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History of Computing Quizzes, Trivia and Puzzles
History of Computing Quizzes, Trivia

History of Computing Trivia

History of Computing Trivia Quizzes

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If you are looking for vintage systems (more than 20 years old) or want to know how computers have evolved from building-sozed assemblies of relays and vacuum tubes to devices that fit your palm with room to spare, you're in the right place. Enjoy a trip down (core) memory lane!
23 quizzes and 235 trivia questions.
1.
A Trip Down Core Memory Lane
  A Trip Down (Core) Memory Lane    
Photo Match
 10 Qns
Obsolete Hardware in Pictures
This quiz has pictures of ten long obsolete pieces of hardware, from the 1950s to the 1990s (and maybe a few years beyond). How many of those can you recognize - and how many have you actually used? Which device has which use?
Difficult, 10 Qns, WesleyCrusher, Aug 31 23
Difficult
WesleyCrusher editor
Aug 31 23
174 plays
2.
  A Brief History of Computers   great trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
A computer is machine that can store and work with large amounts of information. We will take a brief look at the development of calculating machines (computers) through the ages.
Easier, 10 Qns, gme24, Oct 25 21
Easier
gme24 gold member
Oct 25 21
1559 plays
3.
  Windows 98 Introduction    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Test your knowledge of Windows 98.
Easier, 10 Qns, profbrian, Jul 29 23
Easier
profbrian
Jul 29 23
8842 plays
4.
  Basic BASIC (for Old School Computers)   great trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Before Mac and PC, before C++, before Turbo Pascal, we learned to program an Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 800, TRS-80, or a TI-99/4A. Whatever machine we used, we worked in BASIC. What do you remember about the programming language of the 70s and 80s?
Tough, 10 Qns, eauhomme, Dec 04 20
Tough
eauhomme
Dec 04 20
2233 plays
5.
  Home Computers of the 1970s and 1980s    
Match Quiz
 10 Qns
Test your knowledge of the home computers of yesteryear by matching these clues with the computer in question.
Average, 10 Qns, skylarb, Dec 04 20
Average
skylarb
Dec 04 20
467 plays
6.
  The Computer Scrapheap Challenge    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Moore's Law states that the speed and capability of our computers increases every couple of years. Let's look at computing entities that no longer make the grade.
Average, 10 Qns, darksplash, Mar 16 21
Average
darksplash
Mar 16 21
321 plays
7.
  Computers Before The PC   great trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Believe it or not, computers existed before the IBM PC and the Internet. This quiz is about some of those "dinosaurs" that used to inhabit the world's data centers and the people who created them.
Difficult, 10 Qns, ertrum, Dec 04 20
Difficult
ertrum gold member
Dec 04 20
5655 plays
8.
  A Brief History of the Internet    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
The internet is such an integral part of our daily lives, but it has only really been around for a relatively small period of time. Let's see how much you know about its history, from early development to what we use today.
Average, 10 Qns, timence, Dec 04 20
Average
timence gold member
Dec 04 20
894 plays
9.
  The Lowly Punched Card    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Do you remember when computers used punched cards and card readers as the primary form of input? Probably not. But, here are a few interesting facts about the lowly punched card.
Average, 10 Qns, key_man, Sep 21 24
Average
key_man
Sep 21 24
755 plays
10.
  A Universal History of (Internet) Infamy    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Internet came to transform our lives and relationships forever, but since the beginning it was plagued by vicious practices, most of them still alive today. Let's review some.
Average, 10 Qns, kadm, Dec 04 20
Average
kadm
Dec 04 20
463 plays
11.
  Win9x    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Just a few questions about Windows 9x.
Average, 10 Qns, ace_sodium, Jul 11 22
Average
ace_sodium
Jul 11 22
4438 plays
12.
  The Real Computer History Quiz    
Multiple Choice
 15 Qns
There are lots of PC experts out there today. Not too many of them have knowledge that extends back to the early days of the PC. How good are you at early PC history?
Very Difficult, 15 Qns, brownknows, Dec 04 20
Very Difficult
brownknows
Dec 04 20
6527 plays
13.
  History of Microsoft Windows    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This little quiz takes an in-depth look into the history of Microsoft Windows, more colloquially known as Windows.
Average, 10 Qns, UniWaltBros_13, Dec 04 20
Average
UniWaltBros_13
Dec 04 20
438 plays
14.
  A Mainframe Computing Miscellany    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
A variety questions ranging from not too difficult to quite obscure from the 50's, 60's and 70's centering around business computers and their peripherals.
Tough, 10 Qns, key_man, Dec 04 20
Tough
key_man
Dec 04 20
572 plays
15.
  The Curious History of Digital Computers    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
You will probably need to be a hard-core geek and a baby boomer to be good at this quiz. Can you process these little known facts about early digital computers and computer people? Some of the answers may surprise you!
Tough, 10 Qns, UUizard, Sep 21 24
Tough
UUizard
Sep 21 24
311 plays
16.
  Why 360?    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Fifty years ago, on April 7, 1964, IBM announced System/360 computers intended to revolutionize the computer industry. This may be difficult for those who didn't experience the mainframe era, but additional information in the answer gives a perspective.
Difficult, 10 Qns, Aliquis, Jan 23 23
Difficult
Aliquis gold member
Jan 23 23
314 plays
17.
  Troubleshooting Programs on the IBM 360    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Much of the information fed back to programmers in IBM S360 was quite cryptic. Programmers were required to be master detectives sometimes just to find out what went wrong. How would you have survived in this era?
Tough, 10 Qns, key_man, Dec 04 20
Tough
key_man
Dec 04 20
355 plays
18.
  IBM S360 Mainframe Computer History    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
The introduction of the IBM 360 family of mainframe computers changed the face commercial computing. Here is a quiz about how much you know of the early years of this era.
Tough, 10 Qns, key_man, Dec 04 20
Tough
key_man
Dec 04 20
465 plays
19.
  Computer Potpourri I (The Early Decades)    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This is a collection of computer trivia primarily from the '60s and '70s (all the correct answers are from those decades, but I have sprinkled some incorrect answers from other decades). Old-timers should have no problem with this one.
Very Difficult, 10 Qns, foobarguyohio, Dec 04 20
Very Difficult
foobarguyohio
Dec 04 20
1734 plays
20.
  The History of Computing    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
My career followed the growth of the data processing industry. At the time I attended college there were no majors in data processing. I gained most of my training on my own or on the job.
Difficult, 10 Qns, denmarks, Feb 02 21
Difficult
denmarks
Feb 02 21
1494 plays
21.
  The BBC Micro    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
A quiz about the BBC Microcomputer, as used by schools across the UK throughout the 80's
Difficult, 10 Qns, mekon, Dec 04 20
Difficult
mekon
Dec 04 20
737 plays
22.
  Installing, Configuring, and Upgrading (using DOS)    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This quiz will measure your understanding of installing, configuring, and upgrading the various flavors of MS operating systems and applications.
Tough, 10 Qns, cindynlace, Dec 04 20
Tough
cindynlace
Dec 04 20
3020 plays
23.
  Sinclair Computers    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
This Quiz covers the popular home computers of the 1980's manufactured by Sinclair.
Very Difficult, 10 Qns, mekon, Dec 04 20
Very Difficult
mekon
Dec 04 20
1268 plays
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History of Computing Trivia Questions

1. One of the first electronic computers, located in Philadelphia, occupied 167 square metres, weighed 27 tons and consumed 150kW of electricity. What was it called?

From Quiz
The Curious History of Digital Computers

Answer: ENIAC

ENIAC was developed and built by the U.S. Army for the purpose of calculating ballistic firing tables by emulating electronically a hand-operated mechanical calculator. It used a 10-digit decimal system rather than the binary system used by modern computers. It could not store programs, and conditional branching, a basic function of all modern computers, involved clumsy manual programming using wires and plugs. An amusing but false rumour at the time was that the lights in Philadelphia would dim whenever the behemoth was turned on. Only one ENIAC was ever built, and in 1955 it was put out of action by a lightning strike.

2. In which year was Microsoft Windows first released?

From Quiz History of Microsoft Windows

Answer: 1985

Microsoft Corporation released "Windows" a year after the Apple Macintosh was released. It quickly stirred up controversy due to the resemblance it bore to the Macintosh.

3. The development of a particular operating system was an important precursor to the way web servers work today. What was this operating system, first developed in 1969 by AT&T?

From Quiz A Brief History of the Internet

Answer: UNIX

UNIX was first developed in what was knows as 'assembly' language, which restricted its use to the particular type of computer it was written on. In the early 1970s it was written in C, meaning it could now be transported more easily across different computers (and later, networks). UNIX is the precursor to many later internet-based operating systems, including Linux.

4. For what was the stiff format punched card first used?

From Quiz The Lowly Punched Card

Answer: Controlling French weaving looms (early 18th century)

Bouchon & Falcon replaced paper rolls that had been in use to control looms in France with this much more durable format. Babbage did work with punched cards and his mechanical calculators (pre-cursor to computers). Throughout the 19th and 20th century punched cards were used in many types of player-pianos and fairground organs.

5. To begin with, why was BASIC called BASIC?

From Quiz Basic BASIC (for Old School Computers)

Answer: It was an acronym

BASIC stood for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code." It was developed in 1963 at Dartmouth College, but really took hold with the home computer explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of the first versions of BASIC for a home computer was Altair BASIC, written in 1975 by a couple guys you may have heard of--Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft.

6. Which command copies the boot files on a diskette with data, without erasing it?

From Quiz Installing, Configuring, and Upgrading (using DOS)

Answer: Sys A:

This assumes the system files are located on the C: drive.

7. What size disks were used by the Spectrum +3?

From Quiz Sinclair Computers

Answer: 3''

Amstrad were convinced that they had a superior disc format - they were however small capacity, slow devices which cost an arm and a leg!

8. The BBC was the product of which computer company?

From Quiz The BBC Micro

Answer: Acorn

Acorn beat some strong competition including Sinclair to win the British Broadcasting Corporation's contract.

9. The original IBM PC had two identical connectors (in addition to others) on the back panel. One was the keyboard connector. What was the other one?

From Quiz The Real Computer History Quiz

Answer: Cassette Tape IO

The original PC (model 5150) was the only model that had this connector. The only jumper on the motherboard was used to configure this connector for line-level or MIC-level input.

10. Windows 98 tool used to view Files and Folders stored in your computer, CD Rom, or floppy disks.

From Quiz Windows 98 Introduction

Answer: Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is a graphical tool that is found in Start-Programs-Windows Explorer. It shows your computer's files and folders in a tree structure.

11. In the 1990s it was one of the the largest sellers of computers, but which company found it difficult to compete with the big boys and disappeared for good in 2013?

From Quiz The Computer Scrapheap Challenge

Answer: Compaq

Founded in 1982, Compaq was the first to go head-to-head with the IBM Personal Computer. But it struggled against the likes of HP and Dell and could not keep up in the price wars. HP bought out Compaq in 2002 and used the name for a few years before it disappeared in 2013.

12. Claimed by some to be the first electronic computer, the "ABC" was invented in 1942. Oddly enough 'C' stands for Computer, but what do the letters 'AB' stand for?

From Quiz The Curious History of Digital Computers

Answer: Atanasoff-Berry

The validity of the claim that the Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first electronic computer has been debated by many, for various technical reasons. There is no doubt however, that many of the designer Atanasoff's ideas were seminal in future computer design. A case was brought by the holders of the ENIAC patent, Sperry Rand, against Honeywell, charging them with patent infringement and demanding royalties. At the same time Honeywell sued Sperry Rand for monopoly and fraud, and seeking the invalidation of the patent, on the basis that they had used Atanasoff's designs for the ABC in the building of ENIAC. The decision came down in favour of Honeywell, invalidating the patent and putting the design concepts into the public domain. The decision enabled open competition between manufacturers, and the explosion of the modern commercial computer age.

13. Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001 to great fanfare. The original slogan was discarded, and a new one chosen. Why?

From Quiz History of Microsoft Windows

Answer: The 9/11 attacks

Microsoft had been using the slogan "Prepare to Fly" in the lead-up to the Windows XP release. When the September 11 attacks occurred Microsoft decided not to use it, and instead used "Yes, you can".

14. Who was the world renowned French mathematician who devised what is thought to be the first digital computer in 1642?

From Quiz A Brief History of Computers

Answer: Blaise Pascal

Pascal came up with the calculator so that he could help his father, who was a tax collector. He used a number of wheels that had ten cogs each and that could be turned by hand. The calculator allowed the entry of numbers and by turning the wheels it gave the total sum of the numbers that were entered. John Napier, who discovered logarithms is Scottish, Isaac Newton was not born until 1643 and is English and French mathematician Descartes gave the world the Cartesian coordinate system.

15. The announcement made on April 7, was seen by a large number of people and created an immediate stir in the business and technical communities. How many people attended the announcement and where was it held?

From Quiz Why 360?

Answer: Over 100,000 in IBM offices

The formal System/360 announcement was a major event. Naturally, IBM's President Thomas J. Watson, Jr, made the announcement at the company headquarters in Poughkeepsie NY. Additionally, simultaneous announcements, conducted at 165 corporate offices around the country, were attended by 100,000 business executives. Within a month, over 1000 orders had been received. The first S/360, a Model 40, was delivered to a customer a year later in April 1965. According to a 1966 article in "Fortune Magazine", Watson bet the entire company on the S/360. Development required a commitment of $5 billion, which was double IBM's annual revenue and 25 times its annual profit. Not only that, but the announcement instantly obsoleted nearly all of IBM's entire products. Jim Collin's book "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't" lists the S/360 as one of the three all-time greatest business products (along with the Model T and the Boeing 707). The gamble paid off handsomely. By some estimates, 25 years later (in 1989) the S/360 and its descendants continued to account for over 50% of IBM's revenues. They also comprised nearly 50% of large systems in use worldwide.

16. Which renowned engineer is considered the "Father of the modern Internet" because of his fundamental contributions to the World Wide Web architecture?

From Quiz A Universal History of (Internet) Infamy

Answer: Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist, founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, creator of the HTTP protocol, programmer of the first web client, and called the Father of the Internet for all his contributions to this phenomenon. Credit goes in some way also to Nikola Tesla, because without his pioneering work on the invention of alternate current and many others, the electronic era would have been delayed, if ever existed. Jim Kimsey was founder and CEO of AOL, and Thomas Watson leaded IBM during its golden years.

17. What was/is an acoustic coupler?

From Quiz A Mainframe Computing Miscellany

Answer: Suction like cups for attaching a phone handset to computer equipment

Acoustic couplers accepted the handset of the old-style cradle phone (round speaker and mouthpiece style) into a pair of rubber "sockets" and the modem transmitted through the handset. The first of these operated at a blazing 110 bps (BITS not bytes) per second which meant transmitting 1100 bytes (less than 300 ASCII characters) would take between one and two minutes.

18. Program runs which threw exceptions provided a dump which gave the exception code and the location in the machine memory where the error occurred. To locate the offending command you needed to use what information provided?

From Quiz Troubleshooting Programs on the IBM 360

Answer: BLL (Base Locator for Linkage) cell and Displacement

The BLL cells each held an address which allowed for relative indexing into memory locations. In your dump you were given which BLL cell to use to reach to the "offending" instruction and the relative "displacement" from the address given in the BLL cell at which to find the instruction. A little quick math (adding the displacement to the address in the BLL cell) and you now could find the offending location in the dump. BTW, the other two terms (AAI and DIE) are fabrications.

19. The modern punched card (now pretty much obsolete), similar to what became the mainstay of computing input, was developed in 1890. What was it developed to support?

From Quiz The Lowly Punched Card

Answer: Record data for the US Census

It was Herman Hollerith who developed the technology to process data using punched cards for the US 1890 Census. The punched card often was referred to as a Hollerith card. These cards and Hollerith's sorting and tabulating machinery reduced census data compilation time from 8 years (for the 1880 census) to just one year (for the 1890 census).

20. The first hard drives (Direct Access Storage Facility) marketed for the S/360 was the IBM 2311 which was about the size of a top-loading dishwasher. The 2311 had what form/size of drives?

From Quiz IBM S360 Mainframe Computer History

Answer: 7.25 MB on six 14-inch platters in a 10 lb disk pack

40 years later you can hold a typical 500GB disk drive for the PC in the palm of your hand. This would have required approximately 65,000 2311 Direct Access Storage units. Also, the speed of todays drives is about 10x that of this dinosaur (8.5ms vs 85ms average time to find a block of data on the drive). Each of the platters did come with 3 unused tracks which were designated for use only when faults occurred on other tracks on that platter.

21. In most versions of BASIC, you could use a symbol as a shortcut for the PRINT command. What symbol would you use?

From Quiz Basic BASIC (for Old School Computers)

Answer: ?

This shortcut would save some small amount of time, since a large part of any program was indicating what would go onto the screen. Using a ? instead of typing PRINT may have saved only four keystrokes, but for some reason it seemed like so much more. 10 ? "Hello" would do the same as 10 PRINT "Hello".

22. Punch cards were commonly called IBM cards, except by employees of Univac. They were invented by Herman Hollerith and measured 7 3/8" by 3 1/4". Why was this size chosen?

From Quiz The History of Computing

Answer: It was the standard size of banknotes.

They were designed to be the same size as banknotes and fit into existing banknote boxes.

23. What color was the programmer's reference card for IBM 360 series computers?

From Quiz Computer Potpourri I (The Early Decades)

Answer: Green

The "green card" was a must for IBM Assembly programmers and to some extent for COBOL programmers also. It listed all the machine language instructions, data formats, special information and other useful items that a programmer would need to quickly reference while writing a program.

24. Tracy Kidder's 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Soul of a New Machine" was written about the development of which Massachusetts company's "super minicomputer" system?

From Quiz Computers Before The PC

Answer: Data General's MV/8000

Tracy Kidder wrote this book about the team at Data General who designed the MV/8000, one of the first super-minicomputers.

25. To bypass the autoexec.bat and config.sys during the DOS boot process, you press what key?

From Quiz Installing, Configuring, and Upgrading (using DOS)

Answer: F5

When you see (starting msdos) you would then press F5.

26. IBM DOS 1.0 had two utilities that later integrated directly into the functionality of DOS. What were they?

From Quiz The Real Computer History Quiz

Answer: DATE.COM and TIME.COM

DATE.COM and TIME.COM were replaced in DOS 1.1 by the internal DATE and TIME commands. REN, COPY and DEL were always internal commands.

27. What is the gray bar with the Start Button found at the bottom (usually)of Windows95-98 called?

From Quiz Windows 98 Introduction

Answer: Taskbar

The Taskbar has many functions: It has the Start Button that opens the Start Menu, the Clock, sometimes a list of more shortcuts, and sometimes the systems tray.

28. "From small things momma, big things one day come", according to the songsmith Bruce Springsteen. Which early computer company sought to be Britain's answer to Apple, but sank into financial difficulties?

From Quiz The Computer Scrapheap Challenge

Answer: Acorn

Acorn arose from the ideas of a group of students and researchers at Cambridge University. Their aim was to take computing out of the hands of a few coders like themselves and into everyday homes. Their Acorn Atom was to offer that. Their further development of that, the Proton, was to be the basis for the home computer the BBC was looking for. Branded the BBC Micron, it was to be phenomenally successful and Acorn became a successful public company. But the sharks were circulating and finance was shaky.

29. Even though it became "Windows", what was Bill Gates's original name for the system?

From Quiz History of Microsoft Windows

Answer: Interface Manager

"Windows" was originally going to be called "Interface Manager", but an assistant urged Bill Gates to call it "Windows", referring to whenever the user typed a command, it opened a series of tiles, or "windows".

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