Made in Britain Trivia Quiz

Answer: Catseyes

Shaw was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, in April 1890. The roads he drove on were mainly unlit and one foggy night in 1933, so the story goes, he was prevented from crashing by the lights of his car reflecting back from the eyes of a cat. He designed the catseye road stud using reflective glass lenses invented a few years earlier by Richard Hollins Murray. Shaw filed his patent in 1934 and the following year started Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd. to make and market the items.

The original design used white reflectors but today several colours are used depending on their position in the road.

Answer: Michael Faraday

Faraday was born into a poor family in London in 1791. As a boy he was apprenticed to a bookbinder and read every book he worked on. His insatiable curiosity led to an interest in energy, especially force. In 1831 Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, the generation of an electric field in a coil of wire produced by passing a current through another, nearby, coil.

This was the first transformer. Further experiments led to the development of generators and motors.

Answer: Humphry Davy

In 1809, some 70 years before Edison used a carbon filament, Davy attached a charcoal strip between two wires and added a battery. The resultant glow produced the first arc lamp. Edison didn't even file the first patent for a 'lightbulb'. He bought the rights to a Canadian patent filed some four years previously and developed the idea because the original patentee, Henry Woodward, did not have the funds to take things further. What Edison did achieve was a longer lasting filament, eventually developing one which would last for 1,200 hours.

Others then took this further to produce the types of bulbs in common use today.

Answer: 1578

Bourne was a former naval gunner when he designed a craft to travel underwater. The plans called for a wooden hull covered in waterproof leather and devices to pull in the sides to decrease the volume and so make the craft submerge. The sides would be pushed out again to enable it to surface.

The design never got further than a drawing however and it was in 1620 that Dutchman Cornelius van Drebble constructed the first 'practical' submarine. The year 1776 saw the use of the 'Turtle', a vessel designed to sink British warships during the War of Independence.

In 1801 American Robert Fulton designed and built the Nautilus which was able to remain submerged for up to five hours because of the use of compressed air to allow the crew to breathe.

Answer: Corkscrew

British patent number 6006, granted on April 23rd 1888 was for a double lever corkscrew. Called the A1 Heeley Double Lever it worked by pivots to "gain an improvement in mechanical advantage to pull a cork". Prior to this single lever corkscrews were in general use, in particular the one know as the 'waiter's friend', and their design has changed very little since the first patent was granted in Germany to Carl Wienke in 1882.

Answer: Tim Berners-Lee

Berners-Lee was a physics graduate from Oxford University. He developed a hypertext protocol whilst working at CERN, a nuclear research facility in Switzerland. His programme was launched in December 1990 internally at CERN and went global in the summer of 1991.

Answer: Frank Whittle

Although patented in 1930 Whittle's engine did not fly until 1937. He struggled for many years to get official backing but was forced to, initially, go it alone and then get private finance. It wasn't until 1937 that Whittle's engine got official support from the Air Ministry.

It took to the air for the first time on May 15th 1941 powering an experimental prototype aircraft. Both the airframe and the engine were developed further to eventually become the Gloster Meteor, the first allied jet aircraft to enter service in 1944.

Answer: Fax machine

Before computers and e-mail the fax was the only way to quickly send whole pages of data from one place to another. Bain developed the machine using technology developed from Samuel Morse's telegraph. It was described in the Letters Patent as "improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs".

It did this by using a stylus, to scan a flat metal plate, which picked up the image and converted it to an electrical signal that could be transmitted over a long distance.

Answer: Sinclair

The MTV-1 was produced by a company headed by Sir Clive Sinclair in 1978. Because LED screens hadn't yet been invented it used a 2 inch cathode ray tube screen. There were two versions, one for PAL only and one for PAL and NSTC. Sir Clive Sinclair's companies have been responsible for many inventions over the years, most notably the ZX series of micro computers and the slim line pocket calculator.

Answer: Solar powered cigarette lighter

The solar powered cigarette lighter is an example of Chindôgu, the Japanese term for a useless everyday invention that at first glance seems useful. All the other listed inventions, and many more, are the 'brainchild' of one A. P. Pedrick, a former clerk at the UK Patent Office. He has patented over 160 ideas, none of which are practicable.