True or False Inventions Facts

Explore true or false facts about inventions, everyday objects, computers, the internet and transport. Read a statement, then open its answer and explanation

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Thomas Edison invented the first electric light bulb on his own
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False
Inventors such as Humphry Davy and Joseph Swan made electric lamps before Edison, who made bulbs practical for homes
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The arcade game Pong from 1972 was the very first video game ever made
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False
Physicist William Higinbotham's tennis game on an oscilloscope appeared at a US laboratory in 1958, years before Pong
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The first message sent over ARPANET crashed the system after 2 letters
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True
Student Charley Kline typed LOGIN to a remote computer; the l and the o went through, then the system crashed
Source: lk.cs.ucla.edu
The world's first webcam was pointed at a coffee pot
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True
Cambridge computer scientists rigged a camera so colleagues could check the pot before walking to the room
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Bluetooth is named after a Danish king who lived over 1,000 years ago
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True
King Harald Bluetooth united Denmark and Norway; the name began as a placeholder for uniting PCs and phones
Source: bluetooth.com
Satellites carry most of the world's international internet traffic
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False
Nearly all of it travels through fiber-optic cables laid on the sea floor
Source: resources.telegeography.com
A busy Paris street looks almost empty in an early photo because the shot took minutes
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True
Moving carts and people did not register during the 4 to 5 minute exposure of Daguerre's street scene
Source: en.wikipedia.org
NASA invented Velcro in the 1960s for the Apollo space program
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False
A Swiss engineer invented it in the 1940s; NASA used it on Apollo missions, which is why people link it to space
Source: spinoff.nasa.gov
The first commercial microwave ovens were small enough to sit on a kitchen counter
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False
The first model stood about 1.8 m tall and weighed about 340 kg; counter-top models came much later
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Handheld can openers were already in use when food cans first appeared
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False
Tin cans came almost 50 years before the can opener, so early cans were hacked open with a hammer and chisel
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Volvo charged other car makers a fee to use its patented 3-point seat belt
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False
Volvo gave the patent away to the whole industry, and the belt is credited with saving at least 1 million lives
Source: volvogroup.com
Play-Doh was invented as a soft modeling clay for children to play with
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False
It began as a wallpaper cleaner for removing coal soot; a school teacher's idea turned it into a toy
Source: museumofplay.org
Flying London to New York, Concorde landed before it took off by local time
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True
The crossing took about 3.5 hours, but New York time runs 5 hours behind London time
Source: pbs.org
Bertha Benz made the first long car trip and bought her fuel at a pharmacy
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True
She drove to visit her mother; the pharmacy in Wiesloch sold her ligroin, a cleaning solvent that served as fuel
Source: dpma.de
Lightbulb makers formed a cartel to limit bulbs to about 1,000 hours of life
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True
The Phoebus cartel set that target in the 1920s, down from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours bulbs had commonly lasted
Source: spectrum.ieee.org
Willis Carrier built his first air conditioning system to keep people comfortable
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False
He designed it for a Brooklyn printing plant, where humid air made the paper swell and spoiled color prints
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Bubble wrap was invented as a packing material to protect fragile goods
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False
Its inventors were trying to make a 3D plastic wallpaper; the failed product later found a use as packing
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Apollo's guidance software was woven by hand into wires and tiny magnetic rings
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True
Wires threaded through tiny ferrite rings stood for 1s and 0s, and women at Raytheon wove the core memory by hand
Source: sciencenews.org
A commercial fax service linked Paris and Lyon before the telephone existed
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True
It opened in 1865, 11 years before the telephone; inventor Giovanni Caselli built on Alexander Bain's 1843 fax-type patent
Source: en.wikipedia.org
A key Wi-Fi technique came from a failed hunt for exploding black holes
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True
Australian radio astronomers never found the tiny black holes, but their signal-cleaning methods suited indoor wireless
Source: csiro.au

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