Think Outside the Box With This Inventions Quiz

In 1968, Steve McQueen starred in the action thriller “Bullitt.” In the film, McQueen drives a Ford Mustang in a car chase with some hitmen, and the car he’s driving features one of the first modern bucket seats. McQueen invented the slick-looking single-person seat for that very car chase scene, and patented the design as the “bucket seat shell."

Chinese philosophers Mozi and Lu Ban invented the kite during China’s Warring States period (475-211 BCE). The first kites were made from wood and cloth and were meant to mimic a bird in flight. They were mainly used by the military to signal warnings to troops, calculate wind readings, and measure distances for moving armed forces.

Before Play-Doh was a toy, people rolled it against wallpaper to remove built-up soot. But the inventor, Joseph McVicker, changed tack when a teacher complained about how difficult her classroom clay was to play with. He gave her some of his cleaner, and the kids loved it. He then supplied the “Play-Do” to schools around Cincinnati and formed the Rainbow Crafts company to manufacture it as a toy.

In 1879, saloon owner James Ritty of Ohio patented the first cash register, which he called “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier.” He invented it because he wanted to keep employees from stealing cash, so his machine didn’t have a cash drawer; it just recorded sales and their amount. Ritty sold his patent to an investor who founded the National Cash Register company and made a fortune off Ritty’s design.

Pong made its debut in 1972 in a bar in Sunnyvale, California. The game and its classic yellow-and-wood-finish case was the brainchild of Noah Bushnell, founder of the gaming company Atari. Bushnell told a colleague that he wanted “to make a game that any drunk in a bar can play.” Pong, based on table tennis, turned out to be that game. It was a huge hit and took off in arcades around the U.S.

Benjamin Franklin was both nearsighted and farsighted, and he found switching between two pairs of glasses for each condition to be obnoxious. In 1785, he had the lenses from each pair cut in half and put back in the frames, with lenses for close-ups on the bottom and lenses for distance on the top. The bifocals were born.

During World War II, rubber was in short supply. When the U.S. government put out a call for innovators to create a synthetic rubber, engineer James Wright put his time and energy into the cause. By 1943, he had created an unusual goo that could bounce and stretch. While the war effort had little need for it, the “nutty putty” became popular at parties, and was eventually picked up by a toy manufacturer.

Fountain pens are elegant and sleek writing utensils, but they also leak ink, create blotchy messes, and are hard to control. By 1945, the New York City department store Gimbels introduced a solution from the Reynolds International Pen Company: a pen that featured a ballpoint instead of a nib, used a quick-drying ink that eliminated smudges, and wrote without leaving pools of ink. The ballpoint pen was born.

In the 1940s, engineer Percy Spencer was multitasking — experimenting with a powerful magnetic-electric hybrid known as a magnetron, while also preparing to eat a snack. When he put his hand in his pocket, however, he quickly realized that his peanut cluster was a “gooey, sticky mess.” Spencer experimented with the magnetron’s potential for quickly warming foods, and in 1947, the first microwave oven hit the market.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, held a patent for inflatable chambers to help raise a boat over a sandbar or other obstacle in shallow water. The invention was never used, but you can see a model of it in the Smithsonian.

Maybe it was a lifetime of seeing his father design incredible buildings that inspired John Lloyd Wright to make his miniature building kits in 1916. John, the son of the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, invented the popular wooden toy after working with his father on a building design in Japan, which used interlocking beams to secure the building from earthquakes.

Henry Ford gained great notoriety for inventing the assembly-line method of mass-producing cars and popularizing automobiles with the Model T. But his first design for a horseless carriage resembled a bicycle more than a car, and was called a “quadricycle.” This early prototype consisted of a metal frame on four bicycle wheels, powered by a gasoline engine.

Invented in 1857, the original typewriter functioned similarly to a piano: Its keyboard triggered small hammers to stamp out words. While the “literary piano” was the first gadget on the typing scene, the instrument soon evolved to include rows of QWERTY keys that have carried forward to this day. But one thing stuck from the original piano-like design: We still say we type on a "keyboard."

Vending machine history goes back much further than you might think. One invention, which dispensed holy water, dates all the way back to ancient Greece. But the first modern, coin-operated vending machine was debuted by British inventor Percival Everitt in the 1880s. His machines, installed at post offices and train stations, dispensed paper products, including postcards, envelopes, and notepaper.

The first matches were invented in 1826 by a British chemist named John Walker, who discovered (by happy accident) that a stick coated in chemicals and scraped across his hearth burst into flame. Walker, however, didn’t patent his "Friction Lights,” and a man named Samuel Jones stole the idea and sold his matches as “Lucifers,” in a nod to the devil’s sulfurous reputation.

Mechanical engineer Richard James didn’t intend to invent a children’s toy. He was working to figure out how to use springs to keep sensitive maritime equipment stable on ships at sea. In 1943, he accidentally knocked over some coiled wire and noticed how gracefully it seemed to “walk” instead of tumble across the floor. James then worked with his wife, Betty, to turn the wire into a toy.

Electrical engineer Nicholas McKay was preparing to chaperone a high school dance in 1956 when he first thought of using tape wrapped around an empty toilet paper roll to remove lint from his black suit. He went on to patent the invention and start the Helmac Products company, named after his wife, Helen McKay.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was the head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, a medical spa that welcomed famous visitors such as Amelia Earhart and John D. Rockefeller Jr. A medical doctor and nutritionist, Kellogg created corn flakes as a healthy, ready-to-serve breakfast alternative at the sanitarium.

Thomas Jefferson created the revolving chair in 1775 while working on drafts of the Declaration of Independence. He innovated on a simple windsor chair to allow it to rotate on an iron spindle with rollers made of sash pulleys. Jefferson bragged that his Revolving Windsor Armchair had the "miraculous quality of allowing a person seated in it to turn his head without moving his tail."

For such a simple device, the zipper has a complex naming history. The first zipper, invented by Elias Howe in 1851, was called the “Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure.” The patented version, introduced at the 1893 World's Fair by Whitcomb Judson, was known as the much more concise “Clasp Locker.” The invention cycled through several other monikers until it was picked up by the B.F. Goodrich Company and dubbed a “zipper.”

The concept behind Velcro began with some particularly hardy burrs. In the 1940s, Swiss engineer George de Mestral was hunting in the mountains when he noticed cockleburrs stuck to his pants and his dog’s fur. After discovering that the burrs used hooks to attach themselves to materials, De Mestral set out to replicate the technique. Eight years later, he dubbed his new invention “Velcro,” a combination of the words “velvet” and “crochet.”

Telephone networks used to be managed by operators on a switchboard, making for a pretty loud work environment. A 10-pound earpiece, patented in 1891, gave telephonists the ability to easily listen and connect calls without disturbance from other operators in the room. The invention later caught the attention of the U.S. Navy, opening up a new world of communication.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, experimented with the device he referred to as a “harmonic telegraph” for several years before his first successful call in 1876. His message? “Watson, come here. I want you,” directed at Thomas A. Watson, his assistant.

The Egyptians used scissors as early as 1500 BCE. Unlike modern-day scissors with crossed blades, their scissors were made from a single piece of metal split into two blades and controlled by a metal strip, which kept the blades apart until squeezed. Around 100 CE, the Romans adapted the Egyptian design into what resembles scissors today.

Traffic jams were a problem long before automobiles hit the road. In the 1860s, British railway manager John Peake Knight adapted a semaphore signaling system (rotating arms that signaled trains to stop or go) to create the world’s first traffic light. During the day, the arms would let busy drivers know when it was their turn to move forward; at night, gas lamps illuminated red and green lights for the same purpose.

Anthropologists theorize that before homo sapiens started eating with forks, they had perfectly aligned lower and bottom teeth. When humans switched from eating with their hands to forks, they took smaller bites, which worked the jaw muscles less. This weakened jaw muscle has created overbites in a large majority of the human population.

Alfred Nobel may be known for his esteemed prizes, but the chemist’s fame and fortune came earlier in life, thanks to his invention of dynamite. Nobel trained alongside his peer Ascania Sobrero, the Italian chemist who invented nitroglycerin. Nobel patented his final invention, dynamite, in 1866.

In 1943, the U.S. Army developed the aerosol can to spray insecticides in Asian jungles during World War II. After the war, engineers at the Helene Curtis Company saw its potential to package its new resin product for keeping hair in place. The company’s first product was called Spray Net, and in 1950, Helene Curtis coined the term “hairspray” for all resin hair-holding products.

Ancient humans used all kinds of materials to write, from paint on cave walls to stone tablets. But record-keeping was forever changed when paper was invented in first-century China. A nobleman named Cai Lun is credited with the papermaking process, though he may have assumed a commoner's invention as his own. Paper soon spread across Asia but didn’t reach Europe until the 12th century.

At the start of the 20th century, Henry Ford wanted to sell more cars for less, and figured the best way to do that was to build them more efficiently. Taking inspiration from continuous-flow production methods used by flour mills and breweries, he invented the moving assembly line, which began use in 1913. Before this innovation, it took 12 hours to build one of his company’s cars, but the assembly line cut the time to only one hour and 33 minutes.