Inventions and Inventors Quiz and Trivia
Read Time: 1 minute
Readability: Accessible (Clear & approachable)
Time to test your inventions, inventors and patent knowledge. As always there is no prize, so try without Google. Post your score in the comment thread. Good luck!
I have a BS in Information Sciences from UW-Milwaukee. I’ve helped manage Physics Forums for over 22 years. I enjoy learning and discussing new scientific developments. STEM communication and policy are big interests as well. Currently a Sr. SEO Specialist at Shopify and writer at importsem.com
Deciding on the first inventor is always a difficult task. In this case, William Friese-Green filed for a patent in 1889 in England and sent details to Edison who filed for a different design in 1892. (see below)
Edison is considered the first to build a commercial system first shown in 1893.
http://edison.rutgers.edu/pictures.htm
————————————————————————-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Friese-Greene
On 21 June 1889, Friese-Greene was issued patent no. 10131 for his camera.[9] It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using paper and celluloid film. A report on the camera was published in the British Photographic News on 28 February 1890. On 18 March, Friese-Greene sent a clipping of the story to Thomas Edison, whose laboratory had been developing a motion picture system, with a peephole viewer, christened the Kinetoscope. The report was reprinted in Scientific American on 19 April.[10] Friese-Greene worked on a series of moving picture cameras until early 1891, but although many individuals recount seeing his projected images privately, he did not ever give a successful public projection of moving pictures. In 1890 he developed a camera with Frederick Varley to shoot stereoscopic moving images. The camera ran at a slower frame rate, and although the 3-D arrangement images worked, there are no records of projection.[11] Friese-Greene’s experiments in the field of motion pictures were at the expense of his other business interests and in 1891 he was declared bankrupt. To cover his debts he had already sold the rights to the 1889 moving picture camera patent for £500 (£60,000 in 2016 terms). The renewal fee was never paid and the patent eventually lapsed.[12]
Edison's patent on the kinetoscope was granted in 1897 with "Application filed August 24, 1891. Serial No. 403,534. "At least the French patent was seemingly granted earlier:
Léon Guillaume Bouly (* 1872, †1932) is accepted as a French inventor, who was the originator of the name Cinématographe. On February 12, 1892, under the name of the application filed for a patent on an "appareil reversible de photograph et d'optique for the analysis and the synthesis of the mouvements, the Le Cynématographe Léon Bouly". It came to the French State Patent, number 219'350. On December 27, 1893, a change was made to the name of his apparatus: Cinématographe.
The Cinématographe works with paper and roll film without perforation on the principle of the clamp. The film drive is accomplished with a segmented roller opposite full roller.
When in 1894 the annual fee for the patent had not been paid, the term Cinématographe became common property and in the following year reserved for the brothers Lumière.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Guillaume_Bouly
translated by Google, sorry for the laziness
And even Anschütz has been earlier:
In the summer of 1886 Anschütz was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of War to "take chronophotographies of riders and horses of the Military Riding Institute in Hanover, in order to enable the development of scientific instruction methods for the cavalry school." [2] The 24 electrically interconnected cameras made motion studies he combined to image series. Other series show human movement studies. [3] In 1886 he developed a device for the projection of his series images, which consists of a disk with a diameter of 1.5 meters and 24 glass plates in the format 9 cm × 13 cm. The photo plates illuminated from behind with a Geissler tube are rotated by a crank drive at a speed of 30 frames per second. In 1887 he presented his "electric speed-watcher" – the electro-tachyscope – in the Ministry of Culture in Berlin. Siemens & Halske began commercial production of the device in Berlin, which was widely used from about 1891.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomar_Anschütz + Google
I think this is a case of parallel discoveries and a matter of definition, which version one is willing to accept as a functioning projector.
Unlike Dickson, the Lumières used 35mm film, simple perforation and transporter.I'm notoriously skeptic when it comes to this Edison hype. In my opinion it often doesn't hold the proof. (Opinion: The only aspect of his I admit he was better than his competitors, was his marketing and self glorification skills.) As I read the articles about Edison, it is mainly (French born!) Dickson who deserves the merits, but this is also nitpicking, as he had been Edison's employee.
I protest against Edison. IMO Bouly (patent 1892, acc. 1893) resp. the Lumières (1894, renewed Bouly's patent, demo 1895) were first, maybe Anschütz (1885, 1894) or Reynaud (1892), but not Edison (1894).Are you sure? I used Wikipedia also, and I find 1891.
Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design while his employee W. K. L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.[43] In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.[79]Edison's patent on the kinetoscope was granted in 1897 with "Application filed August 24, 1891. Serial No. 403,534. "
I also found this:
Louis Lumière worked with his brother Auguste to create a motion-picture camera superior to Thomas Edison's kinetograph, which did not have a projector. The Lumières endeavored to correct the flaws they perceived in the kinetograph and the kinetoscope, to develop a machine with both sharper images and better illumination.Poor Edison. In his later years, he spent much of his fortune defending his 1093 US patents , and 1239 patents in other countries. Those numbers are exceeded only by the number of denials of Edison's precedence, and claims that Edison "stole" other people's ideas. He seldom lost in court, but he also seldom succeeded in collecting royalties in Europe. That entire period in the history of patents sounds chaotic and anarchistic.
I invented the ejection seat for helicopters. Can't find a backer!
7 of 13. I disagree with Watt as the inventor of the steam engine, but on a multiple-choice format, the choice was clear.
Question 12 says "Since June 2018, the US Patent Office has issued… patents." The answer is given as 10 million. Seeing as how the 10 millionth patent was granted in June 2018 (228 years after the first patent was granted), I seriously doubt another 10 million have been granted in the last 5 months. Did the question mean "As of June 2018…?"am in accounting and of course dates and ranges of are "important", I understand "as of" to mean the same as "since", I get what is meant, but if i interpret it literally
As at June 2018 the US Patent Office had issued
15%, of which half was just luck, the other common knowledge lol
8 points out of 13 – well, a little bit of luck was there once again :wink:
6 points
Question 12 says "Since June 2018, the US Patent Office has issued… patents." The answer is given as 10 million. Seeing as how the 10 millionth patent was granted in June 2018 (228 years after the first patent was granted), I seriously doubt another 10 million have been granted in the last 5 months. Did the question mean "As of June 2018…?"Yes I will correct, thanks!
Question 12 says "Since June 2018, the US Patent Office has issued… patents." The answer is given as 10 million. Seeing as how the 10 millionth patent was granted in June 2018 (228 years after the first patent was granted), I seriously doubt another 10 million have been granted in the last 5 months. Did the question mean "As of June 2018…?"
Five, although I thought I'd pressed the right answer for the remote control and the results say otherwise (probably fat-fingering on my part).
Missing option for #6: aircraft carrier. :wink:
7/13
Header graphic is not visible. I see this with desktop view enabled in chrome android:I added the image to the question, good luck!
Header graphic is not visible. I see this with desktop view enabled in chrome android:
View attachment 233507
The quiz's header graphic is not visible on a mobile browser.doh! Can you see it on the Insights homepage?
The quiz's header graphic is not visible on a mobile browser, making the last question difficult for mobile users.
There is an issue with the AJAX submission thread. I have reverted to POST and it works again. Enjoy! Post those scores!I hate AJAX. It's a nightmare to debug and update …
There is an issue with the AJAX submission thread. I have reverted to POST and it works again. Enjoy! Post those scores!
No score here.
Each time I hit submit, the top question disappears.
Hit submit once, then #2 is the top, Two submits, then #3 is the top…
Something appears to be broken. Anyone not getting a score when you press submit?Also not getting a score.
Something appears to be broken. Anyone not getting a score when you press submit?Maybe I'm the one to blame. If so, then I discovered a bug. I think I had been first who entered the quiz, ran shortly over it, and then wanted to know the results without doing the quiz and hit "submit" on an empty list. As a result, the first question had vanished, so I had to refresh to get it back.
Now I wanted to test it. And each time I hit "submit", this time with a filled out formula, again the first question on the lists vanishes. I stopped the procedure after I "killed" the first 4 questions. So my suspicion is, that something with the submit button is wrong. The underlying code seems to delete the first list entry instead of an evaluation. Perhaps a fix is to remove it and set it again, if that is possible.
Sorry, uhm no sorry for that: I'm too curious. I continued and "killed" the rest of the questions untile there was an empty sheet. Then I hit "submit" again, and ever since the page has gone in state "loading" – which it can't since all list entries have gone. Funny bug.
Something appears to be broken. Anyone not getting a score when you press submit?No score for me.
Something appears to be broken. Anyone not getting a score when you press submit?
Where’s the score?
I protest against Edison. IMO Bouly resp. the Lumières were first, maybe Anschütz or Reynaud, but never ever Edison.
Not the last time Edison had stolen from others.