200 Fun Facts About Engineering

Which German-born engineer designed the Brooklyn Bridge and died of tetanus early in construction?

His foot was crushed by a ferry while he surveyed the tower site; the bridge that eventually opened in 1883 was the longest suspension span in the world.

Which illness, later known as 'the bends', left Washington Roebling bedridden while overseeing the Brooklyn Bridge?

Workers digging the tower foundations inside pressurised caissons came up too fast; the same mystery illness had killed 15 men on the Eads Bridge in St. Louis.

What did Emily Warren Roebling carry as a symbol of victory on the first carriage ride across the Brooklyn Bridge?

She had taught herself catenary curves, materials strength and cable construction to relay her husband's instructions to the engineers on site.

The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of which event?

The date marked 100 years since the storming of the Bastille; the tower's 18,038 iron pieces were joined with 2.5 million rivets.

The Eiffel Tower is made mainly of which material?

The metalwork weighs about 7,300 tonnes, and the top can lean up to 18 cm away from the sun on hot days as the sunny side expands.

Which country began digging the Panama Canal in 1881 and gave up eight years later?

The effort was led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, fresh from Suez; an estimated 22,000 workers died before the United States took over in 1904.

Which US Army engineer directed the Panama Canal to completion in 1914, two years ahead of target?

The canal's Pacific and Atlantic locks lift ships 26 metres up to Gatun Lake, an artificial reservoir made by damming the Chagres River.

Hoover Dam holds back which river on the Nevada-Arizona border?

The reservoir it created, Lake Mead, was for decades the largest in the United States by volume.

How did engineers stop Hoover Dam's concrete from taking over a century to cool and cure?

Once each column stopped contracting, the pipes were pumped full of grout; the dam was known as Boulder Dam from 1933 until Congress restored the Hoover name in 1947.

Which principal engineer did most of the Golden Gate Bridge's calculations, only to be dismissed by Joseph Strauss?

The graceful Art Deco towers were shaped by Irving Morrow, a residential architect who was almost unknown when he got the job.

How tall is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building since 2010?

Its Y-shaped plan is a 'buttressed core': three wings brace a hexagonal centre so the tower resists wind without a heavy steel frame.

Which firm's engineers, led by Bill Baker, designed the Burj Khalifa's buttressed-core system?

The same Chicago firm employed Fazlur Khan, whose tube structures made the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center possible a generation earlier.

The Channel Tunnel was bored mostly through which conveniently soft, watertight rock layer?

Eleven tunnel boring machines dug three parallel bores, two for trains and a smaller service tunnel between them, before the 1994 opening by Queen Elizabeth II and François Mitterrand.

The Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge for two decades, crosses the gorge of which river?

Engineer Michel Virlogeux and architect Norman Foster's cable-stayed design tops out at 343 metres, taller than the Eiffel Tower.

What nickname did the Tacoma Narrows Bridge earn from its wobbling deck before it collapsed in 1940?

It had been open just four months; a 40 mph wind set the deck twisting in opposite directions until it tore apart.

Modern analysis attributes the 1940 Tacoma Narrows collapse mainly to which phenomenon?

The only fatality was Tubby, a three-legged cocker spaniel left in a car on the deck; the designer, Leon Moisseiff, had also consulted on the Golden Gate.

The 1986 Challenger disaster was traced to which failed components in the right rocket booster?

Overnight temperatures had dropped to about 18 °F; the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff.

Which physicist on the Rogers Commission dunked rubber in ice water on live TV to show why Challenger's seals failed?

Morton Thiokol engineers Roger Boisjoly and Allan McDonald had argued against launching in the cold the night before.

How many people died when two walkways collapsed at Kansas City's Hyatt Regency in 1981?

A last-minute change from single continuous hanger rods to two offset rods doubled the load on the fourth-floor connections, which could carry only 30% of what they were asked to hold.

Titanic's iron rivets were found to be unusually brittle because they contained high levels of what?

The ship's 16 compartments were designed to keep her afloat with two, or in some combinations four, flooded; the iceberg opened six.

Brunel was first engineer of which railway, laying its London-Bristol line to a wide 7 ft gauge?

Its Box Tunnel was the longest in the world when it opened, despite claims it could never be built safely.

Which industrialist licensed Tesla's induction motor patents in 1888, sparking the 'war of the currents'?

The deal was worth $60,000 in cash and stock; Tesla had quit Edison's Machine Works after only about six months over a pay dispute.

The SI unit named after Tesla measures which quantity?

The name was adopted in 1960; the inductance unit is the henry, charge is the coulomb and conductance the siemens.

Edison's Pearl Street Station, switched on in 1882, delivered what kind of electricity?

Edison held 1,093 US patents, but the invention that first made him famous was the phonograph of 1877.

The screw pump traditionally credited to Archimedes of Syracuse was designed to do what?

One theory holds that bronze versions were already irrigating the Hanging Gardens in Assyria centuries before Archimedes, though the evidence is contested.

For which Babbage machine did Ada Lovelace write her 'Notes' containing the first computer program?

Her seven notes, lettered A to G, ran three times longer than the French article they annotated; the US Department of Defense named its Ada language after her.

Elijah McCoy, the Edinburgh-trained son of escaped slaves, patented what device for locomotives in 1872?

Despite his mechanical engineering training, the Michigan Central Railroad would only hire him as a fireman and oiler; the phrase 'the real McCoy' is often, and wrongly, tied to him.

Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil's 1942 frequency-hopping patent was for guiding which weapon?

The idea of hopping between channels to defeat jamming underpins Bluetooth and early Wi-Fi; the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave the pair a Pioneer Award in 1997.

Steel is an alloy of iron and which element?

Henry Bessemer's 1855 process made it cheap in bulk; add at least 11% chromium and you get stainless steel.

Concrete is usually reinforced with steel bars because alone it is weak under which load?

Reinforced concrete dates to Joseph Monier in 1849; concrete is the second-most-used substance on Earth after water.

Who patented Portland cement in England in 1824?

The name came from a resemblance to Portland stone from Dorset, not from any link to the city in Oregon.

Roman concrete owed its durability, and its ability to set in seawater, to which ingredient?

Research in 2023 found that lime clasts in the mix react with water seeping into cracks and grow new calcium carbonate to reseal them.

Roman aqueducts moved water across hundreds of kilometres using which force alone?

Rome's first, the Aqua Appia of 312 BC, fed a fountain at the cattle market; the Pont du Gard in France is the grandest surviving aqueduct bridge.

Roughly how many stone blocks were quarried to build Khufu's Great Pyramid of Giza?

At 146.6 metres it stayed the tallest human-made structure for more than 3,700 years, and its base sides differ by an average of just 58 millimetres.

Which of these is NOT one of the six classical simple machines defined by Renaissance scientists?

The full six are the lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge and screw; Archimedes' lever boast was 'give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth'.

Trusses are built from which shape, which cannot deform without a member changing length?

In an ideal truss every member carries pure axial load; a Warren truss alternates equilateral ones up and down along the span.

What is the wedge-shaped block at the top of a masonry arch that locks the others in place?

Each wedge-shaped block in the ring is a voussoir; the outward push the arch exerts at its feet is called thrust and is what abutments exist to resist.

The SI unit of inductance is named after which American scientist?

He was the first secretary of the Smithsonian; the gray and the sievert, both radiation dose units, honour Britain's Louis Harold Gray and Sweden's Rolf Sievert.

In what year did Georg Ohm publish the book setting out the law that current is proportional to voltage?

Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet was so poorly received in Germany at first that Ohm resigned his teaching post.

Who first worked out the idea behind Young's modulus, in 1727?

Giordano Riccati then ran the first experiments in the modern form in 1782, a full 25 years before Thomas Young.

The Haber-Bosch process makes which chemical from nitrogen and hydrogen?

It runs over an iron catalyst at 300-500 °C and up to 180 bar; nearly half the nitrogen in your body arrived through it.

At which laboratory did John Bardeen and Walter Brattain demonstrate the first working transistor in 1947?

The MOSFET that followed in 1959 has become the most manufactured object in history, at more than 13 sextillion units by 2018.

Moore's law observes that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly how often?

Gordon Moore's 1965 article, 'Cramming more components onto integrated circuits', originally said every year; he co-founded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

What creature was the 'first actual case of bug being found' in Grace Hopper's 1947 log?

It had jammed a relay in the Harvard Mark II; the logbook page is held by the Smithsonian.

James Watt's key 1764 improvement to the steam engine was to condense spent steam where?

Keeping the cylinder hot vastly cut fuel use; Watt also adopted 'horsepower', now about 745.7 watts, to sell engines against draft horses.

Which rule from the 1738 book Hydrodynamica says a fluid's pressure drops where it speeds up?

It is the standard classroom explanation for why a carburettor draws fuel and why a shower curtain billows inward.

Which crossing overtook Japan's Akashi Kaikyo Bridge as the longest suspension span in 2022?

The Akashi span of 1,991 metres links Kobe with Awaji Island and had held the title since 1998.

Which Bangladeshi-American engineer pioneered the 'tube' system behind the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center?

Sometimes called the Einstein of structural engineering, his ideas underlie most buildings over 40 storeys built since the 1960s.

What did the US National Academy of Engineering rank as the top engineering achievement of the 20th century?

Neil Armstrong announced the list in February 2000; the automobile and airplane took second and third, and computers came in eighth.

US National Engineers Week coincides with the birthday of which president, regarded as the nation's first engineer?

The National Society of Professional Engineers founded it in 1951; Hoover and Carter were the two presidents who actually trained as engineers.

The word 'engineering' derives from ingenium, a word in which language?

Ingenium meant 'innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention'.

Which Roman engineer wrote that all buildings need firmitas, utilitas and venustas?

His De architectura later inspired Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.

Imhotep, an Egyptian chancellor of the 27th century BC, is credited as possible architect of what?

He was also high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis.

Which ancient Greek engineer described the aeolipile, a steam-powered spinning sphere?

His work on automated devices is seen as some of the first formal research into cybernetics.

The Antikythera mechanism, discovered in 1901, is the oldest known example of what?

The 2nd-century BC device could predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades ahead.

Chinese polymath Zhang Heng presented which instrument to the court in AD 132?

It could reportedly indicate the direction of an earthquake 500 km away.

Al-Jazari's 1206 book of 50 mechanical devices is known in English by what short title?

One of his most famous inventions is the elephant clock.

The Pont du Gard carried water about 50 km to which Roman colony?

Its three tiers of arches stand 48.8 m high.

Construction of the Colosseum began under Vespasian and was completed in AD 80 under whom?

It is the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built.

The Roman road network comprised more than how many kilometres of roads?

Over 80,500 km of that was stone-paved.

The Great Wall of China's collective fortifications span roughly how far in total?

The best-known sections were built by the Ming dynasty.

Machu Picchu is believed to have been built around 1450 as an estate for which Inca emperor?

Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.

The trebuchet first appeared in the 4th century BC in which country?

The counterweight version arrived around the Mediterranean in the 12th century.

The earliest known lifting device, the shadoof, was used around 3000 BCE where?

Later Roman cranes used human treadwheels to lift heavier weights.

Opened in 1781, the famous bridge at Coalbrookdale over the Severn was the first major bridge made of what?

It became a symbol of the Industrial Revolution.

Whose steam locomotive hauled the world's first locomotive-drawn railway journey at Penydarren in 1804?

Trevithick also developed the first high-pressure steam engine.

Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 competition to pick locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway?

It was designed and built by Robert Stephenson at Forth Street Works, Newcastle.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830, holds which distinction?

It was also the first to rely exclusively on steam locomotives and to carry mail.

Standard railway gauge, 1,435 mm, is also known by the name of which engineer?

Brunel's Great Western used a much wider 7 ft gauge instead.

Thomas Telford was dubbed the 'Colossus of Roads' and became the first president of which body?

He held the post for 14 years until his death.

Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct carries a canal over which river?

Its cast-iron troughs run over nineteen arches, 38 m above the valley floor.

Brunel's first major project, which was cancelled after a collapse nearly killed him, was what?

It was completed later without him; the Clifton bridge was finished only after his death.

Brunel's SS Great Eastern was repurposed in the 1860s to do what?

At her 1858 launch she was by far the largest ship ever built.

Joseph Bazalgette built London's sewer system in response to which 1858 event?

His system helped end London's cholera epidemics and still underpins the city's sewerage.

The 1856 Bessemer process made cheap steel by blowing what through molten pig iron?

The oxidation removed excess carbon and other impurities.

Henry Bessemer helped establish which English town as 'Steel City'?

His process dominated steel-making for almost a century.

Which 1800 Henry Maudslay invention allowed thread sizes to be standardised for the first time?

The original is in London's Science Museum.

Joseph Whitworth's 1841 screw thread standard fixed the thread angle at how many degrees?

His Whitworth rifle is considered one of the earliest sniper rifles.

Joseph Bramah, the locksmith who invented the hydraulic press, also improved which household fixture?

Henry Maudslay was made manager of Bramah's workshop at just nineteen.

In 1788, James Watt adapted which device to regulate steam admission in his engine?

Christiaan Huygens had used it in the 17th century to regulate windmills and water wheels.

Elisha Otis's 1853 invention prevented elevators from doing what if the cable failed?

He installed the first passenger safety elevator in a New York store in 1857.

Ford's assembly line was introduced by William 'Pa' Klann after visiting what kind of facility in Chicago?

He was inspired by the 'disassembly line' where carcasses moved along a conveyor.

Which French gunsmith began producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable flintlock parts around 1778?

He worked under the patronage of artillery reformer Gribeauval.

The Forth Bridge, completed in 1890, is which type of bridge?

It held the longest cantilever span until Canada's Quebec Bridge in 1919.

The Quebec Bridge collapsed during construction in which two years?

88 people died; its 549 m span is still the longest cantilever span in the world.

Which British firm designed and built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, opened in 1932?

The Middlesbrough firm reused ideas from its own Tyne Bridge.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge earned what nickname because of its arch design?

It carries rail, road, bicycle and pedestrian traffic across the harbour.

Completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge crosses which river?

It was the first bridge across the Mississippi south of the Missouri.

Swiss-American engineer Othmar Ammann designed which New York crossing, opened in 1931?

He also designed the Verrazzano-Narrows and Bayonne bridges.

On its opening day in June 2000, London's Millennium Bridge was closed because of what?

Modifications took almost two years and cost £2.2 million over budget.

The Øresund Bridge links Sweden to which artificial island in the middle of the strait?

A four-kilometre tunnel completes the link to Denmark.

The 55 km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, completed in 2018, includes how many artificial islands?

It is the world's longest sea crossing.

The world's longest bridge, the 164.8 km Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, carries which high-speed line?

Guinness recognised it as the longest bridge in 2011.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is built in the form of what curve?

Eero Saarinen designed the 630-foot stainless-steel arch in 1947.

A catenary is the curve formed by what?

It also appears as the cross-section of a soap film between two rings.

Which 57 km Alpine rail link, opened in 2016, is the world's longest railway tunnel?

It is the first flat, low-level route through the Alps.

Japan's Seikan Tunnel runs beneath which body of water?

It opened in 1988 and links Honshu with Hokkaido.

Who developed the first successful tunnelling shield, used under the Thames from 1825?

Tunnel boring machines are nicknamed 'moles'.

Which French diplomat formed the Compagnie de Suez in 1858 to build the canal?

The canal opened on 17 November 1869 after ten years of construction.

The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, was the first navigable waterway from the Atlantic to where?

It runs between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.

The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest power station, with what installed capacity?

It spans the Yangtze near Yichang in Hubei province.

The Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River is jointly run by Brazil and which country?

Its 20 generating units provide 700 MW each.

Grand Coulee Dam, the largest US power station by capacity, sits on which river?

A third powerhouse completed in 1974 raised its capacity to 6,809 MW.

The Thames Barrier, protecting London from North Sea surges, has been operational since when?

It is closed during dangerous high tides and reopened at low tide.

The Dutch Delta Works were built between 1954 and 1997 in South Holland and which other province?

The aim was to shorten the coastline so fewer dikes had to be raised.

For how many years did the CN Tower hold the record as the world's tallest free-standing structure?

It was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa in 2007.

Which architectural firm designed the Empire State Building in the Art Deco style?

It was built between 1930 and 1931.

Which architect designed the Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004?

They remain the world's tallest twin skyscrapers.

Taipei 101 has the world's largest wind damper. How wide is it?

The tower stands just 200 m from a major fault line.

How many storeys does the Willis (Sears) Tower have?

It opened in 1973 as the world's tallest building and held the title for nearly 25 years.

One World Trade Center's symbolic height in feet matches which year?

The spire's final component was installed on May 10, 2013.

How tall is the 128-storey Shanghai Tower?

It was the world's second-tallest building from 2015 until Merdeka 118 opened.

Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia was designed to be the first building to reach what height?

Its design height would top the Burj Khalifa's 828 metres by at least 180 metres.

The Sydney Opera House was formally opened in 1973, how many years after Utzon won the design competition?

Utzon resigned amid cost and schedule overruns; Peter Hall's team completed it.

Ove Arup, founder of the Arup engineering firm, was born in which English city?

His parents were a Danish vet and his Norwegian wife.

Beijing's 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium was completed in June 2008 for which event?

It seats 80,000, or 91,000 with temporary seating.

Kansai International Airport's Terminal 1, the world's longest airport terminal, was designed by whom?

The airport sits on an artificial island in Osaka Bay and opened in 1994.

Dubai's Palm Jumeirah is divided into the trunk, the fronds and what third area?

The Palm Islands developments will add 520 km to Dubai's shoreline.

The first geodesic dome was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld for which company?

Buckminster Fuller later coined the term 'geodesic' and patented the idea in 1954.

Who patented prestressed concrete in 1928?

Prestressing puts the concrete in compression before loading so it can resist tension.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa began leaning during construction in which century?

Soft ground could not support the bell tower's weight; it now leans nearly four degrees.

Robert Hooke first stated his law of elasticity in 1676 in what form?

He revealed the solution in 1678: ut tensio, sic vis, 'as the extension, so the force'.

In materials science, fatigue is the growth of cracks caused by what kind of loading?

Metal fatigue destroyed two de Havilland Comet airliners in the 1950s.

A factor of safety expresses what about a system?

It is the ratio of absolute strength to actual applied load.

Aluminium is smelted by the Hall-Héroult process, which dissolves alumina in what molten substance?

The alumina itself comes from bauxite via the Bayer process.

Kevlar, developed by Stephanie Kwolek in 1965, was first used commercially in place of steel in what?

By strength-to-weight ratio it is five times stronger than steel.

Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic, was developed by Leo Baekeland in 1907 in which New York town?

The chemical industry at the time focused mostly on cloth dyes and explosives.

DuPont announced nylon in 1938, shortly before which event?

The research programme had begun in 1927.

The word 'vulcanization' was suggested by William Brockedon in reference to which god?

The process treats natural rubber with sulfur and heat.

The first modern patent on ball bearings went to Welsh ironmaster Philip Vaughan of which town?

The Conrad-style bearing followed with a British patent in 1903.

Which mathematician is credited with the saying 'Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world'?

A lever is a rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or fulcrum.

The slide rule was developed in the 17th century based on whose work on logarithms?

William Oughtred and others built the first slide rules.

The finite element method traces back to early-1940s work by Alexander Hrennikoff and whom?

Courant divided domains into finite triangular sub-regions to solve torsion problems.

Francis Wenham built the first enclosed wind tunnel in which year?

Benjamin Robins had earlier used a whirling arm to measure drag.

The volt is named after Alessandro Volta, who invented what in 1799?

He also discovered methane after reading Franklin's paper on 'flammable air'.

Michael Faraday's discoveries include electrolysis, diamagnetism and which principle behind generators?

He also discovered benzene and coined 'anode', 'cathode' and 'ion'.

The first constant-potential transformer was invented in which year?

Transformers made long-distance AC transmission practical.

The ampere is defined as one what per second passing a point?

It honours André-Marie Ampère, a father of electromagnetism alongside Ørsted.

One joule is the work done when a force of one newton moves a body how far?

It is named after English physicist James Prescott Joule.

Roughly what average power output can a labourer sustain over an eight-hour day?

The watt honours James Watt, who improved the Newcomen engine in 1776.

Who was the first woman professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States?

She was also the country's first female professor of electrical engineering.

Hertha Ayrton won the Royal Society's Hughes Medal for her work on electric arcs and what?

She registered 26 patents, 13 of them on arc lamps and electrodes.

The IEEE was formed in 1963 by merging the IRE with which older body, dating from 1884?

The AIEE dated to 1884; the IRE had grown larger by the mid-1950s.

The American Society of Civil Engineers, the oldest US national engineering society, was founded in what year?

It is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.

Canada's Iron Ring ceremony for engineers was written by which poet?

The ring is worn on the little finger of the working hand.

Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit on 12 September 1958 at which company?

Robert Noyce at Fairchild independently developed a silicon version soon after.

The Intel 4004, released in 1971, was a CPU of how many bits?

Design work was led by new Intel hire Federico Faggin.

ENIAC, completed in 1945, was designed to calculate what for the US Army?

John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert designed it.

Konrad Zuse's Z3, operational in May 1941, is regarded as the world's first what?

His Z4 later became the world's first commercial computer.

Claude Shannon's 1937 MIT master's thesis applied which kind of algebra to relay circuits?

It established the theory behind digital circuits; he later founded information theory.

On what date in 1989 did Tim Berners-Lee propose the information management system that became the Web?

He implemented the first HTTP client-server communication that November.

The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer based on what?

Its software was stored in hand-woven core rope memory.

Margaret Hamilton, who led Apollo's on-board flight code, coined which term?

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Charles Kao laid the groundwork for fibre-optic communication in 1966 at a lab in which English town?

He worked at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories.

Who built the first laser, in 1960, at Hughes Research Laboratories?

'Laser' began as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by which organisation?

It stands for radio detection and ranging.

The first official transatlantic telegram in 1858 was sent by Queen Victoria to which US president?

Cyrus West Field's Atlantic Telegraph Company built the cable.

Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with which German physicist?

They were honoured for contributions to wireless telegraphy.

Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first US patent for the telephone on which date?

His research into hearing and speech led him to experiment with hearing devices.

The GPS prototype satellite launched in 1978; when did the full 24-satellite constellation become operational?

The project was launched by the US Department of Defense in 1973.

Unimate, the first industrial robot, went to work in 1961 on an assembly line of which company?

George Devol invented it and co-founded Unimation with Joseph Engelberger.

The Segway self-balancing transporter, launched in 2001, was invented by whom?

It grew out of the self-balancing iBOT wheelchair.

Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen, considered the first practical modern automobile, dates from which year?

He patented it in 1886, the year he first drove it in public.

Nikolaus Otto's four-stroke compressed-charge engine, the 'Otto cycle', appeared in which year?

Gottlieb Daimler later hired a lawyer to avoid paying Otto's company royalties.

The Wright Flyer's first controlled powered flight on December 17, 1903 took place at what site?

It lies four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Igor Sikorsky's Russky Vityaz of 1913 was the first successful aircraft with how many engines?

He later became a pioneer of the practical helicopter in America.

Hans von Ohain's engine powered the world's first jet-propelled aircraft, the He 178, built by which firm?

It flew on 27 August 1939, some years after Whittle's British patent.

The de Havilland Comet, the first commercial jet airliner, first flew in which year?

Two later crashes were traced to metal fatigue in the airframe.

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947 flying which aircraft?

He named it Glamorous Glen after his girlfriend Glennis.

Kelly Johnson's Lockheed Skunk Works team built its first prototype, the P-38, in what former building?

He later led the design of the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird.

Who led the Boeing 747 design team after leaving the 737 programme in 1965?

The first 747 rolled out of the purpose-built Everett Plant in September 1968.

Concorde was powered by four Olympus 593 turbojets built by Rolls-Royce and which French firm?

It entered service on 21 January 1976 with Air France and British Airways.

Which airline took the first delivery of the Airbus A380 in October 2007?

It remains the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-decker.

The first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 shortly before which event?

The Tōkaidō route links Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka.

A modified TGV set the wheeled-train speed record of 574.8 km/h in which year?

The TGV has never recorded a passenger fatality on normal high-speed service.

The Shanghai maglev's operational speed record of 431 km/h uses technology from which country?

Japan's experimental L0 Series set the overall record of 603 km/h in 2015.

Bagger 288, the bucket-wheel excavator that became the heaviest land vehicle in 1978, was built by whom?

It superseded the 12,700-tonne Marion 6360.

Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket on which date?

He and his team launched 34 rockets between 1926 and 1941.

The V-2 became the first artificial object to reach space by crossing which boundary in 1944?

Wernher von Braun co-developed it at Peenemünde.

Sergei Korolev directed development of which rocket, the world's first ICBM?

Modified R-7s launched Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin.

How many Saturn V rockets were launched between 1967 and 1973?

Nine of them sent 24 astronauts toward the Moon.

Which company oversaw development of the Apollo Lunar Module?

It remains the only crewed vehicle to land anywhere beyond Earth.

Apollo 13's Moon landing was aborted after what exploded two days into the mission?

Jim Lovell commanded, with Jack Swigert and Fred Haise.

Katherine Johnson calculated trajectories for which astronaut, the first American in orbit?

Her 33-year NASA career was dramatised in Hidden Figures.

The two Voyager probes launched in 1977 to exploit what?

They explored Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 went on to Uranus and Neptune.

Hubble's main mirror was ground incorrectly, causing which optical flaw?

The 2.4 m mirror's fault was corrected on a 1993 servicing mission.

The Large Hadron Collider's tunnel is how long in circumference?

It lies up to 175 m beneath the France-Switzerland border near Geneva.

The first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place on 2 December 1942 in what?

Enrico Fermi led the experiment for the Manhattan Project.

The Trinity test's implosion device shared its design with which bomb?

It was detonated on July 16, 1945.

The Tay Bridge collapsed in a storm on 28 December 1879 as a train crossed. Who designed it?

Its iron piers were narrower and less braced than his earlier designs.

The 1928 failure of the St. Francis Dam killed at least how many people?

The dam stored water for the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Boston's 1919 Great Molasses Flood sent a wave through the North End at roughly what speed?

The 2.3-million-gallon tank burst, killing 21 people.

Ronan Point, a London tower block, partially collapsed in 1968 after what?

One corner of the 22-storey block fell only two months after it opened.

The Silver Bridge, which collapsed in 1967, connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with which state?

It was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge named for its aluminium paint.

The NTSB blamed the 2007 Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse on which excessively thin component?

13 people died in the evening rush-hour failure.

The Therac-25 radiation machine gave overdoses up to how many times higher than normal because of race conditions?

At least six incidents occurred between 1985 and 1987.

The Swedish warship Vasa sank in 1628 after sailing roughly how far on her maiden voyage?

She was salvaged largely intact in 1961 after 333 years on the seabed.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred while drilling at which prospect in the Gulf of Mexico?

The explosion killed 11 people and lit a fireball visible 40 miles away.

Mary Anderson's 1903 patent described a 'window cleaning device' now known as what?

It was a hand-operated blade for clearing snow, ice or sleet.

Gustave Eiffel built the internal metal framework of which famous monument?

Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the copper-clad statue, dedicated in 1886.