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Inventions That Changed the World: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
The Wheel
Wheels appeared about 5,500 years ago. Some of the first turned clay on potters’ wheels; soon after, wheels were carrying carts.
Key fact
The oldest known wooden wheel is about 5,100 years old.
The Printing Press
Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg built a press with movable metal type in Mainz. Books became far cheaper, and ideas spread across Europe fast.
Key fact
The Gutenberg Bible was printed around 1455.
The Light Bulb
Many inventors worked on electric light. In 1879, Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan each made long-lasting bulbs with glowing carbon filaments.
Key fact
LED bulbs use at least 75% less energy than old filament bulbs.
The Telephone
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, which turns a voice into electrical signals and back. Elisha Gray filed a similar design that same day.
Key fact
Bell’s first words on it: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
The Steam Engine
Steam engines turn the heat of burning fuel into motion. James Watt’s improvements in the 1760s and 1770s helped power the Industrial Revolution.
Key fact
The watt, a unit of power, is named after James Watt.
Vaccines
In 1796, Edward Jenner showed that material from cowpox could protect people from smallpox. It was the first vaccine.
Key fact
Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980.
Antibiotics
In 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed mould killing bacteria in a dish. The mould was making penicillin, the first widely used antibiotic.
Key fact
Penicillin was only mass-produced in the 1940s.
Fun facts
Potters’ wheels may have come before wheels on carts.
Gutenberg had trained as a goldsmith, skilled at working metal.
A light bulb in a California fire station has been glowing almost nonstop since 1901.
The first phone call across the United States, from New York to San Francisco, was made in 1915.
Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine was pumping water out of mines by 1712, before James Watt was even born.
Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone.
Early penicillin was so scarce that doctors recovered it from patients’ urine to use again.
Story: The Mould That Waited
The Mould That Waited
1928. Alexander Fleming notices that a mould has killed the bacteria in one of his dishes. He calls its juice penicillin.
Then, for about ten years, little happens: nobody can make enough of it to treat a single patient.
In Oxford, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain learn to purify it. In 1942, Anne Miller, dying of an infection in the US, is saved by a dose.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
The wheel was invented more than 5,000 years ago.
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True. The oldest wheels date to around 3500 BCE.
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Question 2 of 10
Gutenberg invented the very first movable type.
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False. Bi Sheng made clay movable type in China about 400 years earlier.
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Question 3 of 10
Thomas Edison was the only inventor of the light bulb.
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False. Joseph Swan made working bulbs in England at the same time, building on earlier designs.
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Question 4 of 10
Bell patented the telephone in the 1870s.
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True. In 1876, just hours before Elisha Gray filed his own design.
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Question 5 of 10
James Watt built the very first steam engine.
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False. Newcomen’s engine came decades earlier. Watt made steam engines far more efficient.
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Question 6 of 10
Smallpox is the only human disease wiped out worldwide.
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True. The World Health Organization declared it eradicated in 1980.
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Question 7 of 10
Penicillin was mass-produced as soon as Fleming found it.
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False. Mass production only came in the 1940s.
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Question 8 of 10
The Aztecs moved their goods on wheeled carts.
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False. They made wheeled toys, but moved goods by porter and by canoe.
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Question 9 of 10
Printing helped the Protestant Reformation spread.
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True. Luther’s writings were printed in huge numbers and read all over Europe.
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Question 10 of 10
An old filament bulb turns most of its energy into heat, not light.
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True. Only around 5% becomes visible light. The rest is heat.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Inventions That Changed the World has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Smithsonian Magazine — history of technology
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — wheel, printing, incandescent lamp, telephone, steam engine
- WHO — Smallpox eradication
- U.S. Department of Energy — LED lighting
- Science Museum (London) — Alexander Fleming and penicillin
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — eyeglasses, telegraph, pendulum clock, Marconi, Bakelite
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History — The first barcode scan
