Q 01/05

How did Samuel Slater get Britain's closely guarded spinning-machine designs to America in 1789?

A) Hid them in a trunk

B) Memorized them

C) Bribed a customs officer

D) Mailed them ahead

Answer · why

B) Memorized them

He memorized them during his years as a mill apprentice, because British law banned the export of machine drawings. He then rebuilt the machinery in A...

Q 02/05

Samuel Slater's English hometown rejected a 2001 gift from its American twin: a statue of which toy?

A) Raggedy Ann

B) Cabbage Patch Kid

C) Mr. Potato Head

D) Optimus Prime

Answer · why

C) Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head arrived as a large fibreglass model, and some residents of Belper found it hideous. The statue was refurbished and sent back to the to...

Q 03/05

Samuel Slater's later Massachusetts mills drew power from a lake famous for which American record?

A) Longest place name

B) Deepest natural lake

C) Largest man-made lake

D) Highest-altitude lake

Answer · why

A) Longest place name

The longest place name in the United States is often said to be the lake's 45-letter form, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Slater ...

Q 04/05

Which president, greeting Samuel Slater in 1833, hailed him as the father of American manufactures?

A) Martin Van Buren

B) James Monroe

C) John Quincy Adams

D) Andrew Jackson

Answer · why

D) Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson paid the tribute two years before Slater died, and it stuck. Slater is still widely called the Father of the American Industrial Revolu...

Q 05/05

After he took mill secrets to America, Samuel Slater's hometown branded him Slater the what?

A) Smuggler

B) Deserter

C) Traitor

D) Pirate

Answer · why

C) Traitor

Traitor was the word in Belper, where many townspeople earned their living at the mills whose methods he took abroad. Americans remember him instead a...