General Knowledge
Old or New? When Was It Invented?
Fax machines or Nintendo — which came first? The answers will shock you.
Fax machines or Nintendo — which came first? The answers will shock you.
The can opener was invented 48 years after the can. Before that, people used chisels and hammers. That single fact captures everything this quiz is about: our assumptions about when things were invented are almost always wrong. From ancient vending machines to surprisingly recent sliced bread, this quiz serves up 50 questions designed to make you rethink everything you thought you knew about invention timelines.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50. Some ask which invention came first; others test whether you know the surprisingly early or late date something was created. Every answer includes an explanation with historical context, so you learn something new even when you get it wrong.
You'll explore the surprising histories of everyday objects, ancient technologies that predate their "modern" versions by centuries, and historical overlaps that seem impossible but are completely true. The quiz covers everything from the fax machine and the telephone to woolly mammoths and the Great Pyramids.
Some of the most shocking dates include the fax machine (1843, predating the telephone by 33 years), sliced bread (1928, surprisingly recent), and the electric car (1884, decades before the Model T). Oxford University also began teaching in 1096, more than 300 years before the Aztec Empire was founded in 1428.
The wheel, invented around 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, is often cited as the oldest invention still in everyday use. Other ancient inventions we still rely on include mirrors (circa 6000 BC as polished stone), combs, and basic forms of plumbing. The concept of the lock and key dates back to ancient Egypt around 4000 years ago.
Sliced bread was not sold commercially until 1928, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder's bread-slicing machine was first used by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. Before that, people simply cut their own bread at home. Other surprisingly recent inventions include the wheeled suitcase (1970) and the computer mouse (1964).
Last updated: March 2026