Who? Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Flamsteed

King Charles II of England ordered the construction of the Greenwich Observatory in the 1670s. The first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, had to pay for his own equipment, however. There's always a catch.

Answer: Chinese

In A.D. 105 the Chinese Imperial Workshops announced the first use of paper. They went on to develop printing from wooden blocks.

Answer: Edison

Edison's (1847-1931) laboratory was located at Menlo Park in New Jersey.

Answer: Evangelista Torricelli

Torricelli had studied under Galileo. His barometer consisted of a glass tube open at one end and filled with mercury. When put into a dish of mercury, open-end down, the atmospheric pressure forced the mercury in the tube to rise. Christian Schobein was a German chemist who discovered guncotton, or nitrocellulose, in 1845.

He spilled a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acid onto his cotton apron and hung it up to dry, whereupon it exploded.

Answer: Joseph Niepce

Niepce's (a Frenchman) photo was taken in 1826 and shows a view from a {window;} it was made on an asphalt-coated pewter plate...the exposure took 8 hours. Edwin Land, an American, invented the Polaroid camera (first 'instant' camera) in 1947. The film in his camera was automatically developed by chemicals inside. W.H. Fox Talbot (Englishman) invented the calotype photography process in the early 19th {century;} he found a way of making positive paper prints from a negative. George Eastman (American) invented the Kodak camera, which used roll film instead of plates.

Answer: Wilhelm Roentgen

The German Roentgen discovered X-rays by accident in 1895, while experimenting with a cathode ray tube. He noticed that crystals in the same room glowed when the tube was switched {on;} they even glowed when moved to the next room. He realized that invisible rays which could penetrate walls were causing the glow.

He called them X-rays, X meaning the unknown. Ernest Rutherford split the atom, changing a nitrogen gas into oxygen and hydrogen atoms by bombarding it with alpha particles. Niels Bohr applied quantum theory to atoms. Sir Joseph John Thomson discovered electrons in 1897, while at Cambridge University in England.

Answer: Archimedes

The screw was turned by a handle inside a wooden cylinder. As the handle was turned, water was raised from the ship's hold. It was much faster than the previous practice of lowering buckets on the end of a rope.

Answer: Kepler

Kepler (1571-1630), who established the fact that the planets revolved around the sun in ellipses, not perfect circles, believed that the craters on the Moon must be circular walled cities built by Moon people. He believed that these Moon people were probably giants, 19 times the size of humans. Every great scientist is entitled to one horrible blunder!

Answer: Clement Ader

The Eole managed a brief hop in 1890. The flying machine had a 20-horsepower steam engine. Cornelius van Drebbel built a wooden submarine, which was driven by {oars;} it successfully crossed the river Thames in London.

Answer: Igor Sikorsky

Other helicopter designs flew before Sikorsky's VS-300 (1939), but his was the forerunner of modern choppers. I believe the Wrights were strictly airplanes. Colonel John Stapp reached a speed of 632 mph on a nine-rocket sled in 1954, in an experiment to find out how acceleration and deceleration might affect pilots and astronauts.

He experienced 40g while decelerating and was blinded for several weeks. Octave Chanute (1832-1910) was a French aviation pioneer (though he lived in America) who carried out over 2,000 glider flights in the 1890s (when over 60 years of age, nonetheless!) and exchanged ideas with the Wright brothers, helping them work out their design for their airplane.

Answer: Babylonian priests

The priests of Babylon were skilled in astronomy and kept very accurate records of the passing of the seasons. Over 3,000 years ago they calculated that it took the Earth 365 days 6 hours 15 minutes 4 seconds to complete one revolution of the sun--the modern calculation is only 26 minutes, 55 seconds longer!

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Galileo stood two men with flashing lamps on distant hilltops and attempted to measure the time it took the light to travel between them. Light travelled far too fast to be measured in this way, however. Ole Roemer of Denmark measured how long it took light from Jupiter to reach Earth in 1676, coming up with a figure for the speed of light that is almost the same as that calculated today. Isaac Newton did many experiments with light, proving that white light is a mixture of colors in 1665-66 and later inventing the Newtonian reflecting telescope (which was not the first reflecting telescope to be built, just the design that's more popular today). Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1600.

Answer: Joseph Bramah

Bramah (British) reinvented the flushing toilet, or 'water closet', in the 1770s. This had been tried many times before but never caught on because piped water and drains were so rare. Joseph Priestley was a British chemist and clergyman who discovered oxygen in 1774 by heating mercuric oxide. Vladimir Zworykin was a Russian-born American engineer who was one of the pioneers of electric television, working for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in the 1930s. Linus Yale introduced mass-production of locks in the 1850s and invented the cylinder lock named after him in 1861.

Answer: Henry Cavendish

Cavendish (1731-1810) was an English nobelman with a passion for science who discovered hydrogen in 1766. He also discovered that water was composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen, as told in the question above. Humphry Davy (1778-1829) discovered boron, sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium, and barium. Mendeleyev was a Russian chemist who first set up the periodic table of elements in 1870.

Answer: Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage (1792-1871) was an English mathematician who designed a huge calculating machinem which he called the Analytical Engine. In theory it could be programmed to carry out many mathematical {operations;} however, it was so ahead of its time that it could not be built because there was no way to provide enough power to its thousands of moving parts. Michael Faraday was an unschooled blacksmith's son who went on to become a great British scientist. Andre Ampere passed an electric current through a coil of wire in the early 19th century, creating the first electromagnet.

Answer: Valentina Tereshkova

Tereshkova (born 1937) was a Soviet cosmonaut who made 48 orbits of the Earth in 1963 in the Vostok 6 spacecraft.

Answer: Edmund Halley

Halley (as in 'Halley's Comet') invented a wooden diving bell in 1690. It was made of wood coated with lead, cone-shaped, and was lowered to a depth of 65 feet in the sea. Halley and four friends were inside. Fresh air was lowered to them in barrels on the end of a rope, allowing Halley to stay under water for 90 minutes. His diving bell was a great advance on previous designs.

Answer: Anders Celsius

Kind of a no-brainer. The scale, created in 1742, has its freezing point (of water) at O degrees and its boiling point at 100 degrees. The earlier Fahrenheit scale had its freezing point at 32 degrees and its boiling point at 212 degrees. Lord Kelvin created a temperature scale that started at the lowest possible temperature--absolute zero. Galileo invented a primitive thermometer in 1592.

Answer: Charles Lyell

Lyell (1797-1875) believed that the Earth had been changed by weather, sea, and earth movements--and was still being changed. Charles Darwin took Lyell's book "Principles of Geology" with him on his voyage around the world aboard the Beagle. Ottmar Mergenthaler,a German watchmaker who came to America, created the Linotype machine for printing in the 1880s. Tsiolkovski (1857-1935) was a Russian schoolteacher and scientist who was perhaps the greatest Russian pioneer of spaceflight.

He worked out that the only way to fly into space was using a liquid-fueled rocket in 1903. Gurney built a steam carriage in 1831 that ran a passenger service between Gloucester and Cheltenham in England. Gurney was forced to give up his experiment (even though it worked well) because of people protesting along the route.

Answer: Sir Francis Bacon

Bacon (1561-1626) was a famous English statesman, writer, and scientist. He went out to stuff a dead chicken with ice in midwinter, to see if this would keep the meat fresher, but caught a cold, became ill, and died. Dunlop invented the pneumatic (air-filled) tire in the 1880s when his son asked him to improve the solid tires of his tricycle. Dunlop cut a length of garden hose, stuck the ends together, and pumped it full of air.

Heinlein was a German clockmaker who made the first spring-driven clock in the early 1500s. Thomas Midegley (1889-1944) discovered that lead added to gasoline made car engines run more {smoothly;} leaded gasoline went on sale in 1923 (now we know that lead pollutes the air and cars have switched to safer, lead-free gasoline).

He also pioneered the use of freon, a gas that is safe to use in refridgerators, freezers, and air-conditioning systems. Thanks for playing, hopefully you learned something.