Who Invented That?

Fed up with smudges, the journalist pictured here, László Bíró, borrowed the idea of quick-drying newspaper ink. What did he invent?

• The paper clip
• The ballpoint pen
• The pencil sharpener
• The safety pin

Answer: The ballpoint pen. His 1938 ballpoint pen is why the British still call one a 'biro'.

He came back from a holiday in 1928 to find mould like this killing his bacteria. Whose lab was it?

• Alexander Fleming
• Edward Jenner
• Marie Curie
• Louis Pasteur

Answer: Alexander Fleming. Alexander Fleming's untidy bench at St Mary's, London, gave the world penicillin.

His boss scribbled 'Vague but exciting' on the 1989 proposal. Where did Tim Berners-Lee, pictured, work?

• IBM
• NASA
• MIT
• CERN

Answer: CERN. At CERN, the physics lab near Geneva, where scientists needed to share documents.

Two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, made the first powered aeroplane flight in 1903 on the windy dunes near Kitty Hawk. Which US state is that?

• Virginia
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
• Georgia

Answer: North Carolina. The Wright brothers chose North Carolina's Outer Banks for steady wind and soft sand. The first flight, on 17 December 1903, lasted 12 seconds.

On a ship crossing the Mediterranean in 1921, C. V. Raman started the work that won him the 1930 Physics Nobel. What puzzled him?

• The deep blue colour of the sea
• The rolling of the ship in waves
• The twinkling of stars at night
• The salt left behind by sea spray

Answer: The deep blue colour of the sea. He doubted that the sea was blue only because it reflects the sky. Studying how light scatters led him to the Raman effect in 1928.

A chocolate bar melted in this engineer's pocket while he stood near radar kit. What did that lead to?

• The refrigerator
• The television
• The microwave oven
• The electric kettle

Answer: The microwave oven. The radar's magnetron was heating the chocolate. Percy Spencer's company, Raytheon, turned it into the microwave oven.

Tired of her servants chipping the fine china, Josephine Cochrane invented what in 1886?

• The pressure cooker
• The dishwasher
• The vacuum cleaner
• The washing machine

Answer: The dishwasher. She built the first commercially successful dishwasher, with wire racks and water jets.

The Bakhshali manuscript, found buried in a field in 1881 in what is now Pakistan, uses a small dot to mark an empty place in a number. What did that dot become?

• The decimal point
• The digit zero
• The full stop
• The minus sign

Answer: The digit zero. Carbon dating in 2017 placed parts of this birch-bark text in the 3rd or 4th century, making its dot the oldest known placeholder zero.

In 1895 J. C. Bose, pictured, rang a bell and set off a small charge of gunpowder across a Kolkata college, through two walls, with no wires. What did he send?

• Radio waves
• Sound waves
• X-rays
• An electric current

Answer: Radio waves. Very short radio waves, now called millimetre waves. The IEEE honours it as the first millimetre-wave communication experiment.

A Swiss engineer's dog came home covered in these, and he turned them into the fastener shown here. What were they?

• Gecko feet
• Burdock burrs
• Spider silk
• Seaweed

Answer: Burdock burrs. George de Mestral saw the tiny hooks on burdock burrs under a microscope and copied them to make Velcro.

In 1942 a Kodak chemist rejected a new compound for clear gun sights because it stuck to everything it touched. Years later it went on sale as what?

• Sellotape
• Fevicol
• Bubble wrap
• Super Glue

Answer: Super Glue. Harry Coover's cyanoacrylate was too sticky for gun sights. He saw its value in 1951, and it reached shops in 1958 before being renamed Super Glue.

As the company tells it, an 11-year-old left a fruity soda with its stirring stick on the porch on a very cold night in 1905. What did he end up inventing?

• The ice-cream cone
• Candy floss
• The ice lolly
• The slushie

Answer: The ice lolly. Frank Epperson's drink froze around the stick. He patented his 'Epsicle' in the 1920s, and his children helped rename it the Popsicle.

After seeing how hard it was to hook up a home printer, an Intel engineer from Vadodara helped design a plug that now links and charges almost everything. Which?

• HDMI
• Bluetooth
• Ethernet
• USB

Answer: USB. Ajay Bhatt co-created the Universal Serial Bus in the 1990s. He calls himself a co-creator, crediting his Intel team.

College students in the US loved tossing empty pie tins from a bakery in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A toy company named its plastic version after the bakery. What toy?

• The yo-yo
• The boomerang
• The Frisbee
• The hula hoop

Answer: The Frisbee. The tins came from the Frisbie Pie Company. Wham-O changed the spelling to Frisbee to stay clear of trademark trouble.

In 1957 two engineers in New Jersey sealed air between two plastic sheets and tried to sell it as textured wallpaper. It flopped, so what did it become?

• Bubble wrap
• Cling film
• A raincoat
• A swimming float

Answer: Bubble wrap. Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes went on to found Sealed Air, and their bubbles became the world's favourite packing material.