Q 01/05

Whose wife Bertha took his three-wheeled Motorwagen on the first long-distance car journey in 1888 without telling him?

A) Gottlieb Daimler

B) Wilhelm Maybach

C) Karl Benz

D) Armand Peugeot

Answer · why

C) Karl Benz

Karl Benz's wife cleared a blocked fuel line with her hat pin on the 65-mile drive and bought more fuel at a pharmacy. She took their two teenage sons...

Q 02/05

What did US and Canadian railroads introduce on November 18, 1883, some 35 years before Congress made it law?

A) Standard time zones

B) A common track gauge

C) Automatic air brakes

D) Steel passenger cars

Answer · why

A) Standard time zones

Standard time zones began as a private railroad agreement, set off by a telegraph signal from an observatory in Pittsburgh. Congress only adopted them...

Q 03/05

Which invention did Elisha Gray and a teacher of the deaf both take to the US Patent Office on February 14, 1876?

A) Phonograph

B) Typewriter

C) Microphone

D) Telephone

Answer · why

D) Telephone

The telephone patent went to Alexander Graham Bell, whose lawyer filed on the same day that Gray's lodged a caveat with a similar diagram. Who reached...

Q 04/05

Which inventor's Pearl Street Station began selling electricity to 82 customers in Manhattan in 1882?

A) Charles Brush

B) Thomas Edison

C) Elihu Thomson

D) Joseph Swan

Answer · why

B) Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison's plant started with six dynamos and a load of just 400 lamps. Within two years it was lighting more than 10,000 for 508 customers.

Q 05/05

Which carmaker's five-dollar daily wage of 1914 more than doubled the pay of most of his workers?

A) Henry Ford

B) Ransom Olds

C) Walter Chrysler

D) Louis Chevrolet

Answer · why

A) Henry Ford

Henry Ford wanted to end the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men a year to fill 100 jobs. The raise worked: Detroit's best mechani...