Deck 1: Catalysts for Chang

Question 1

The company that invented the microprocessor is

A) Fujitsu
B) Hewlett-Packard
C) IBM
D) Intel
E) Texas Instruments

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Tablets, abacuses, and manual tables

A) are no longer used, because of the proliferation of calculators and computers.
B) are examples of aids to manual calculating.
C) were developed in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages.
D) replaced Hindu-Arabic numerals as the preferred way to do calculations.
E) All of the above.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Programming languages FORTRAN and COBOL became international standards, meaning

A) they were approved by the United Nations.
B) the United States and other members of NATO agreed to share the designs.
C) the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to share the designs.
D) they were supported by every computer manufacturer.
E) they were based on the metric system.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which of the following was not a result of the adoption of mechanical calculators?

A) Less demand for "superstars" who could rapidly compute sums by hand
B) Higher productivity of bookkeepers
C) Higher salaries of bookkeepers
D) Proliferation of companies making calculators
E) Feminization of bookkeeping

Question 5

Who wrote "An Open Letter to Hobbyists," complaining about software theft?

A) Stewart Brand
B) Bob Frankston
C) Bill Gates
D) Steve Jobs
E) Steve Wozniak

Question 6

Punched card tabulation was invented by Herman Hollerith, an employee of

A) the Pennsylvania Railroad.
B) the Census Bureau.
C) the Pennsylvania Steel Company.
D) the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.
E) IBM.

Question 7

A semiconductor device containing transistors, capacitors, and resistors is called

A) a difference engine.
B) a diode.
C) an integrated circuit.
D) a radio.
E) a transformer.

Question 8

Which of the following was not a feature of cash registers in the early 1900s?

A) Ability to compute total of purchases
B) Ability to print itemized receipts for customers
C) Ability to print log of transactions for owners
D) Ability to compute amount of change to give customer
E) Ability to ring a bell every time cash drawer is opened

Question 9

Which of the following was not an activity of the People's Computer Company, a not-for-profit corporation in the San Francisco area?

A) Publishing a newspaper containing the source code to programs
B) Allowing people to rent time on a time-shared computer
C) Hosting Friday-evening game-playing sessions
D) Promoting a culture in which computer enthusiasts freely shared software
E) Developing the world's first graphical user interface

Question 10

Programming languages were developed in order to

A) make it possible to program computers in English.
B) make programming faster and less error-prone.
C) speed translations between English and Russian during the Cold War.
D) improve the computation speed of computers, which were very expensive.
E) All of the above.

Question 11

Which Cold War program played an important role in advancing integrated circuit technology?

A) B-52 bomber
B) Hydrogen bomb
C) Mark 37 torpedo
D) Minuteman II ballistic missile
E) NORAD radar network

Question 12

The first commercial electronic digital computers were produced just after

A) the Spanish-American War.
B) World War I.
C) World War II.
D) the Korean War.
E) the Vietnam War.

Question 13

Which company produced the System/360, a family of 19 compatible mainframe computers?

A) Fujitsu
B) Hewlett-Packard
C) IBM
D) Intel
E) Texas Instruments

Question 14

The calculating machine of Georg and Edvard Sheutz

A) computed the values of polynomial functions.
B) typeset the results of its computations.
C) performed calculations faster than they could be done manually.
D) performed calculations more reliably than they could be done manually.
E) All of the above.

Question 15

Which of the following phrases does not describe the Gilded Age in America?

A) rapid industrialization
B) economic expansion
C) widespread electrification
D) concentration of corporate power
E) corporate mergers

Question 16

Which statement best supports the conclusion that society can control whether to adopt a new technology?

A) No new nuclear power plants were built in the United States for 25 years after the accident at Three Mile Island.
B) About half of all email messages are spam.
C) Despite decades of research, fusion power is an elusive goal.
D) People do not have to listen to Rush Limbaugh if they do not want to.
E) Some new technologies are simply too expensive to even consider adopting.

Question 17

Software that allows multiple users to edit and run their programs simultaneously on the same computer is called

A) a data-processing system.
B) an intranet.
C) a microprocessor.
D) a programming language.
E) a time-sharing system.

Question 18

Which of the following phrases best describes a machine that inputs data, performs one or more calculations, and produces output data?

A) manual calculator
B) digital computer
C) data-processing system
D) difference engine
E) cash register

Question 19

The mechanical adding machines of Pascal and Leibniz were not widely adopted because

A) they were too expensive.
B) there were unreliable.
C) they were too difficult to program.
D) they could not handle fractions.
E) bookkeepers successfully lobbied the King, and he made the machines illegal.

Question 20

The two principal catalysts for the Information Age have been

A) books and pamphlets.
B) computers and communication networks.
C) radio and television.
D) newspapers and magazines.
E) the telephone and television.

Question 21

ARPA Director J.C.R. Licklider conceived of a Galactic Network that would

A) control weapons from space.
B) guide spacecraft to distant planets.
C) become the world's most powerful number-crunching machine.
D) facilitate the exchange of programs and data.
E) All of the above

Question 22

Most early telephones were installed in businesses, because

A) people were afraid that telephones were dangerous.
B) people thought that the government was using telephones as eavesdropping devices.
C) only men were allowed to use a telephone.
D) most homes did not have electricity.
E) leasing a telephone was expensive.

Question 23

The Pony Express went out of business when

A) the Mexican War ended in 1846.
B) the Civil War began in 1861.
C) the transcontinental telegraph was completed.
D) AT&T completed the national telephone network.
E) the radio was invented.

Question 24

A key application that first made personal computers more attractive to business was

A) the spreadsheet program.
B) the World Wide Web.
C) desktop publishing.
D) video editing.
E) email.

Question 25

Hypertext is supposed to mimic

A) the associative memory of human beings.
B) the way that creeks flow into streams and streams merge into rivers.
C) constellations in the night sky.
D) road networks.
E) the way that some people "channel surf" with a remote control.

Question 26

The first electronic networking technology widely used in the United States was the

A) Internet.
B) radio.
C) telegraph.
D) telephone.
E) television.

Question 27

Which country has the fastest broadband connections on average?

A) China
B) Germany
C) India
D) South Korea
E) United States

Question 28

A common name for a wireless Internet access point is

A) broadband hub.
B) hotspot.
C) Internet access-ory.
D) Internet café.
E) wap.

Question 29

The software company that provided IBM with the operating system for its PC was

A) Apple.
B) Boeing.
C) Microsoft.
D) Novell.
E) Tandy.

Question 30

In the fourth century the codex replaced the scroll because

A) it was more durable, and it was much easier to look up a particular passage.
B) it was much lighter, and it could be made much more rapidly.
C) Gutenberg's printing press had just been invented.
D) there was a worldwide shortage of papyrus.
E) All of the above

Question 31

The first popular personal computer with a graphical user interface was the

A) Apple Macintosh.
B) Compaq Presario.
C) IBM PC.
D) NeXT workstation.
E) Tandy TRS-80.

Question 32

The power of radio as a medium of mass communication was demonstrated in 1938 when Orson Welles put on a dramatization of

A) War of the Worlds.
B) Hamlet.
C) Homer's Odyssey.
D) the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt.
E) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Question 33

Guglielmo Marconi originally conceived of the radio as a way to

A) transmit telegraph messages without wires.
B) transmit electricity without wires.
C) transmit votes in national elections.
D) transmit light without wires.
E) All of the above

Question 34

What term is used to describe a high-speed Internet connection?

A) broadband
B) hypertext
C) Internet2
D) the Matrix
E) World Wide Web

Question 35

The World Wide Web is the creation of

A) Tim Berners-Lee.
B) Vannevar Bush.
C) Douglas Engelbart.
D) Alan Kay.
E) Ted Nelson.

Question 36

The first alphabet to represent vowels as well as consonants was developed by the

A) Babylonians.
B) Egyptians.
C) Greeks.
D) Romans.
E) Syrians.

Question 37

What visionary invented the computer mouse and demonstrated windows, email, and live network videoconferencing at "the mother of all demos" in 1968?

A) Vannevar Bush
B) Douglas Engelbart
C) Al Gore
D) Alan Kay
E) Ted Nelson

Question 38

One of the first and most important applications of the ARPANET was

A) email.
B) voice mail.
C) spreading computer viruses.
D) disseminating anti-Communist propaganda to American citizens.
E) stealing secrets from the Soviet Union.

Question 39

Alexander Graham Bell invented the harmonic or musical telegraph, which enabled

A) more than one message to be sent over a single telegraph wire at the same time.
B) human speech to be sent over a telegraph wire.
C) music to be send over a telegraph wire.
D) B and C
E) None of the above.

Question 40

A typewriter that prints a message transmitted over a telegraph line is called a

A) computer.
B) monitor.
C) teletype.
D) terminal.
E) transponder.

Question 41

By 1870 fire alarm boxes were in use in 75 major cities in the United States. Which popular communications technology enabled the creation of these alarm boxes?

Question 42

A Web browser enables you to

A) view Web pages.
B) edit Web pages.
C) create Web pages.
D) delete Web pages.
E) All of the above

Question 43

The development of the personal computer was influenced by the power-to-the-people, do-it-yourself movement around in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Question 44

A single semiconductor device containing transistors, capacitors, and resistors is called .

Question 45

In 1957 eight key employees of Shockley Semiconductor left to form their own company. The company founded by "the traitorous eight" was .

Question 46

In the first half of the 20sup>th/sup> century, AT&T used vacuum tubes to construct amplifiers that made long distance telephone calls possible. AT&T funded research to develop a semiconductor replacement to the vacuum tube. The research resulted in the invention of the .

Question 47

Which device resulted in the creation of the first "on-line" communities?

Question 48

A series of inventions led to the creation of the electronic digital computer shortly after this war: .

Question 49

In 1964 IBM announced the System/360, a series of 19 compatible computers. What advantage do compatible computers have for a business wishing to upgrade its systems?

Question 50

Herman Hollerith invented to help the U.S. Bureau of the Census tally information about tens of millions of residents.

Question 51

An integrated circuit that can be programmed to perform a wide variety of tasks is called a .

Question 52

The invention of the addressed two challenges faced by department store owners in the late 19sup>th/sup> century: creating detailed sales records and embezzlement by employees.

Question 53

The adoption of mechanical calculators in offices changed the profession of bookkeeping. Employers .

Question 54

Blaise Pascal and Gottfried Leibniz are remembered as computer pioneers for their invention of .

Question 55

What two significant developments made personal computers more attractive to businesses in the late 1970s and early 1980s?

Question 56

Three important aids to manual calculating are .

Question 57

In the 1960s the invention of allowed multiple people to interact more-or-less simultaneously with a single computer.

Question 58

Demand for mechanical calculators increased tremendously in America in the late 19sup>th/sup> Century due to the increase in size of .

Question 59

What is the name of a program that follows hyperlinks, collecting information about Web sites?

A) daemon
B) hacker
C) spider
D) trawler
E) worm

Question 60

In the earliest digital computers every instruction was coded as a long number. People invented to make coding faster and less error-prone.

Question 61

The development of the first true alphabet by the Greeks represented a key step in Western civilization's shift from an culture.

Question 62

The two most popular applications of the Internet are .

Question 63

How did the National Science Foundation stimulate the development of commercial, long-distance Internet connections in the United States?

Question 64

Why was the ARPANET designed so that the loss of any single computer would not prevent the rest of the network from working?

Question 65

In January 1984 Apple Computer released the Macintosh. The Macintosh is notable because it was the first commodity personal computer with a .

Question 66

Devices used in the creation, storage, manipulation, exchange, and dissemination of data, including text, sound, and images, fall into the category of technology.

Question 67

Hypertext is a .