Greatest British Inventions: Part Three Quiz

Answer: Joseph Swan

Thomas Edson is commonly credited with inventing the light bulb. However, in that same year, 1879, Joseph Swan gave a practical demonstration 10 months before Edison. Swan also patented the idea and won court cases protecting that patent in the United Kingdom.

All of the answers were inventors who had something to do with lighting. Louis Hartman, an American, was the sole non-Briton listed.

Answer: Michael Faraday

Faraday was a physicist and chemist who experimented with electromagnetism and was the first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field. He also invented the first electric motor and dynamo. Faraday, at one time, was an assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy and learnt a lot about chemistry from him.

In 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted and André-Marie Ampère individually came up with theories around electric current, but it was Faraday, the following year, who came up with the first working electric motor to turn electrical energy into mechanical energy.

Answer: Flying shuttle

The first flying shuttle was patented by John Kay in 1733. That invention was to be gradually improved on over the next 14 years.

The shuttle enabled one weaver to do the work of two, and much faster. This did not make Kay popular with weavers who lost their jobs. His home was attacked and he fled to France, where he died in poverty.

Answer: Portland cement

Portland cement is the material combined with aggregate or sand to make concrete. The cement is made of a mixture of limestone, shale, iron ore, and clay that is heated to a high temperature and then ground down to a powdery constituency. Lime and silica make up about 85 percent of the ingredients.

Some people get terminology confused. Cement is the material: concrete is the product it is made into.

Answer: Locomotion

The first line to carry freight and passengers ran from Stockton to Darlington. The eight-mile line itself was built by Edward Pease to transport coal from a colliery to Darlington on the coast. His intention was to use horses to pull the coal wagons.

George Stephenson intervened and said that, by using steam locomotives, 50 times the weight of coal could be carried.

According to the Darlington museum service: "The ceremonial opening on 27 September 1825 was the first occasion on which a steam locomotive was used to haul passengers on a public railway. The locomotive concerned, Stephenson's 'Locomotion No 1' still exists and is displayed at Head of Steam, which is situated on the original 1825 S & DR route".

Note: There had been earlier railway lines, but this was the first to carry passengers. Meanwhile, "Puffing Billy", built in 1813, is the world's oldest surviving locomotive.

Answer: Automatic electric kettle

Actually, Russell had a hand in the development of the pop-up toaster and electric iron, as well as the electric hairdryer, while working with another company. Hobbs, meanwhile, was woking in South Africa, but left a company there while trying to develop a coffee percolator.

The two men joined forces in England and in 1955 came up with the first electric kettle that switched itself off on boiling. Their company, Russell Hobbs, went on to create and make a wide range of domestic electrical items.

Answer: Domestic clockwork radio

Radios that got their power from hand-cranking had been used by the military before, but Baylis wanted something that was smaller, cheaper, neater and would work in parts of Africa that had no access to electricity supplies or ready access to standard batteries.

Baylis said he came up with the idea after learning that people in Africa had no access to information or education about the spread of AIDS. The first models could be cranked to run for 15 minutes. Later versions were powered by batteries recharged by hand-cranking.

Although Baylis was feted the world over for his invention - he was honoured by his country by being appointed OBE and later CBE - he made little money out of it. Others stole his intellectual property. He died in 2018 at the age of 80.

Answer: John McAdam

Not since Roman times had such a breakthrough in road-building technology been achieved as by McAdam.

The website "Interesting Engineering", main source for this series of quizzes, noted in 2017 "John Loudon McAdam was a pioneering Scottish engineer who single-handedly changed the way roads were built around the world".

McAdam was born in Ayr around 1760, moved to North America but was on the wrong side of the American revolution, and returned home.

Before McAdam (the original spelling of his name) roads were constructed using large flat rocks and were themselves flat and featureless, with little chance of draining water away. McAdam became intrigued by road building. He promoted the idea of raising roads above the surrounding land and giving them a small camber that would allow water to drain off, (as the Romans had done).

His roads had several layers of mixed stones and sand, rather than the heavy shaped rocks preferred by others. (We should not forget the work on road designs by another Scotsman, Thomas Telford.)

Ironically, while McAdam believed there was no need for a surface coating to bind his road materials together, in 1901 a Swiss doctor, Ernest Guglielminetti came up with the idea of coating the surface with tar. Later, Edgar Purnell Hooley patented a mixture of coal tar and ironworks slag that he called "tarmac".

Answer: In a brewery

Priestly was a prolific inventor. As well as carbonated water, he came up with the rubber eraser, identified oxygen and a number of key elements, and was an early promoter of electricity.

In a brewery in 1767 he discovered a way of infusing water with carbon dioxide by suspending a bowl above a beer vat.

Answer: The Rover

Before Starley put his spoke in (sorry), other bicycles had been built, including the penny farthing style. Indeed Henry John Lawson designed the first "safety bicycle" in 1876.

In 1885, The Rover became the first commercially successful bicycle. Today we can still see the elements that Starley came up with: diamond shaped frame; pedals below the saddle powering the rear wheel through a chain; handlebars above the front wheel and fork.

Now, let us go back to that song by the talented Ms. Melua. While she may have been correct when the song was released, and bicycles do remain important in China, their numbers appear to be dropping. In the 1980s, China had an estimated 500 million bicycles. but by 2019 that number had reduced to about 450 million.

In 1986, 65 per cent of journeys in Beijing were by bicycle. By 2015 that had dropped to 15 per cent.