History of Computer Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. In 1948, the Manchester Baby successfully ran a program stored electronically in its memory. What principle did this demonstrate?
A single microprocessor could power a personal computer
A mechanical calculator could transmit results by radio
A computer could operate without any form of memory
A computer could store program instructions in memory alongside data
2. Engineers want to make an early computer smaller, more reliable, and less power-hungry by replacing its vacuum tubes. Which technology represents the next major hardware step?
Transistors
Magnetic tape
Punched cards
Mechanical relays
3. Who led the 1968 presentation later nicknamed “The Mother of All Demos,” which showcased ideas including a mouse, hypertext, and collaborative computing?
Alan Turing
Douglas Engelbart
John von Neumann
Seymour Cray
4. A legacy program stores 1998 as “98” and 2001 as “01,” creating a risk that dates will be ordered or interpreted incorrectly. Which historical computing issue does this illustrate?
The dot-com bubble
The software crisis
The millennium bug in GPS week numbering
The Y2K problem caused by two-digit year fields
5. A historian says one 1981 machine helped establish a widely imitated hardware platform for business and home software. Which computer best fits that description?
IBM Personal Computer
Commodore 64
Altair 8800
Apple I
6. Who proposed the system that became the World Wide Web while working at CERN?
Vint Cerf
Bill Gates
Tim Berners-Lee
Steve Wozniak
7. An engineer reduces a computer’s central processing functions from many separate components to a single integrated circuit. Which development does this describe?
The microprocessor
The graphical user interface
The modem
Magnetic-core memory
8. Which electronic component was used in large numbers within ENIAC?
Integrated circuits
Microprocessors
Vacuum tubes
Electromechanical relays only
9. Which 19th-century inventor designed the Difference Engine and later proposed the more general Analytical Engine?
Herman Hollerith
Charles Babbage
George Boole
Samuel Morse
10. A museum exhibit describes equipment that accelerated processing for the 1890 United States Census by reading information encoded as holes in cards. Whose system is being described?
Konrad Zuse’s relay computer
Herman Hollerith’s tabulating system
Blaise Pascal’s mechanical calculator
John Atanasoff’s electronic calculator
11. A researcher in the early 1970s sends data between distant computers over ARPANET. Which networking approach is most central to that system’s historical importance?
Circuit switching reserved a dedicated line for every session
Packet switching divided data into units that could travel through a network
Broadcast television signals carried every computer message
Standalone computers exchanged data only through removable disks
12. A manufacturer needs to place several electronic components together on one small piece of semiconductor material. Which innovation makes this possible?
The telegraph relay
The cathode-ray tube
The floppy disk
The integrated circuit
13. Which operating system was originally developed at Bell Labs by researchers including Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie?
CP/M
MS-DOS
Unix
Mac OS
14. Why is Ada Lovelace often regarded as an important early figure in programming history?
She published an algorithm intended for Babbage’s Analytical Engine
She built the first working electronic computer
She invented the punched-card tabulator
She created the first commercial programming language
15. A student says the internet and the World Wide Web are identical. Which correction is historically and technically most accurate?
The web existed before computer networks, while the internet appeared later
The internet is a collection of websites, while the web is the physical cabling
The web and internet were separate names for ARPANET until personal computers appeared
The internet is the broader network infrastructure; the web is a service using linked resources accessed over it
16. Why is the Altair 8800 considered a significant milestone in personal-computer history?
It introduced the World Wide Web to households
It was the first computer to use vacuum tubes
It helped stimulate the hobbyist microcomputer market in the mid-1970s
It was the first machine used to process a national census