He quickly put the device together in 1881 in order to attempt to locate a bullet in U.S. President James Garfield's body.

Answer: Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in Coupvray, France. When he was three years old, he was playing in his father's shop and injured one of his eyes with an awl, which is a sharp tool used to make holes in leather. Both eyes became infected, and by the time he was five, Louis Braille was completely blind. He attended school in the village and learned by listening. At the age of 10, he received a scholarship to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, where he learned both academic and vocational skills.

While at the institute, he used a complex system of 12 raised dots which represented different sounds known as sonography. At the age of 12, Braille set out to simplify sonography, and by the time he was 15, he had developed a system using only 6 raised dots in different combinations to represent letters and punctuation marks. He became an apprentice teacher at the institute when he was 19, and a full teacher at the age of 24.

When Louis Braille retired from teaching in 1850, his simpler method of reading and writing were well on the way to widespread acceptance. His system remains largely unchanged to this day, and is known around the world as Braille.

Answer: Basketball

James Naismith was born November 16, 1861 near Almonte, Ontario, Canada.
A physical education instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, Naismith was looking for an indoor game that could be played between football and baseball seasons. In 1891, he was hired as a full-time faculty member in Springfield, and was given the task of creating a game that could be played indoors during the harsh New England winters. He was told to design a game that would help athletes keep in shape, not take up much room, be fair for all players, and not be too rough.

He nailed peach baskets 10 feet up on either end of the gym and explained to students that the goal was to throw the ball into the opposing team's basket. Originally played with a soccer ball and with the ball passed from player to player in overhand throws rather than dribbling, the first game featured a lot of kicking, punching, and tackling! With some trial and error, Naismith rewrote the rules as the game progressed, and we wound up with the team sport that we know today.

James Naismith lived long enough to see his game become an official Olympic event at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, Germany.

Answer: Popsicle

Frank Epperson was born August 11, 1894 in Willows, California. After a long day of playing outside, he left a cup of soda with a stirring stick on the porch. It got very cold that night, and when he came outside the next day, the soda was frozen solid like an icicle. He called his invention the "Ep-sicle", and it was a hit with the kids at school. Later on, his own children enjoyed the frozen treat and they called it "Pop's Sicle". He patented the Ep-sicle in 1923 and later changed it to the catchier Popsicle.

His product gained enormous popularity, and he sold his patent in 1925 to the Joe Lowe Company. Popsicles are still widely enjoyed all over. What's your favorite flavor?

Answer: Louis Daguerre

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was born on November 18, 1787 in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France. He was a painter, and a celebrated designer for the theatre. In 1829, he partnered with early photography pioneer Nicéphore Niépce and continued experimenting with the process after his partner's death. In 1839, he went public with his daguerreotype and exchanged the rights for is process with the French government in exchange for a lifetime pension for himself and for Niépce's son.

On August 19, 1939, the French government presented the invention as a gift "free to the world" and published instructions on the process. Daguerre's process produced a clear, sharp image on a silver-coated copper plate. The plates are heavy and extremely fragile, and very few daguerreotypes made by Daguerre himself are still in existence, making them very valuable.

Answer: Kevlar

Stephanie Kwolek was born on July 31, 1923 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. She gained an interest in science from her father, who sadly died when she was only 10 years old. In 1946, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in chemistry, and planned to continue her schooling to become a doctor. In order to make money for medical school, she took a job with the DuPont chemical company. She intended to work there only temporarily, but spent the rest of her career with DuPont.

At that time, DuPont was trying to find a petroleum-based polymer fiber that would be lighter and harder-wearing than the steel in radial tires. At this time, most of the world was heavily involved with World War II, and we needed a lightweight armor for soldiers and their equipment. Steel was the only material available for armor, and it was much too heavy to really be useful.

In 1964, Kwolek's group set out to develop a lightweight yet strong fiber to replace the steel used in tires. In this process, she discovered a solution that was five times stronger than steel by weight, and could be made stronger by heating it. Thus Kevlar was born. While she is credited with the invention of Kevlar, she was not involved in developing the practical applications of it, and received no profit since she signed over the patent to DuPont.

Kevlar is used in over 200 products, including bullet-proof vests, skis, airplanes, and armored cars. The week that Kwolek died, the one millionth bullet-proof vest made from Kevlar was sold.

Answer: Clarence Birdseye

Clarence Birdseye was born on December 9, 1886 in Brooklyn, New York. While working in Labrador (now Canada), he became interested in quickly freezing foods in order to keep them fresh for long periods of time. Taught to ice fish by the Inuit, he found that the fish froze rapidly in the super cold temperature, and that it tasted fresh when thawed and cooked.

At that time, foods were frozen at higher temperatures than the -40C he found in Labrador, which allowed ice crystals to form and grow in the food, causing cell tissues to deteriorate and the food to become mushy when thawed. When he returned to the United States, Birdseye began to experiment with different freezing processes. In 1924, he helped found the General Seafoods Company, and five years later he began selling his quick-frozen foods. While Birdseye's products weren't the first frozen foods, his process preserved the taste and look of a variety of foods. You've probably eaten Birdseye frozen foods yourself.

Answer: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ruth Jones Graves Wakefield was born on June 17, 1903 in Easton, Massachusetts and was educated at the Framingham State Normal School of Household Arts. After her graduation in 1924, she taught high school home economics and worked as a hospital dietitian.

In 1930,she and her husband bought a tourist lodge in Whitman where travelers would pay a toll, change horses, and enjoy a home-cooked meal. They named their lodge Toll House Inn, and soon Ruth became well known for her delicious meals. Around 1938, Mrs. Wakefield was experimenting with her cookie recipe and she cut up a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar and mixed the pieces into the cookie dough, and the chocolate chip cookie was born. Some say she felt the chocolate would melt and spread throughout the cookie, making a chocolate cookie. Others say she knew exactly what she was doing and that the chocolate pieces would soften but keep their shape, creating little bursts of chocolate flavor in the basic cookie.

Whether by accident or by design, the cookies she called Toll House Chocolate Crunch were a big hit, and she would soon partner with Nestlé, who later produced the chocolate chips we now know and love. To this day, Ruth Wakefield's recipe appears on the Nestlé chocolate chip bags.

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci, properly named Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Leonardo, son of ser Piero from Vinci), was born on April 15, 1452 near Vinci, Italy. The name da Vinci refers to his birthplace and is not the family name. With paintings such as the 'Mona Lisa' and 'The Last Supper', he is one of the greatest painters in history and is credited as being the founder of the High Renaissance.

In addition to his beautiful paintings, da Vinci was also a great inventor, and is credited with many wonderful ideas, most of which were far ahead of their time. Engineering and metallurgy were in their infancy during his time, so very few of da Vinci's inventions were able to be constructed before his death.

Among da Vinci's inventions was the parachute - a wooden pyramid frame draped with cloth; an armored war machine, driven by eight men and armed with a machine gun; a flying machine he called an ornithopter, whose flapping wings would be powered by the pilot turning a crank attached to pulleys; and an early version of the helicopter, which he called the Arial Screw.

da Vinci is truly one of the greatest minds that ever existed.