What did Johann Gutenberg develop that changed printing in Europe?
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Answer
Interchangeable metal movable type
Gutenberg is credited with uniform metal letters that could be set, printed and reused.
Inventors and Discoveries
Printing, vaccines, flight, light bulbs and the Moon landing
Inventors and Discoveries is a Bertopia flashcard pack of 72 cards: printing, vaccines, flight, light bulbs and the Moon landing. It covers paper, printing and messages; medicine and vaccines; electricity and light; flight and navigation; telescopes and space.
Sample cards
Written accounts from the mid-1500s describe a Chinese way of protecting people from smallpox. What did it involve?
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Answer
Blowing dried, ground smallpox scabs into the nose
This early method, called insufflation, gave a milder illness that protected people later. It is a form of variolation.
What did Benjamin Franklin suggest that lightning actually is?
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Answer
Electricity
Franklin's experiments, published in 1751, proposed that lightning is electrical and described positive and negative charge.
When did the Wright brothers make the first powered airplane flights at Kitty Hawk?
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Answer
17 December 1903
Orville flew first, for 12 seconds and about 36 metres. Later that day Wilbur flew 59 seconds.
In 1610 Galileo Galilei used an early telescope to spot four moons. Which planet do they circle?
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Answer
Jupiter
Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were the first moons found beyond Earth's own. They are called the Galilean moons.
In which German city was the Gutenberg Bible printed, around 1455?
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Answer
Mainz
The printing was probably finished in Mainz in late 1455. It was the first great book printed in Western Europe from movable metal type.
Sources
51 sources
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- IEEE Spectrum, History Lesson: The Magnetic Compass, IEEE
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- Library of Congress, Invention of the Telephone: Topics in Chronicling America, Library of Congress
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