Quiz  /  A Brief History of the Computer Told from the 1990s: A Quiz

  • 1. 
    In the 1970s, which pair of American inventors on the West Coast produced the first personal computer to appeal to a broad market?

  • Margaret Hamilton and Saydean Zeldin
  • William Hewlett and David Packard
  • Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak
  • Bill Gates and Paul Allen

  • 2. 
    Beginning in 1994, which American software company offered a simple point-and-click interface for browsing the Internet?

  • America Online, Inc.
  • Netscape Communications Corp.
  • Global Crossing
  • Apple Computer, Inc.

  • 3. 
    Which dominant technology company was founded by two young men who got their start stringing rubber hoses across roadways?

  • Microsoft
  • Gateway 2000
  • IBM
  • CompUSA

  • 4. 
    Where were the personal computer, graphical user interface, handheld mouse, and Ethernet all first developed?

  • Wintek
  • Bell Laboratories
  • Xerox PARC
  • Carnegie Corporation

  • 5. 
    About the size of a sewing machine, the Osborne I of 1981 was an ancestor of what computer product?

  • modems
  • laptops
  • laser printers
  • scanners

  • 6. 
    What U.S. Navy officer was instrumental in developing high-level computer programming languages?

  • William B. Shockley
  • Grace Murray Hopper
  • Vannevar Bush
  • Katherine Johnson

  • 7. 
    What California company introduced the first pocket calculator as well as a successful line of computers, printers, and peripherals?

  • Apple Computer, Inc.
  • Hewlett-Packard Company
  • Microsoft Corporation
  • Compaq Computer Corporation

  • 8. 
    What simple method of communicating with a computer evolved from such 1960s and 1970s innovations as the tiled screen, the mouse, and the icon?

  • graphical user interface
  • full-text search
  • email
  • Web crawlers

  • 9. 
    An agricultural area once known as the “Valley of the Heart’s Delights” became synonymous with personal computer manufacturing and software and then Internet-based businesses in the 1980s and ’90s. What is it?

  • Silicon Valley, California
  • Seoul Capital Area, South Korea
  • Ruhr Valley, Germany
  • Guangdong province, China

  • 10. 
    What was the first full-length animated motion picture, released in 1995, to be completely computer-generated?

  • Toy Story
  • Aladdin
  • Chicken Run
  • A Bug’s Life

  • 11. 
    What device did Robert Noyce in California and Jack Kilby in Texas independently file patent applications for in 1959, without which the Internet boom of the 1990s would have never happened?

  • integrated circuit
  • MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer)
  • the Internet
  • transistor
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