nourishing obscurity

1. Joseph Gidden, a 60-year-old New Hampshire rancher was the first to invent a method for mass manufacturing of ____ ___ and he made a fortune as American farms took to it.

2. Hippocrates was the first to realise the healing power of the substance – his related ancient Greek treatment was a tea made from willow bark, and was effective against fevers and gout. Much later, in turn-of-the-century Germany, chemist Felix Hoffman perfected the remedy on his arthritic father, marketing it under the trade name _____.

3. New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob, widely considered to be the inventor of ___ ___, had bought a sheer silk dress and devised a handkerchief and ribbon device as an alternative. She later sold her business for $1,500 to Warner Brothers, who made $15m from her invention.

4. When the CD was being devised, Sony chief Akio Morita stipulated that one disc could carry whose and which symphony?

5. Until natural rubber was first used by English engineer Edward Naine, draughtsmen had to use ___ to erase but both were perishable. The advent of more durable vulcanised rubber in 1839 (a method pioneered by the tyre tycoon Charles Goodyear) sealed the future of the eraser.

Answers: barbed wire, Aspirin, bra, Beethoven’s Ninth, bread

Filed under: Diversions, Technology & ideas