Fixing Problems - Heroes Who Fixed Common Problems Online Quiz | People

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. The woman who invented Liquid Paper was a hero to all typists of the era. If you aren't familiar with Liquid Paper, it was essentially a small bottle of white paint that you used to cover up typing mistakes that were all too common before word processing. Did you know that the inventor of Liquid Paper was the mother of a member of a famous music group? Which music group?

Answer: The Monkees

Her name was Bette Nesmith Graham, and her son Michael Nesmith was the member of the band the Monkees. He was the one who wore knit hats before they were popular. Bette sold Liquid Paper to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million in 1979.

2. Pope Gregory XIII fixed a problem for us all through the development of the Gregorian calendar, which modified the leap year. This fixed a big problem for the Church at the time. What was it?

Answer: Lack of clarity on the date for Easter

Before the change to the Gregorian calendar, the date for Easter kept drifting away from the early spring time - which is when the Church believed it should be celebrated. There were also multiple ways and different systems to calculate the date for Easter. The reforms introduced with the Gregorian calendar fixed that.

3. OK, not all "fixers" are heroes. Gamblers famously "fixed" an American sporting event in the early 20th century. What was it?

Answer: The 1919 World Series

While they were acquitted in the courts, eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned for life from baseball for conspiring to "fix" (i.e., intentionally lose) the 1919 World Series. The Cincinnati Reds beat the White Sox in the 1919 World Series, five games to three.

4. The development of the QWERTY keyboard layout in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes fixed a common problem with manual typewriters of the time. What was the problem?

Answer: Typewriter keys getting stuck

Early typewriters jammed a lot because the type was mounted on metal arms which would smash into each other and jam if neighboring arms were pressed at the same time or in rapid succession. Sholes' solution was to design the keyboard so that commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") were not near each other, thus avoiding jams.

5. Before air conditioning was common, airplanes could get very hot sitting on the tarmac between flights. How did some ingenious engineers fix this problem?

Answer: Painting the planes white

Planes don't need to be air conditioned in flight, but sitting on the ground they can get quite hot, and this was a problem in the early days of commercial aviation. Several strategies to cool the plane for boarding passengers were developed, but the simplest and best fix was to paint the plane white. White reflects the most light (and therefore heat) and helps keep the aircraft cooler than any other color. Most airplanes are still white, and the energy savings on cooling is one reason why.

6. Nylon was a great invention of the 20th century. It is used in a wide range of applications including cookware, apparel, machine parts, and electrical equipment. But did you know that shortly after it was invented, nylon was used to resolve a specific problem during World War II. There was a shortage of something important to the war effort. What?

Answer: Silk

During World War II, Japan cut off the supply of silk produced in Asia that was bound for Europe and the Americas. It was critical for the Allies to find a silk substitute for a number of military applications - especially parachutes. Engineers at DuPont saved the day by inventing nylon.

7. Sometimes it takes a while to fix a problem. Which one of these solutions to the problem indicated took the longest to develop?

Answer: Vacuum - to clean dirty rugs

While some of these fixes took a while, undoubtedly the longest gap between problem and solution was the vacuum cleaner. While there were other ways to clean rugs, the first vacuums weren't developed until the 20th century, while rugs have been around for millenia.

Interestingly, canned food had been around for decades before the can opener was developed. I wonder how that worked?

8. OK, George Washington was not an "every day hero". But he did something that today is quite ordinary, but was revolutionary (pun intended) at the time. And this controversial action on his part may have been a critical factor in achieving a victory for the revolutionary army. What was it?

Answer: Inoculating his troops against smallpox

From the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/GW&smallpoxinoculation.html) Among the soldiers in the American Revolution, 90 percent of deaths were caused by disease, and the small pox virus was the most vicious of them all. On the 6th of January 1777, George Washington wrote to Dr. William Shippen Jr., ordering him to inoculate all of the forces that came through Philadelphia. Most British troops were immune to small pox, giving them an enormous advantage against the vulnerable colonists.

The urgency was real. Troops were scarce and encampments had turned into nomadic hospitals of festering disease, deterring further recruitment. Both Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin, after surveying the havoc wreaked by small pox in the Canadian campaign, expressed fears that the virus would be the army's ultimate downfall. Washington's foresight and willingness to take this unpopular action was a stroke of genius.

9. Smokeless gunpowder sounds like a good idea, right? And it certainly fixed a lot of problems. Which of the following was NOT a problem fixed by the development of smokeless gunpowder?

Answer: Less expensive to manufacture

Building on earlier developments, Paul Vieille invented a smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B in 1884 which was quickly adopted in one form or another by all the European powers. Before smokeless gunpowder, the thick black cloud over the battlefield made it hard for commanders to see what was going on and therefore give effective commands, the corrosiveness of older gunpowders required constant cleaning of guns, and the positions of snipers were quite easy to spot.

But it wasn't necessarily more expensive to make.

10. The speed bump - while an annoyance to many of us - did fix the notable problem of cars moving too fast through residential neighborhoods. Where in the world was the first speed bump located? (Hint - check my profile)

Answer: Chatham, New Jersey

On March 7, 1906, The New York Times reported "Chatham, N. J. has evolved a new scheme for the regulation of automobile scorchers. Within a short time neatly printed signs bearing the legend. "Warning Raised Crosswalks " will appear about the town. Broken springs and racked machinery will await the motorists who fall to heed the warning".

While the idea of speed bumps had been discussed elsewhere, the little town of Chatham New Jersey was the first to actually implement them. Supposedly it was a big deal - the whole town turned out for the unveiling.

The other three choices are some of the most beautiful places in the world in my opinion. You should visit them if you haven't already.

Source: Author malidog

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Fixing Problems - Heroes Who Fixed Common Problems Quiz

Heroes come in all types. This quiz salutes people who have fixed common problems that have plagued humanity over the years.

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