Origins of Inventors Trivia Quiz

Denis Papin was a French physicist and inventor who lived in the 1600s. In 1679, he invented something he called the 'steam digester', which was the world's first pressure cooker. He discovered that when you cook food in a sealed pot, the steam can't escape, which increases the pressure inside. This higher pressure raises the boiling point of water, allowing food to cook much faster and at higher temperatures than normal. His invention could soften bones and cook tough meat in a fraction of the usual time.

Papin's pressure cooker was an important step forward in cooking technology, but it was also dangerous, because if too much pressure built up, the pot could explode. To solve this problem, he invented the safety valve, a device that releases excess steam when the pressure gets too high. This safety valve became one of his most important contributions because it made pressure cooking safe and practical.

Pressure cookers are used in kitchens around the world, today, and Papin's basic design and safety principles are still in use over 300 years later.

The first practical electric clock was invented in 1840 by Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor and clockmaker. Before his invention, all clocks were mechanical, powered by springs or weights. Bain had the revolutionary idea of using electricity from a battery to power a clock's mechanism. His electric clock used electrical pulses to swing a pendulum back and forth, which then moved the clock's hands. This was a major breakthrough because electric clocks were more accurate and required less winding than traditional mechanical clocks. His invention laid the groundwork for modern timekeeping technology.

Although his early electric clocks weren't perfect and faced some technical challenges, they proved that electricity could be used to measure time precisely. His work inspired other inventors to improve electric clock designs, eventually leading to the highly accurate electric and electronic clocks we use today.

Johann Christoph Denner, a Nuremberg instrument maker, improved the chalumeau around the late 17th to early 18th century by adding two keys, including a small tube called the 'register key', displaced towards the mouthpiece. This allowed the instrument to over blow and play higher pitches, greatly increasing its range to nearly three octaves. Other structural changes, such as lengthening the tube and replacing the recorder-like foot joint with a bell, enhanced tuning accuracy and sound projection.

These enhancements transformed the limited-range chalumeau into the more versatile clarinet, capable of playing both low chalumeau register notes and higher clarino register notes, establishing the clarinet as a new instrument on the European musical scene by about 1700. Over time, further developments refined the clarinet's design and range, eventually making the chalumeau obsolete.

The combustion-powered submarine was invented by Narcís Monturiol, a Spanish inventor and engineer from Barcelona. He created the first air-independent and combustion-engine-driven submarine, called the Ictíneo II, which was launched in the Port of Barcelona on October 2, 1864. He developed an air-independent steam engine that operated using a chemical reaction to produce its own oxygen for combustion, allowing the submarine to stay submerged without surfacing for air.

Monturiol's propulsion system was considered revolutionary because it solved two of the biggest technical challenges facing submarines at the time: providing mechanical power underwater and supplying breathable air independently of the This made the Ictíneo II the first submarine capable of combustion-powered underwater navigation, a pioneering achievement not replicated for more than 70 years.

John Walker, an English chemist and druggist from Stockton-on-Tees, was born in 1826. He discovered by accident that a wooden stick coated with a chemical mixture would ignite when scraped across a rough surface. He called his invention 'Friction Lights' and started making them for sale in 1827. These early matches consisted of wooden splints coated with sulfur and tipped with a mixture including antimony sulfide and potassium chlorate, igniting by friction against sandpaper supplied with the matches.

He started selling his friction matches on April 12, 1827, from his chemist shop, initially made from cardboard and later wooden splints, packaged with sandpaper for striking. This selling activity is recorded in his day book, held in the Science Museum archives, and mentioned in local historical recounts. Walker never patented his invention, allowing others to freely make friction matches, but he is credited as the inventor of the first practical friction match.

The modern ballpoint pen was the invention of László Bíró, a Hungarian-Argentinian journalist, who patented the first commercially successful design in 1938. He developed a pen that used quick-drying ink, similar to newspaper printing ink, combined with a ball-and-socket mechanism to control ink flow, making the pen less messy and smudge-free.

The first patent for a ballpoint pen was granted earlier, in 1888, to John J. Loud, who created a pen with a rotating ball mechanism designed to write on rough surfaces. However, his design was not commercially successful.

Bíró's innovation is considered the true breakthrough that made ballpoint pens practical and popular worldwide, especially after their production and use by the British Royal Air Force during World War II.

Bartolomeo Cristofori, an Italian instrument maker, invented the piano around the year 1700. His key innovation was creating a keyboard instrument capable of playing both soft and loud sounds, depending on how hard the keys were struck. He called his invention the 'gravicembalo col piano e forte' ('harpsichord with soft and loud'), which was later shortened to 'pianoforte' and eventually just 'piano'.

He also introduced the hammer mechanism: pressing a key made a hammer strike and quickly releasing the string, letting it vibrate freely. Unlike the plucked harpsichord, this allowed dynamic control. He also added dampers to silence strings when keys were released. Although his invention was not widely adopted at first, other builders refined and improved his design throughout the 18th century, leading to the modern piano. Cristofori is universally credited as the original inventor of this instrument that became central to Western music.

The modern submarine was developed through contributions from several inventors, but John Philip Holland is most often credited as the inventor of the modern submarine. Holland, an Irish engineer, designed the USS Holland (SS-1), which was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1900. This vessel became the Navy's first commissioned submarine and established the basic design principles still used today: it combined electric motors for underwater propulsion with gasoline engines for surface travel, had diving planes for controlled submersion, and featured a torpedo tube as its primary weapon.

Holland's design was significant because it was the first practical, reliable submarine that navies actually adopted for regular service. Both the U.S. and British navies purchased his designs, making it the template for modern submarine development in the early 20th century.

The process for growing single crystals of silicon, known as the Czochralski method or Czochralski process, was invented in 1915 by Polish scientist Jan Czochralski. He discovered the technique accidentally while studying the crystallisation rates of metals and drawing a thin filament from molten tin, which solidified into a single crystal.

The Czochralski process later became crucial for producing large single crystals of silicon, which serve as the base material for semiconductor devices, including integrated circuits and solar cells. It remains the dominant method for silicon crystal growth in the electronics industry today.

Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table in 1869, revolutionising how scientists understood chemical elements. He organised the known elements by atomic weight and noticed that elements with similar properties appeared at regular intervals. What made his work brilliant was that he left gaps in his table for elements that hadn't been discovered yet, and he even predicted the properties these missing elements would have. When elements like gallium and germanium were later discovered with properties matching his predictions, it validated his entire system.

Mendeleev's periodic table became the foundation for modern chemistry because it revealed that the properties of elements follow a predictable pattern rather than being random. While the modern periodic table is now organised by atomic number rather than atomic weight, and includes many more elements, the basic structure and concept Mendeleev developed remains unchanged.