Inventions of the Gilded Age

Question 1

1884
- Perfected the telegraph (did not event)
- Created morse code

Answer 1

Samuel F. B. Morse

Question 2

1859
- Drilled for oil using the steam-powered engine

Answer 2

Edwin Drake

Question 3

1867
- Invented the typewriter

Answer 3

Christopher Sholes

Question 4

1878
- Perfected the light bulb
1877
- Invented the phonograph
1881
- Built 1st power plant that lit dozens of buildings in NYC
1893
- Invented motion the picture camera*

Answer 4

Thomas Edison

Question 5

1886
- Discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery
❖ Sold his patent rights to his systems of AC dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse
1891
- He invented the Tesla coil, widely used in radio technology

Answer 5

Nikola Tesla

Question 6

• Designed an air brake that made rail travel safer

Answer 6

George Westinghouse

Question 7

1876
- Invented the telephone, he was only 29
- Improved Edison’s version of the phonograph into the graphophone, that both recorded and played sound.

Answer 7

Alexander Graham Bell

Question 8

1856
- English inventor who developed the first process for manufacturing steel inexpensively

Answer 8

Henry Bessemer

Question 9

1877
- Founder of the meatpacking firm Swift & Company
- Developed the refrigerated rail car (by circulating fresh air that was chilled by passing over ice.)

Answer 9

Gustavus Swift

Question 10

❖ Discovered oil at Spindletop near Beaumont, TX
❖ Geyser flowed an estimated 100,000 barrels of oil a day
❖ The Texas oil boom had begun

Answer 10

Pattillo Higgins & Anthony Lucas

Question 11

❖ [They] are responsible for the world’s first successful airplane
❖ They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903
❖ Marked the birth of “aeronautics” as an industry

Answer 11

Orville & Wilbur Wright (Wright Brothers)