Master Who Invented What: 98 Inventor Flashcards From the Telephone to Velcro

Everyone knows who invented the light bulb. Almost nobody can name the inventor of the ballpoint pen, the zipper or instant noodles. The Famous Scientists & Inventors deck on Flip It (deck code JF8084, 98 cards) is built for that second list — and despite the title it is purely an inventors deck: every card asks "Who invented X?" and answers with a name, life dates and a country. No theories, no equations, no Darwin or Einstein. Read it as a who-made-what index and it is one of the fastest recall wins in the library.

Eight cards, straight from the deck

What you will actually memorise

Communication and computing: telephone, telegraph, Morse code, typewriter, printing press, World Wide Web, Internet Protocol, Ethernet, DRAM, ENIAC, transistor, computer mouse, JavaScript, Java, mobile phone, television, video game console. Medicine: penicillin, insulin extraction, X-rays, the portable "Little Curies" units, MRI, the electrocardiogram, the Apgar score, contact lenses, bifocals. Transport and power: diesel engine, pneumatic tyre, electric motor, transformer, electric locomotive, steamboat, submarine, hovercraft, helicopter, liquid-fuel rocket, the V-2 and Saturn V, nuclear reactor, nuclear fission, the Salyut space station. Everyday objects: zipper, safety pin, sewing machine, dishwasher, refrigerator, canning, flash freezing, thermos flask, Post-it note, Super Glue, photocopier, lawnmower, bagless vacuum, Lego, Playmobil, the Rubik's Cube, kaleidoscope. Instruments, materials and sound: Bunsen burner, mercury thermometer, the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales, gyroscope, laser and maser, holography, Braille, the piano, compact disc, vinyl LP, Dolby noise reduction, stereo sound, nylon, PVC, Gore-Tex, Portland cement, the geodesic dome — plus dynamite, Semtex, the Gatling gun, the revolver and the Taser.

Two fixes before your first session

1. Review this deck in one direction only. Six people answer more than one card: Benjamin Franklin has four (bifocals, lightning rod, Franklin stove, glass harmonica), and Edison, Faraday, Fahrenheit, Fulton and Morse have two each. Flipped to person -> invention those cards become unanswerable. Keep it question -> name, and write your own grouped card instead: "Franklin: name four inventions."

2. Know the alphabet trap. 82 of the 98 answers are surnames beginning A-G (24 in B, 17 in F). This deck is a slice of an alphabetical index, which is why Tesla, Watt, Marconi, Whitney, Bessemer and Zuse never show up — absence here does not mean unimportant. Shuffle before the second pass so you stop recognising cards by their neighbours.

One factual pass is worth making too: Fleming discovered penicillin and Rontgen discovered X-rays, so reword those two fronts; and the card reading "electrocardiogram (EEG)" mislabels it — Einthoven built the ECG, while the EEG is Hans Berger's. Fix three fronts and the deck is clean.

A one-week plan

The 98 cards split neatly by domain: start with computing and communication (16 cards you already half-know), then everyday objects, medicine, instruments, and leave materials and weapons last. Two sittings of 15 cards a day clears it in a week. Ignore the dates on the first pass — lock the names, and 1847 or 1931 attaches itself on the second.

Prefer working chronologically? Pair this deck with Memorize the Inventions Timeline: 146 Flashcards From Stone Tools to the Antikythera Mechanism: the timeline gives the when, JF8084 the who.

Deck JF8084 — Famous Scientists & Inventors — is waiting in your Flip It library: start reviewing.