ICONIC INVENTION

Given the importance of the creations that flow from this object, we all

ought to know what it is, and the name of the man that invented it (he’s the serious-looking fellow in the suit). Nearly a century ago, he filed his first US patent application for a certain system; that application, and a follow-up two years later, described some of the principles of this gadget, which was finally made in the 1930s. The rest, as they say, is history. We know you can Google, but where’s the fun in that? Tell us what you think it is. The correct answer – and/or the most creative – will be published in our next issue.

Send your hunches to contribute@cosmosmagazine.com

Last issue’s object was far from mysterious for several readers. The first correct answer – from Dermot Allen – came with the ink barely dry on magazine pages: Dermot was spoton in saying the item is “considered to be the world’s first microscope, made by the Dutch scientist [Antonie van] Leeuwenhoek”. Not surprisingly, van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) is known as the ‘father of microbiology’. Other correct object pickers include Patrick Flynn, Tony Little and 18-year-old Kaemon Ah Kuoi-simich. Our favourite guess came from 11-year-old Anna Kuznetsova: “I believe it is a thumb measurer used back in the olden days ... to determine if [someone was] a witch or not.” Well played, Anna – and please enter again.