Q 01/05

Which of these inventions was patented first?

A) The fax machine

B) The telephone

C) The phonograph

D) The radio

Answer · why

A) The fax machine

The fax machine was patented by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain in 1843, more than three decades before Bell's telephone. By the 1860s a commerci...

Q 02/05

Which came first?

A) The Aztec Empire

B) The University of Oxford

C) The Inca Empire

D) The Ottoman Empire

Answer · why

B) The University of Oxford

The University of Oxford was teaching by 1096 and grew fast after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from Paris. The Aztecs did not found the...

Q 03/05

Which of these 17th-century milestones came first?

A) Newton's Principia

B) The Bank of England

C) Harvard University

D) The Royal Society

Answer · why

C) Harvard University

Harvard University was founded in 1636 by a vote of the Massachusetts colony's court, not by John Harvard, a minister who left the young college his l...

Q 04/05

Which invention came first?

A) The friction match

B) The photograph

C) The electric telegraph

D) The two-wheeled bicycle

Answer · why

D) The two-wheeled bicycle

Karl Drais's foot-propelled 'running machine' of 1817 beat the friction match and the first photograph, both from 1826.

Q 05/05

Which of these 18th-century milestones came first?

A) The US Declaration of Independence

B) The Encyclopaedia Britannica

C) The first manned balloon flight

D) The Guinness brewery

Answer · why

D) The Guinness brewery

The Guinness brewery began on 31 December 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a disused Dublin brewery at £45 a year. American ind...