Left To Their Own Devices Trivia Quiz

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

While all these men were left-handed, the great artist, sculptor and inventor who dreamed of parachutes and gliders (as well as helicopters and tanks) was da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci is most famous for his works as an artist, "The Last Supper" and the "Mona Lisa" to name just two; but he spent quite a good amount of his time working on applications in the advancement of science and technology. Da Vinci left detailed sketches (enhanced by his artistic mastery) evidencing that he had envisioned many advances long before the technology to create the wonders actually existed.

The first practical parachute is commonly associated with Sebastien Lenormand in 1783; but da Vinci actually conceived the idea of the parachute almost three hundred years earlier. Da Vinci made a sketch of his idea and described it thusly: "If a man have a tent made of linen of which the apertures (openings) have all been stopped up, and it be twelve braccia (about 23 feet) across and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without suffering any injury." As with most of da Vinci's designs, he was not able to build his parachute; however in 2000 Adrian Nichols constructed and tested a parachute of da Vinci's design. Despite the odds, da Vinci's design worked as intended and Nichols arrived safely on the ground, noting the design had a gentler ride than more modern parachutes.

Da Vinci also designed a glider that showed a remarkable resemblance to the modern hang glider. Several "da Vinci" gliders have been built and though some minor adjustments in aerodynamics were needed the glider's worked using materials that were available to the 15th Century engineer. Speculation amongst scholars leads some to suggest that da Vinci built and tested his glider designs, but there is no credible scientific record to suggest this happened.

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

A short list of Benjamin Franklin's accomplishments include his work as a printer, writer, politician, entrepreneur, inventor and scientist. Throughout his life Franklin was filled with curiosity about how things worked and sought ways to make them work better. Ben had poor vision and needed glasses to read (hyperopia) and needed corrective lens to see at a distance (myopia). Over time he simply got tired of constantly switching his reading and distance glasses so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of glasses cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. While glasses themselves were not new, as both far-sighted and near-sighted corrective lens had existed for centuries before Franklin; nobody had thought to join them together. Despite the nearly 300 years in time, Franklin's original bifocal design has remained almost unchanged over time.

Lightning and the study of electricity were long time passions of Franklin. While Franklin was not the first to note the power of lightening and document electric activity, he did create something to deal with one part of the destructive natural element. Franklin's discoveries regarding the behavior of electricity led him to create the first lightning rod in 1752. The lightning rod can be placed on the highest points of a building with a wire connected to the ground. The electrical charge created by the lightening is diverted from the building into the ground. Franklin's invention made him a household name throughout Europe and America. Franklin continued to refine his initial designs and is forever associated with the rod and control of electricity.

A word before I get letters from the right-handed majority here at FT. There is great speculation as to whether Franklin was left-handed or simply ambidextrous. Historical analysis confirms that Franklin signed the most important document of his life, the US Declaration of Independence, with his left hand. Whether he also found a way to make use of his "lesser" hand seems inconsequential in view of this.

Answer: Henry Ford

The popular myth is that Henry Ford "invented" the automobile. The fact is he didn't, as that honor belongs to Karl Benz; but Henry Ford did play a significant role in creating the modern vehicle. Ford created the V-8 engine and other innovations. Ford is best remembered, however, for driving the creation of the mass production factory assembly line. This process revolutionized the auto industry by greatly reducing the time and labor required to assemble a car. Ford desired to make a mass production vehicle so as to create economies of scale and efficiency that would increase units for sale; but also reduce the price of each unit. Ford's vision was that the automobile to be a sustained product needed to be available for middle and lower income people and not just the wealthy elite.

Ford was not the first automaker to seek to decrease vehicle production time. In 1901 R. E. Olds (a left-hander of course) used a form of divided assembly production to make his Oldsmobile faster, quadrupling his factory's output, from 425 cars in 1901 to 2,500 in 1902. Some argue that Olds should be credited with being the "father of the assembly line". Ford, however, took the assembly concept one giant step further. By installing a moving belt in his factory that moved the car along the factory, employees would be building multiple cars, piecemeal, at the same time reducing down time and space constraints. By using a "division of labor" principle Ford workers could focus on doing one thing, do it as fast and well as possible, rather than being responsible for multiple tasks.

Ford and his team continually changed and improved his assembly concept over time. Demand for his - in the meantime "affordable" - Model T vehicle soared even as production went up. By 1927 when they stopped making the Model T, the Ford Motor Co. had sold 15 million vehicles and Ford had become the leading auto manufacturer in the country.

Outside of his business acumen and engineering skill Ford pursued a large political and social agenda. In business, Ford offered profit-sharing to employees who stayed with the company and conducted their lives in a morally acceptable manner. The company's "social department" looked into an employee's drinking, gambling and other activities to determine eligibility for participation. Ford was an ardent pacifist and opposed World War I, even funding a peace ship to Europe. Later, in 1936, Ford and his family established the Ford Foundation to provide ongoing grants for research, education and development. On the other hand, Ford was a committed antisemite, going as far as to support a weekly newspaper, The "Dearborn Independent", which subscribed to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and openly supported the Nazis. While there is no evidence of active mistreatment or discrimination against Jewish workers in Ford's plants, he did frequently correspond with Hitler and in 1938 received the "Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle" (Grosskreuz des Deutschen Adlerordens) which was the highest honor the Nazi state bestowed on foreigners. I think one quote from Mr Ford sums up his feelings about Jews: "If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words- too much Jew."

Answer: Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle Washington on October 28, 1955. Gates breezed through high school and was accepted at Harvard University. Even before college Gates and his best friend Paul Allen had developed an interest in the nascent 1970's computer industry. As a thirteen year old Gates wrote his first program that allowed a player to engage in a tic-tac-toe game with the computer.

Gates was brilliant, ambitious and impatient. He dropped out of Harvard University to establish, with Allen, his own programming company. The company was named Micro-Soft the combination of "micro" computers and "soft" ware. Eventually the hyphen was dropped. During the late 1970's Gates and Allen struggled to find customers for their software. They had a breakthrough in 1980 when Microsoft won a contract from IBM to provide an operating system (MS-DOS) for IBM's new personal computers. Gates and Microsoft, shrewdly kept ownership of the DOS protocol and only licensed the use of the system to IBM and its customers. When other manufacturers created personal computers or programs using MS-DOS Microsoft received licensing fees. In 1985 Gates and Microsoft introduced the next generation of operating system software "Windows" and Microsoft went from being "A" player in the computer industry to being "THE" player.

Gates who had dreamed of being a millionaire by age 30, achieved better and was a billionaire by the time he was 31. Often considered the wealthiest man in the world, Gates retired from his role as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 and has spent the bulk of his time running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

While Gates is a left-hander he is also a shrewd businessman and has not developed computer software that is based or skewed towards left-handers.

Answer: Auguste Piccard

Swiss born inventor and scientist Auguste Piccard first invented an aluminum spherical enclosed balloon gondola that would allow pilots to withstand high altitude journeys. During the 1930's Piccard and his twin brother shattered balloon altitude records and topped out at more than 23,000m (75,000').

During the late 1930's Piccard became interested in whether his gondola design could be used underwater to allow oceanographers to dive into lower depths and withstand the increased pressure. Despite being interrupted by World War II Piccard completed testing on a self powered submersible observation craft in 1948. Piccard named the craft a "bathyscaphe" after the Greek words for deep(bathyes) and ship(skapos). Piccard's initial bathyscaphe reached depths of
4000m in 1954. Piccard's crowning achievement was the bathyscaphe "Trieste" built in 1953. After being used to explore the Mediterranean Sea the vessel was refitted and sold to the US Navy. In 1960 the Trieste piloted by Naval Lt Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, Auguste's son, descended inside the Marianas Trench (the planet's deepest known location) to a record depth of 10,916 meters (35,814 ft).

Piccard found his way into popular culture as well as history. Belgian author and artist Herge admitted that the brainy Professor Cuthbert Calculus in the "Adventures of Tintin" was based on Piccard and his accomplishments. The character of Captain Jean-Luc Piccard from Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek The Next Generation" is an amalgam of Piccard and his twin brother's names.

James Cameron has also visited the bottom of the Marianas Trench in a submersible craft and is left-handed. No record is made as to whether Otis Barton was left-handed but he did design the "bathosphere", a self-contained pressurized tethered precursor to the Piccard bathyscaphe.

Answer: Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio as the youngest of seven children. Edison apparently did not learn to talk until he was four years old. Edison attended public school for only three months in Port Huron, Michigan. His teacher complained that Edison was "addled" and suffered from hyperactivity, was prone to distraction, and to being "difficult". His mother, an accomplished teacher in her own right, quickly pulled him from the school and instead homeschooled Thomas. Modern education theory would suggest that Edison showed all the signs of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and likely would have wanted to have Edison placed on psychotropic and mood controlling drugs.

While left-handers do tend to be diagnosed with some neurological diseases in greater proportions (such as schizophrenia and dyslexia), the evidence supporting a link between left-handedness and ADHD is not conclusive. In any event there exists a debate within the medical community as to whether Edison's prolific and varied career might have been derailed by the introduction of psychotropic drugs.

What we do know is that Edison was both an inventor of far reaching ambition and a shrewd, aggressive businessman. Edison invented new devices and improved the inventions of existing devices with equal aplomb. For example Edison improved the signaling power of telephones. Before 1877, telephones used magnets that produced weak currents that limited the distance the device could transmit sound. Edison used a carbon transmitter for the telephone and greatly improved the distance over which the telephone could be used. This basic design continued to be used until the 1980s and digital phones. While working on the telephone improvements Edison hit upon the idea to use the basic engineering to create a device for recording and playing back sound. This design became the modern phonograph.

Contrary to popular legend Edison did not invent the incandescent light-bulb. What he did do is work tirelessly to test ways to increase the earliest light-bulbs efficiency and mass produced the first copper filament vacuum sealed light-bulbs. Similarly, Edison developed the first reliable motion picture camera and a myriad of products that enriched him and the world.

One of Edison's great rivals was Nikola Tesla (left-handed - did you even need to ask?). Brilliant in his own right, Tesla championed the use of alternating current in large electricity systems; while Edison favored direct current. Tesla's system proved more efficient but Edison did all right as he owed several companies using both technologies for outfitting communities with electrical systems.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

The litany of accomplishments by Thomas Jefferson is quite long. He was the principal author of the US Declaration of Independence, served as the second US Vice President and third US President. Jefferson as architect designed and built his own residence and gardens in Virginia (Monticello). Jefferson designed and organized the creation of the University of Virginia as a nonsectarian public educational college. Jefferson designed the University to be centered about the library and contained no church.

Jefferson never claimed or sought great financial return on his "projects" as he called his inventions. Jefferson developed the "wheel cipher" out of necessity while serving as the US Secretary of State. The wheel cipher consisted of twenty-six cylindrical wooden pieces which each had a hole bored into its center so that they could then be threaded onto an iron spindle. On the edge of each wheel, all twenty-six letters of the alphabet was inscribed. By using the cipher, a person could scramble and unscramble letters and code messages decipherable only to another wheel holder.

Jefferson invented an improved plow after observing the Dutch moldboard (front of a plow that lifts up and turns over sod) was largely ineffective. Jefferson invented a new moldboard based on pure mathematical principles, namely, placing the board at a straight right angle. His moldboard briefly transformed agriculture (before iron replaced the wooden plows), and yet Jefferson never tried to patent his design. Putting his politics into practice, he expressed the desire that inventions should be solely for the good of the people and not for the advancement of the inventor.

Jefferson, while also serving as Secretary of State, also served as a member of a three person board tasked to create the newly established United States patent policy. Jefferson stayed true to his notion that inventions should be shared for the good of all and was a harsh critic of long term patent rights. He realized that some return on investment and reward for research was in the best interest for spurring development but helped craft the limited period of patents and strict criteria for patent approval used in the US.

Answer: Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the same Christmas Day the great scientist Galileo died. Newton's father had died three months before his birth and Newton was born premature and was not expected to live. He survived but spent much of his early life away from his mother neglected and isolated. This set the pattern for Newton's life, overcoming hardship, great triumph and a sense of the surreal. In 1661 Newton went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Isaac paid his way through college for the first three years by waiting tables and cleaning rooms for the faculty and his wealthier peers. While brilliant at study, Newton was not accepted by the mostly aristocratic Cambridge elite. In 1664, he was elected a scholar though part of his tenure was interrupted when plague spreading across Europe caused Cambridge to close in the summer of 1665.

Newton's first major public scientific achievement was the design and construction of a reflecting telescope. Other 17th century scientists, including Newton's Cambridge rival Robert Hooke also worked on improving the telescope; but Newton was the first to produce a working design. He ground the mirror, built the tube, and created his own tools for the construction. The mirror gave a sharper image than was possible with a large lens as it reduced distortion. During his work with telescopes Newton explored the nature of light. Newton demonstrated that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colors, and that using a lens and a second prism you could recompose the multicolored spectrum back into into white light.

Newton is best known for his work on gravity and motion. Newtons Laws of Motion and gravitational theories were first published in 1687 in his seminal work "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica". Included in the "Principia" was a new mathematical process that formed the basis for modern calculus. Newton used his new math and understanding of gravity to show that celestial bodies would be affected by the same forces as earthbound objects.

Leibniz, working independently in Germany, also developed the basic rules of calculus. Once a friend of Newton, the two fought bitterly over who should be credited with the "creation" of calculus. The furor involved both European politics and the combativeness of scientists and did neither the English supporters of Newton nor the German supporters of Leibnitz much credit.

Answer: Alan Turing

The Alan Turing story is both the history of a hero and genius, but also a tale of intolerance and the effect of criminalizing issues of sexual orientation. Turing was born in London in 1912; he went on to University at Cambridge and studied math, subsequently joining the University faculty. Part of Turning's work was in the area of quantum mechanics combined with theoretical mathematics. Turning developed (at the same as another mathematician Alan Church) the mathematical proofs to establish limits to automatic computation. This concept, also known as the "Turing machine", is considered the basis for the modern theory of computation and computer programming.

During World War II Turing joined the ultra-secret British cryptanalytic department at Bletchley Park. Turing lead a team that designed an electro-magnetic machine called the "bombe" that successfully decoded German messages encrypted by the "Enigma" machine, thereby providing vital intelligence for the Allies. Turing was made and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his work during the War.

After the war, Turing designed, but could not convince the British government to build, the first digital super-computer. During the late 1940's Turing chaired the Manchester University computing laboratory and laid the groundwork for work in the area of artificial intelligence. Despite his brilliance and service to the UK he was arrested in 1952 and tried for committing homosexual (then a serious criminal offense in the UK). To avoid prison, Turing accepted a common but barbaric punishment, injections of estrogen, which were designed to curb his illegal "instincts". Because homosexuals were considered a security risk Turing's security clearance was withdrawn. Humiliated and physically altered by the drug treatment, Turing committed suicide on June 7 , 1954.

Ironically in 2002, Turing was ranked by the BBC as the 21st greatest Briton of all-time; and "Time Magazine" included Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and stated: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, open[s] a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

Answer: Linus Pauling

All of these people won Nobel Prizes and all are left-handed. US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and Sir Alexander Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering penicillin and antibiotics. Marie Curie did win two Nobel's (1903 for Physics and 1911 for Chemistry) but shared both prizes with others. Only Linus Pauling won two Nobel prizes solo.

Pauling is a fascinating person. A product of American public schools and Oregon State University, Pauling received his doctorate in chemistry at 24 and became a full professor at the prestigious California Institute of Technology before he turned 30. Pauling's major scientific work was to understand the properties of chemical substances and their structure. One branch of this research led Pauling and his team to discover that the magnetic properties of hemoglobin change upon being exposed to oxygen. Next Pauling and team came to the seminal understanding that some hemoglobin does not function properly when exposed to less oxygen. The resulting disease was called "sickle cell anemia" and was the first documented instance of a "molecular" level disorder. This and other advances led to Pauling being awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954.

Pauling was also a noted anti-nuclear and anti-war activist. In 1958, he presented to the UN a petition signed by 9,235 scientists from all over the world calling for the end to atomic bomb testing and nuclear proliferation. His work in support of these efforts led to Pauling receiving the 1963 (reserved from 1962) Nobel Peace Prize. In a fitting homage, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, outlawing all but underground nuclear testing, went into effect on October 10, 1963, the same day the Nobel Committee announced Pauling's Peace Prize.