The Second Mouse Gets The Cheese Quiz

Answer: Powered, controlled flight

Is there any development more hotly disputed than the 'first flight'? The Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum tells us: "On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." However, two years earlier in 1901 the German-born Whitehead claimed to fly for 1.5 miles - the Wright Bothers managed just 40 yards.

In 2013, "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" backed Whitehead's claim. In supporting the claim for that first flight at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 14, 1901, "Jane's" refers to photographs, eyewitnesses, and newspaper accounts of the story. In 2014, the State of Connecticut introduced legislation to recognise Gustave Whitehead as "First in Flight." (As you can imagine, that went down like a lead balloon with the states of Ohio and North Carolina.)

To offer some balance, in 2014, "Scientific American" published an article entitled "Scientific American Debunks Claim Gustave Whitehead Was "First in Flight". Meanwhile, it is claimed that in March 1902, Richard Pearse flew for 350 yards in New Zealand.

Answer: Antonio Meucci

This we do know: on February 14th, 1876, a lawyer acting for Bell made his way to the US Patent Office and filed on his client's behalf. Later that day, a lawyer acting for Gray turned up to file a caveat - an invtention to file a patent. (Some say there were two hours in it.)

The author Travis Brown wrote in "Historical First Patents: The First United States Patent for Many Everyday Things" (Scarecrow Press, 1994), that Bell's lawyer was the fifth to attend the office that day; Gray's was 39th.

History tells us that Bell's patent was US Patent Number 174,465. In fact, neither man was 'first' with the idea of a talking telegraph: that had been Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant. He filed a caveat in 1871 announcing that he was about to patent a device. He could not afford to renew it, though.

edn.com noted: "On June, 11, 2002, the United States Congress acknowledged Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone."
Meucci began work on his 'talking telegraph' in 1849.

Answer: Rivet reinforced jeans

Jacob Youphes was born in Latvia in 1831 and emigrated to North America, living in both Canada and the US. He adopted the name Jacob Davis. US Patent No. 139,121 was issued to Davis and Levi Strauss & Co on May 20th, 1873.

Officially, Levi Straus & Co credits the invention of blue jeans to Jacob Davis. Davis was a tailor in Reno. Nevada and he was first with the idea for riveted trousers. Levi Straus was at the time living and working in San Francisco and was a fabric supplier.

History.com notes: "As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together." Straus, like Davis, hailed from Europe. He had been born in Bavaria in 1829 and arrived in the US in 1847. Within a few years, he had established a profitable business in California..

Footnote: neither Straus nor Davis invented denim trousers. They were first worn in the French city of Nimes.

Answer: Silly Putty

When he died in 1976, Hodgson was worth $140m. Not bad for a second mouse. An engineer called James Wright had been working for General Electric on a synthetic rubber and came up with Nutty Putty in 1949. No one was interested, since it was not much of a development on what had gone before.

First of all, Ruth Fallgatter stocked it as a toy in her store at New Haven, Connecticut, but when it did not sell. Peter Hodgson took it on. He called it "Silly Putty". He first packed it into plastic eggs for Easter. It is estimated more than 300 million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold since 1950. *

* Source: Crayola LLC, owners since * Source: Crayola LLC, owners since Hodgson's death.

Answer: Movie projector

Biography.com notes that "On April 23, 1896, Edison became the first person to project a motion picture..." -- However, that feat had been accomplished two years earlier by Charles Francis Jenkins. Jenkins was born near Dayton, Ohio, in 1868. In 1894 he demonstrated his "Phantoscope" film projector. He developed this in partnership with a financier, Thomas Armat.

To cut a long story short, Armat sold his interest. Jenkins sued, but withdrew his action. Subsequently, Armat sold the rights to Thomas Edison and it became known as the Vitascope. After many years of legal dispute over who should be deemed the inventor of the Pantascope - Jenkins or Armat - a court ruled that Jenkins had come up with the idea and Armat the money.

Answer: Karaoke

Daisuke was a drummer in a band, but one night in 1971 he could not make it to a performance so sent in his music on tape. He also created a simple eight-track player with music that people could sing along to.

Karaoke is Japanese for empty orchestra. If Daisuke was the early bird, in 1975 Philippino inventor Roberto de Rosario became the second mouse when he patented his "Sing Along System".

Answer: Matches

In 1824, Walker, a British chemist, came up with the idea for a stick with a potassium chloride-antimony sulfide paste that could create a flame when struck on another object. He called the product "Friction Lights" but declined to patent them because he was concerned over the safety of a naked flame. Others were not so hesitant and made fortunes.

Walker was right about the dangers. The first matches could easily catch fire inadvertently through sudden impact with each other or a foreign object. Safety matches were invented that could only ignite from striking a coarse sandpaper type strip, or by direct combustion.

Answer: Cotton Gin

Whitney's cotton gin came out in 1793, and was patented in 1794 but in 1788, in the West Indies, Joseph Eve had come up with a machine that did the same job. There were others who had come up with similar devices. The difference was that Eve's machine used rollers while Whitney's gin had a more efficient coarse wire system.

So what is a cotton gin? It is a machine that more easily separates cotton fibres from seeds. It revolutionised the business, history.com noted, but added: "Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues." Credit for the cotton gin was to be the subject of arguments in courts for years after. In her book "Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America", Angela Lakwete noted there had been 25 lawsuits in 15 years.

Answer: Electric light bulb

Edison's patent is credited as being the first commercially successful lightbulb. However, in 1800 an Italian inventor called Alessandro Volta demonstrated a device that is seen today as the first working incandescent lighting. In 1802 in England, Thomas Davey showed off the first electric arc lamp.

Other scientists and engineers were also on the ame track and by 1860 Joseph Swann had developed a light bulb that he patented in 1878. Meanwhile, Harry Woodward and Matthew Evans came up with their bulb in Toronto in 1874 and patented it in Canada. They sold the concept to Edison.

It was a further five years before Edison patented his own bulb. All in all, Edison's bulb developed and improved others.

Answer: Monopoly

In the early 1900s, Elizabeth Magie created a board game she called "The Landlord's Game". The idea was - allegedly - stolen from her and sold to manufacturers Parker Brothers. It was to become a worldwide success. Subsequently, Parker Brothers paid Magie $500.

The "New York Times" reported: "Magie filed a legal claim for her 'Landlord's Game' in 1903, more than three decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing Monopoly. She actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time - people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller." Magie created two sets of contrasting rules. A man called Charles Darrow claimed one set as his own and sold the game to Parker Brothers. He became a millionaire on the back of that sale.

Once "Monopoly" was released Magie sued Parker Brothers. "The Guardian" newspaper reported that she gave interviews to Washington papers in 1936: "She was angry, hurt and in search of revenge against a company that she felt had stolen her now-best-selling idea."

In 2015, npr.org went further, reviewing a book on Magie's story under the heading "Ever Cheat At Monopoly? So Did Its Creator: He Stole The Idea From A Woman". That article claimed: "Darrow got his hands on the game through a Quaker friend - and then sold it to Parker Bros. as his own." Charles Darrow died in 1967.