From Aspirin to Zeppelin
Part 1: Inventors and Inventions
Teil 1: Erfinder und Erfindungen
Germanic Inventors and Inventions
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Can you answer these trivia questions
about inventions?
1. What German invention helped Jesse Owens win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
2. Which famous movie actress co-invented the basic spread-sprectrum technology used in digital cell phones today?
3. Where did the MP3 technology that made Napster possible come from?
4. How did the diesel engine and "megahertz" (MHz) get their names?
5. Who was the German aviation pioneer whose wing designs were closely studied by the Wright Brothers?
6. What's the name of the world's first programmable electronic digital computer?
These are only a few of the intriguing questions we answer in this article and our Erfinder series. All of the answers to the previous questions involve Germans and Austrians who have in some way contributed to the technological advances of the last several centuries. As always, our interest here includes the German vocabulary related to Erfinder/Erfinderinnen (inventors) and Erfindungen (inventions).
Before we proceed, it is worth mentioning that the matter of who invented what (and when they invented it) is often more political than scientific. The answer to who invented the telephone or the light bulb can vary, depending on where you live. How many Americans have ever heard of Johann Philipp Reis? Well, Germans will tell you that Reis invented the telephone in 1861, years before Bell (who, as Scots are quick to point out, was Scottish). Edison's incandescent light bulb (die Glühbirne) came 20 years after Englishman Sir Joseph Swan produced a prototype carbon filament lamp in 1860. But this also brings up the problem of definition. Is the first light bulb or telephone the first practical one, the first prototype, the first commercial success or the first patent? The Reis telephone is not well known because it didn't work well enough to be commercially viable.
Germanic Trivia
Cultural and historical facts
One theory maintains that inventions are just a matter of time. How else to explain the many simultaneous inventions by different inventors in different places? Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler never met, but they both independently produced the world's first practical gasoline-powered automobile (Kraftwagen) in Germany in 1885/1886. (Austrians claim Siegfried Marcus in 1864. A Frenchman invented the first steam-driven car in 1769.) The first early versions of the bicycle (Fahrrad) also came about independently: J.N. Niepce's céléripède in Paris in 1816, and Karl von Drais' Laufmaschine in Mannheim in 1817. (Both were foot-powered wooden devices without pedals, which were invented later by Phillip Moritz Fischer.) The list of other simultaneous inventions is far too long to include here.
As technology grows increasingly complex, fewer and fewer inventions can be credited to a single inventor. Examples of this are radar (developed simultaneously in the 1930s in Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the US) and television (Fernsehen). Modern radar screens and television picture tubes are based on the Braunsche Röhre (cathode-ray oscilloscope) invented by the German Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897. Another German, Paul Nipkow, invented the rotating scanning disk named for him (die Nipkow-Scheibe), which established the basis for television picture scanning (later done electronically). But many other refinements and new developments by inventors of many nationalities had to appear before the first public broadcast of electronic TV signals in London in 1936. (The 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first major event to be televised—by the private Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow.)
Before going on to "Inventors," can you answer the questions at the top of this page?
NEXT › Trivia Quiz - Who invented it?
MORE › Intro › Quiz › Inventors › Inventions
MORE › Germanic Trivia
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