Driving Inventions Trivia Quiz

Answer: Etienne Lenoir

Etienne Lenoir (1822-1890) was not the first to patent an internal combustion engine, but he was the first whose invention was sold over 100 times. Some previous patents (almost unused) went to the British Thomas Mead (1794), the French Nicéphore Niepce (1807) and the Swiss François de Rivaz (1807), and the American Samuel Brown (1823).
The internal combustion engine (abbreviated ICE) gets its power from the rapid burning of a gaseous fuel, which transforms the chemical energy of the combustion into kinetic energy. Many ICEs work according to the four-stroke cycle developed by Nicolaus Otto: intake of a mixture of air and fuel; compression of the gaseous mixture; ignition via a spark; expansion and expulsion of the rest gases.
Most ICEs burn fossil fuel, which causes two different problems: on the one hand the fossil fuels are not renewable, and thus scarcity can be foreseen; on the other hand, the burning of fossil fuel causes air pollution and global warming. That's why many countries have announced measures to ban the sale of ICE powered vehicles, starting somewhere between 2025 and 2050. In these countries, all new cars should be equipped with electrical motors instead of combustion engines.

Answer: John Dunlop

During the reign of King Charles II, wooden wheels were protected with steel "tyres", so as to reinforce the whole construction. But this type of tyre does nothing to muffle the unevenness of the terrain. In 1847 Robert Thomson patented a pressurized rubber tyre, but did not use it commercially. It was only in 1889 that John Dunlop (1840-1921) revived the interest for pneumatic tyres, although his first patent demand was refused.
The advantage of a pneumatic tyre is that the rubber outside is filled with pressurized air, which smooths out the unevenness of the terrain. It improves the comfort of driver and passengers, but also provides a better continuous grip. Suppose a wheel without pressurized air tyre would roll over a bump of a few millimetres: it would fly for a limited time through the air. Everyone who has ever pushed a pram, will appreciate the advantage of a pneumatic tyre.
Goodyear (1800-1860) patented vulcanized rubber.
André Michelin (1853-1931) and his brother Edouard (1859-1940) came up with the idea of the removable pneumatic tyre.
Pirelli (1848-1932) founded the eponymous tyre company, specialized in tyres for race cars.

Answer: Citroen

The first cars ever made had the engine in the front and the powered wheels on the rear. Later front-wheel drive was inserted, with a front engine and power on the front wheels. As most of the heavy components were at the front, it was not always ideal. That's why Porsche, who placed the engine usually in the rear, chose regularly for front-wheel drive with a rear engine.
Four-wheel drive (4WD) has some advantages over front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive: as all the wheels are powered, traction is improved on wet and/or slippery surfaces. In the common 4WD, there is one engine that transmits the power to a differential gear (placed in the mid of the vehicle), which then divides the power over each of the wheels by a separate output shaft. This solves the mathematical conundrum of taking a turn, in which the wheels on the inside have to travel less distance than the wheels on the outside.
Citroen made a special version for use in the difficult desert settings: the Citroen 2CV Sahara, which had a front engine powering the front wheels and a rear engine powering the rear wheels. About 700 of these oddities were made in 1958, and over sixty years later there are still some examples of these cars.

Answer: Light emitting diode

The LED technology was already commercialized in 1968, but limited to the use in early calculator screens, as these first LEDs could not render any other colour than red, and they were not quite efficient. It took scientists till 1994 to develop a more efficient LED that could emit blue light. Adding a phosphorus coating helped to transform some of the blue light to red and green, thus creating an even white light. The first cars (pre-1900) used candles or gas lighting for their headlamps.

In 1898 the first headlamps with incandescent lightbulbs were introduced, and in 1962 the first halogen headlamps found application.

But since 2004, the LED headlamps are gaining terrain.

Answer: Daf

The reason why a car needs a gearbox, is that internal combustion engines operate at higher revolution speeds than the powered wheels. Typically a powered wheel will make at most 1800 revolutions per minute, while a combustion engine allows to go to 7000 revolutions per minute. The gearbox evens out these differences. The first gearboxes were designed with cog wheels of different sizes, and the driver chose to change gear (i.e. transfer the motor power to another cog wheel in the gearbox) by manually clutching the gear box.
Very soon different people experimented with automatic gearboxes, where hydraulic systems took care of selecting another cog wheel in the gearbox.
In 1958 the Dutch car make Daf came up with a continuously variable transmission, in which a belt connects two conical pulleys. By adjusting the belt towards the rim or towards the spindle of the one cone (and the other way round on the other cone), the transmission allowed automatically selecting a seamless ratio between input and output.

Answer: Mary Anderson

There were several people who demanded patent for windscreen wipers around the start of the 20th Century, but most sources give the credit to Mary Anderson.
The carriages form the era of King Charles II were steered by a driver outside the passenger compartment. As the driver always sat in open air, he had no windscreen before him and thus could not use windscreen wipers.
When the first cars appeared around 1880 - 1890, the driver was seated inside the passenger compartment - and this has been a constant since then. Soon a windscreen was installed before the driver's seat, to prevent his sight being hampered by dust, mud and rain. But of course this windscreen got dirty over time.
So several people sought a solution. In 1903 the American Mary Anderson came up with the windscreen wipers that wipe in a semi-circular movement, while the Irish James Apjohn chose for brushes with only a vertical movement.
Henry Royce was one of the founders of Rolls-Royce.
Alec Issigonis designed the Mini.
Nikola Tesla was an electric engineer, whose name was used for a brand of electric vehicles founded in 2003.

Answer: True

When King Charles II reigned, there were only few carriages and so the parking problem never was acute. But since the 1960s the number of cars has grown to formidable quantities, while there arose also more buildings in the western world. This has made parking a car a difficult adventure.
The first automatic parking devices with which car manufacturers have experimented, were intended to facilitate parking in parallel lines to the driveway. The experimental device forced all wheels to turn to perpendicular angles, so the car could move into a parking space sideways. But these devices were never commercialized, because it forced too much on the wheels and tyres.
In 1999 Lexus (the luxury brand in the Toyota concern) came up with the first commercialized automated parking assistant. A central computer receives input by backup cameras, rear sensors and front sensors, determines whether the chosen space is large enough to accommodate the car (calculating also the space needed for manoeuvring into the parking space), and controls the gearbox, the (slow) speed needed, the steering angle. Then the car parks itself.
Similar parking assistance is provided on various of the more expensive types of for instance BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Lincoln and Audi.

Answer: Global Positioning System

The GPS (Global Positioning System) is the American version of satellite navigation, although many people use the abbreviation GPS for any system of satellite navigation - even these developed by other countries.
Imagine that you are to meet someone at a certain address on a set time. During the reign of King Charles II, you had to take a carriage to the general direction of the given address, and then ask for instructions. This method was cumbersome, and the military could not rely on such method in case of advancing in enemy territory: the foes might give deceiving instructions, tear down or reroute road signs, and so on.
When the first telecom satellites were launched in the 1960s, someone in the American Navy had the brilliant idea of equipping satellites with a continuous signal that could be picked up by ships. By triangulating between the signals of at least three satellites, ship captains could determine quite exactly where they were, even if there was no land in sight. Soon the American Ministry of Defence expanded the GPS to aircraft and road vehicles, and made the technology available for civilian use.

Answer: Volvo

Safety belts are designed to restrain the driver's and passenger's bodies from collisions with the interior of the car in case of an emergency brake or a car crash. The first type developed was a two-point safety belt, either worn over the waist (and thus quite ineffective to protect the head) or over the shoulder. These lap belts or shoulder sashes were commercialized by (among others) Ford and Saab, but with low success.
It was the Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin, working for Volvo, who combined the lap belt and the shoulder sash into one single, three-point safety belt. This type of belt (that soon became the standard) is significantly more efficient than a two-point safety belt, as long-term statistical analysis of car crashes has shown.
Bohlin's three-point safety belt was installed in every Volvo 122 from 1959, and every subsequent model by Volvo. In a gesture towards more road safety, Volvo made the patent free for all to use.

Answer: ABS

ABS is the abbreviation for anti-lock braking system.
When you need to stop your car quickly, it is recommended (for cars without ABS) that you pump the brake pedal rhythmically. The brakes block the wheels, releasing the brake pedal allows you to steer the wheels. Of course this technique of emergency braking a car is not evident for most drivers, so engineers developed an electronic component that does exactly the same as you ought to do (and with more rapid cycles of braking and steering).
LPG is Liquefied Petroleum Gas, a fossil fuel that in some cars is used instead of the normal petrol or diesel in combustion engines.
ETA is the abbreviation frequently used in (aerial) transport: estimated time of arrival.
JIT is short for "Just in Time", the motto professional transporters propose to limit the necessary stocks.