A Faster Way to Travel Trivia Quiz

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.

Answer: North Carolina

The Wright brothers made their inaugural journey at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina on 17th December 1903 with the Wright Flyer, a wooden aeroplane with twin propellers and a crude engine. Wilbur piloted the Wright Flyer lying on his stomach, and steered by moving a cradle, which was attached to his hips.

The Wrights' interest in aeronautics was piqued by the death of Otto Lilienthal while testing a glider. They started out with gliders, experimenting with wing and rudder design, and these gliders eventually evolved into the Wright Flyer. A follow-up aircraft, the Flyer II, suffered much damage, and the Flyer III incorporated a primitive three-axis control system, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft while keeping it balanced. This type of control system is used as a standard in aircraft today.

Answer: Wheeled luggage

Bernard Sadow, the vice president of a Massachusetts luggage company, patented wheeled luggage in 1972. He was inspired to create a wheeled suitcase after seeing an airport worker using a wheeled skid to move a heavy suitcase. Sadow experimented at home by taking the castors off a wardrobe and putting them on a suitcase, which he pulled with a strap.

He eventually found a buyer in the form of Macy's, who promoted wheeled suitcases as 'the luggage that glides'. Pilot Robert Plath expanded on Sadow's idea by inventing the Rollaboard, a suitcase which could be wheeled upright by means of two wheels and an extendable handle.

Answer: Stockton and Darlington Railway

Often considered to be the 'Father of Railways', George Stephenson was a colliery engineer from Northumberland who was inspired to create his own locomotive by Richard Trevithick's 1802 concept. His first locomotive, Blücher, was designed for hauling coal, and was built in a colliery workshop.

These locomotives were too heavy to run on wooden rails, and iron rails were still in their infancy stage; Stephenson came up with the idea of adding more wheels to distribute the weight of the locomotive. The Stockton and Darlington Railway was built in the northeast of England in 1821, and Robert Stephenson & Company, managed by George Stephenson, were charged with building locomotives powered by steam. Locomotion No 1., built by the Stephensons, became the first steam locomotive to pull a passenger train.

Answer: Space travel

The fuel in question was rocket fuel. The life of Jack Parsons was an interesting one, and formed the basis for the TV drama 'Strange Angel'. As a child, he experimented with homemade rockets in his own backyard. These rockets were powered by gunpowder. He and a group of other rocket enthusiasts became known as the 'Suicide Squad' because of their dangerous experiments. Parsons experimented with fuel mixtures and developed both solid and liquid rocket fuels, including a castable propellant. He was also involved in the development of JATO (Jet-Assisted Take-Off), a type of take-off which uses small rockets to help propel aircraft.

Outside science, Jack Parsons followed the teachings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley, and held mad parties at his mansion in Pasadena. The FBI grew suspicious of him because of this. He later befriended L Ron Hubbard, the future founder of the Church of Scientology. He died in an explosion in his home labs while working on explosives for a film; some theories claim that his death was not an accident.

Answer: Karl Benz

Though other engineers, such as Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot and Richard Trevithick, had come up with ideas for steam-powered motor vehicles, it was Benz's which is widely considered to be the first motor car. He started out working on a two-stroke engine powered by petrol, and progressed to designing a 'horseless carriage' with evaporative cooling, a four-stroke engine and wire wheels. This was named the Benz Patent Motorwagen. Benz's wife Bertha also played a major role in its development, as she suggested giving it brake pads in order to help it climb hills, and took a later model for a drive from the Benz's home town of Mannheim to Pforzheim, fixing it on the way. This served as publicity for the vehicle, with the event being commemorated with an antique car rally every two years in Germany, and the route was given heritage status as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route in 2008.

Gottlieb Daimler, incidentally, was the co-founder of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, which later merged with Benz's company Benz & Companie to form Daimler-Benz and create the Mercedes-Benz series of cars (now owned by Daimler AG). Daimler himself had had a fall-out with Benz and sued him over a hot tube ignition patent.

Answer: Yvonne Brill

Yvonne Brill was a rocket and jet propulsion engineer. She wanted to study engineering at university, but women were not allowed to study the subject, so she took chemistry and maths instead. She came up with the idea of the hydrazine resistojet as an engine that only used a single propellant - hydrazine, a colourless nitrogen and hydrogen compound used by rockets in World War 2 - and this system enabled better engine performance and a more reliable propulsion system. Brill worked with NASA and played a role in the development of the TIROS weather satellite and the Nova rocket series. Brill's propulsion system also prevents satellites from falling out of the air.

Answer: Life rafts

Maria Beasley might not have invented the life raft, but she made several improvements to existing designs. She had previously patented a barrel-hooping machine which speeded up barrel manufacture, and in 1882, she came up with an idea for a fireproof life raft which was also easier to launch than previous models, and had protective guard rails.

It was also foldable, making it easy to store. Before Beasley's design was introduced, life rafts were flat wooden boards. 20 of Beasley's life rafts were used on the Titanic, and they saved the lives of 706 passengers.

Answer: Hideo Shima

Hideo Shima started out designing steam locomotives for the Japanese National Railways. He temporarily quit his job there after a fire at Yokohama Station that killed over 100 people, and went to work for Sumimoto Metal Industries, but was invented back to work for the Japanese National Railways by its president, Shinji Sogo. Shima started work on a design for a high-speed line between Tokyo and Osaka.

In 1955, he oversaw the building of the first Shinkansen line, which was originally intended to connect Tokyo to more remote areas of Japan. Shima's team were responsible for the sleek bullet-like design which gave the train its nickname.

However, both he and Sogo resigned in 1963 due to the immense production costs of the Shinkansen line, and he moved into space travel with the National Space Development Agency of Japan.

Answer: Aaron Manby

Aaron Manby was the founder of the Staffordshire-based Horseley Ironworks, who also manufactured bridges. He patented an oscillating engine, powered by a piston turned by a crank. Although steamboats were already in existence, they only travelled on rivers and lakes, and were not seaworthy.

The Aaron Manby was built in 1821, and made her virgin voyage to Paris the following year. She was the first steamship to go to sea and travel directly from London to Paris, and the first to be built from iron. Charles Manby, Manby's son, was on board as an engineer.

She was later sold to a French consortium.