Inventions
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96 free Inventions trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Inventions trivia questions with answers. Who invented the telephone, the microwave oven, the safety razor, the zipper? This quiz is fifty rounds of exactly that question, from Gutenberg's movable type to Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, with the accidental discoveries (penicillin, the microwave, Post-it Notes) mixed in with the deliberate ones. It suits pub quizzes, classrooms and anyone who likes knowing where everyday things came from. About a third of the questions are ones most people half-remember from school; the rest reward real curiosity about the history of technology. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each question, so the arguments about who really invented radio can be settled on the spot.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who is widely credited with developing the movable type printing press in Europe during the 15th century?
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible, but his financier Johann Fust sued him over the loans and the court handed Fust the workshop.
Q 02Which inventor is most associated with the practical incandescent light bulb of the late 19th century?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison's bulb had a British rival in Joseph Swan's, and in 1883 their competing companies merged into one, nicknamed 'Ediswan'.
Q 03Who was granted the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876?
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell's patent was granted on March 7, 1876, before his telephone had carried clear speech; that came three days later.
Q 04Who is credited with inventing the first successful gasoline-powered automobile in 1886?
Karl Benz
Karl Benz's Motorwagen got its big break in 1888, when his wife Bertha drove it 106 km to Pforzheim without telling him, winning the firm its first sales.
Q 05Which aviation pioneers made the first controlled powered airplane flight?
The Wright brothers
The Wright brothers tossed a coin to pick the pilot; Wilbur won but stalled on his try, so Orville made the historic 120-foot flight in December 1903.
Q 06Who developed the first successful polio vaccine in the 1950s?
Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk's vaccine was declared safe and effective in April 1955, and he never patented it or earned money from it, wanting it spread as widely as possible.
Q 07Who is credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928?
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin's antibacterial properties from a mold contamination in his lab in 1928, ushering in the age of antibiotics.
Q 08Who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989?
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN, developed the World Wide Web in 1989 to facilitate information sharing among scientists.
Q 09Which 1946 machine was the first general-purpose electronic computer?
ENIAC
ENIAC was built because the U.S. Army needed its artillery firing tables computed faster.
Q 10Which 1947 invention revolutionized electronics by enabling the miniaturization of circuits?
Transistor
The transistor was built in 1947 by a team hunting a solid-state replacement for vacuum tubes.
Q 11Who sent the first transatlantic radio signal, from Cornwall to Newfoundland, in 1901?
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi said he heard the letter S through an earpiece on a kite-held antenna, but historians still question whether he really caught the signal.
Q 12Which broadcaster launched the world's first regular 'high-definition' television service in 1936?
BBC
The BBC alternated two rival television systems, John Logie Baird's 240-line one and an electronic 405-line one, then dropped Baird's in early 1937.
Q 13Whose 1839 photographic process produced one-off images on silvered copper plates?
Louis Daguerre
Louis Daguerre's process was bought by the French state and given 'free to the world' on 19 August 1839, yet his agent had patented it in England days earlier.
Q 21Which explosive did the man whose will created the Nobel Prizes patent in 1867?
Dynamite
Dynamite made nitroglycerin safer by mixing it with kieselguhr earth, three years after a nitroglycerin blast in Stockholm killed Alfred Nobel's younger brother Emil.
Q 22Who invented the first true electric battery, a stack of zinc and copper discs, in 1800?
Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Volta built his pile to prove Luigi Galvani wrong: the current came from different metals in contact, not from 'animal electricity' in living tissue.
Q 23Elisha Otis showed off his safety brake for which machine by having its hoisting rope cut while he stood aboard?
Elevator
Q 14What 1793 Eli Whitney invention transformed crop production in the American South?
Cotton gin
The cotton gin made cotton so profitable that demand for land and enslaved workers soared, spreading slavery rather than shrinking it.
Q 15Which toy did engineer Richard James invent after knocking a spring off a shelf?
Slinky
Slinky: the spring 'walked' down instead of just falling, and his wife Betty chose the name after leafing through a dictionary.
Q 16Whitcomb Judson's 1893 'clasp locker' for shoes was an early form of which fastener?
Zipper
Zipper: Judson's clasp locker was unreliable and drew little notice, and only Gideon Sundback's later redesign made the fastener catch on.
Q 17Who is widely recognized for inventing the modern ballpoint pen, patented in 1938?
László Bíró
László Bíró saw that newspaper ink dried fast without smudging, but it was too thick for a fountain pen, so he gave his pen a rolling ball tip.
Q 18The Post-it Note was invented in the 1970s by scientists at which company?
3M
3M chemist Spencer Silver was trying to make a very strong adhesive in 1968 and got a weak, reusable one; in 1974 Art Fry used it to anchor bookmarks in his hymn book.
Q 19What kitchen appliance did radar engineer Percy Spencer invent in the 1940s?
Microwave oven
Microwave oven: Spencer found by chance in 1945 that radar microwaves could heat food, yet Raytheon paid him just a $2 token for the patent.
Q 20Who discovered X-rays in 1895?
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen called them X-rays because the rays were unknown, and he refused to patent the discovery so everyone could benefit.
Elevator: at New York's Crystal Palace in 1854 the platform held after the cable was cut, and trust in safe elevators made skyscrapers practical.
Q 24Which company did microchip pioneer Robert Noyce co-found with Gordon Moore in 1968?
Intel
Intel: Noyce and Moore left Fairchild Semiconductor to start it, and because Noyce died in 1990, he could not share Jack Kilby's 2000 Nobel Prize for the chip.
Q 25Which insulin pioneer gave half his 1923 Nobel Prize money to Charles Best, who had been left out?
Frederick Banting
Frederick Banting shared the prize with lab head John Macleod, and Macleod answered by splitting his own share with James Collip, who had purified the extract.
Q 26Who is credited with inventing the first practical mercury thermometer in 1714?
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's mercury thermometers beat the alcohol ones of his day, and he fixed 0 °F with a freezing mix of ice, water and salt.
Q 27Which execution method did a Buffalo dentist dream up in 1881, hoping it would be more humane than hanging?
Electric chair
Electric chair: its first use, on William Kemmler in 1890, left him alive after the first jolt, and the New York Times called it 'far worse than hanging.'
Q 28Which fibre did DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek discover while seeking a light, strong material for tyres?
Kevlar
Kevlar: her solution was thin and cloudy, unlike normal polymer solutions, but she got a technician to spin it, and the fibre now goes into bulletproof vests.
Q 29Which invention, patented by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952, revolutionized checkout?
Barcode
Barcode: Bernard Silver overheard a supermarket boss asking a Drexel dean for a faster way to check out groceries, and he and Woodland set out to build one.
Q 30Which machine did Barthélemy Thimonnier see destroyed when a mob stormed his Paris uniform factory?
Sewing machine
Sewing machine: the rioters feared his machines would cost them their jobs, and Thimonnier later died in poverty in 1857.