X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.folklore.computers: 19484 Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0-3 14/03/90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!newstop!eastapps!pyrite!sgolson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Questions from Computer Bowl I Message-ID: <10896@eastapps.East.Sun.COM> From: sgolson@pyrite.East.Sun.COM (Steve Golson) Date: 13 Feb 92 21:47:43 GMT Reply-To: sgolson@east.sun.com (Steve Golson) Sender: news@East.Sun.COM Organization: Trilobyte Systems, Carlisle MA Lines: 598 The first Computer Bowl sponsored by The Computer Museum was held in Boston in October 1988. The questions used are listed below. For a more detailed report see the January 1989 issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM v32n1). [Keep in mind these questions were posed in 1988! Some of the answers may be out of date.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND ONE QUESTIONS 1. Dick Heiser opened the world's first microcomputer store in West Los Angeles in 1975. Was it called Computerland, The Itty Bitty Computer Company, or The Computer Store? 2. Only 220 examples of this computer were produced at $666.66 apiece, but they helped launch a major microcomputer company. What was the computer? 3. Who wrote the first book about personal computers in 1974? 4. How long would it take to send the Encyclopaedia Britannica over a 2-gigabit fiber-optic cable? Would it be 2 seconds, 2 minutes, or twenty minutes? 5. Here's an early example of a computer accessory that's fairly common today. What is it? [photo shows a metal device looking roughly like a hand-held electric drill] 6. The letters in most software languages form acronyms. Which of the following two language names is not an acronym? FORTRAN or ADA? 7. We'll name the people, and you name the computer languages they invented: a. Kenneth Iverson b. John Backus c. John McCarthy d. Niklaus Wirth 8. What hi-tech company determined whether the 18 minute gap in the Nixon tape was deliberate? Was it IBM; Bolt, Beranek and Newman; or Tektronix? 9. LIFE is the name of a well-known computer game. Who won Scientific American's Game of LIFE contest by creating the first "glider gun"? Was is Bill Gosper or Donald Knuth? 10. Here's a four-part question, about computers in the movies. a. In what Disney movie do the main characters live inside a computer? b. What was the name of the robot in the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still?" Was it Robbie, Gort, or Braniac? c. What computer co-starred with Robert Redford in the film, "Three Days of the Condor": a PDP-11, an Apple II, or a Cray 1? d. What company worked with Disney to supply effects for the animated cartoon classic, "Fantasia"? Was it IBM, Hewlett Packard, or Sperry Rand? 11. What was the first name of the inventor of Boolean algebra? 12. Dartmouth College is famous for many computer firsts. Of the following three pioneering events, which did not take place at Dartmouth: the first remote computer linkup; the first AI workshop; or the first color video terminal? 13. Many people believe that ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer, but a recent article in Scientific American claims this honor should really go to another computer pioneer. Is this person Stibitz, Atanasoff, or Zuse? 14. The word "modem" is formed from what two words? 15. Is Silicon Valley South or North of Route 128? 16. Everybody's heard of Silicon Valley. Tell us the real geographical locations of the following places: a. Silicon Prairie b. Silicon Mountain c. Silicon Valley North d. Silicon Glen 17. In what year did the byte become standard? 1950, 1958, or 1964? 18. Was the first slide rule developed in 1620, 1750, or 1880? 19. A famous computer pioneer was also an opium addict and a gambler. Was it Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, or Norbert Weiner? 20. Ada Lovelace, of course, was the famous friend of nineteenth century computer pioneer Charles Babbage and a software pioneer in her own right. Was Ada Lovelace in favor of, or against, the idea of artificial intelligence? 21. What computer-related fact links Timex, Osborne Computer, and Southwest Technical Products? 22. What computer language inspired the design of the IBM Selectric type ball? FORTRAN, BASIC, or APL? 23. "More than iron, more than lead, more than gold, I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber." That's an excerpt from the first book written by a computer, entitled "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed". Who is the author? Is it Eliza, Racter, or Bard? 24. What is the purpose of the bench around the Cray 1 supercomputer? 25. What is a FLOP? 26. Here's some real trivia. We'll name the time period. You tell us what computer industry trade show is held during that period: a. January and June b. Mid-August c. Late April or early May ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND TWO QUESTIONS 1. What was the first home computer to sell a million units? The Apple II, the Commodore VIC-20, or the TRS-80? 2. Name two computer software languages developed by industry and user committees. 3. The Pizza Time Restaurant chain was started by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. What was the name of Pizza Time's mouse robot? 4. Is Rocky's Boots a program to teach children logic, a walking robot, or a PC bootstrap program? 5. During World War II the allies used computers to decode secret messages written by the Nazis on machines like this. Was this machine called the Ultra, the Ace, or the Enigma? [photo shows a wooden box with keys, lights, wheels, plug cords] 6. During World War II, Churchill received advanced word from a decoded Enigma message that the Germans planned to bomb a major British city. He was forced to let the attack happen to keep his knowledge of enemy communications a secret. What was the British city? Manchester, London, or Coventry? 7. The Bombe and Colossus are names of two computing devices developed during World War II. Were they used for designing the A-bomb; for cryptography; or for designing radar? 8. What was the first software company to go public on the NY Stock Exchange? 9. Which of the following did Bill Gates not do: drop out of Harvard; program the PDP-10; or have a one thousand-person 25th birthday party? 10. Who cofounded Microsoft along with Bill Gates? 11. Are computers mentioned anywhere in George Orwell's "1984"? 12. In 1888 William Burroughs was granted a patent. Was it for the printing adding machine, the difference engine, or the punched card? 13. How far can electricty travel in a nanosecond: 1.8 inches, 10.8 inches, or 108 inches? 14. Is CADUCEUS a high level language, a Data General Computer, or a medical diagnosis program? 15. What book about computers won a Pulitzer prize? 16. Tell us who wrote the following books: a. "The Art of Computer Programming" b. "The Third Apple" c. "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise" 17. What was the first tune generated by a computer, and where was it generated? 18. A rectifier changes AC current to DC. What does an inverter do? 19. Was the Model 33 a tape drive, a teletype machine, or a video terminal? 20. Ivan Sutherland described the first interactive graphics program. What was it called? 21. What is SABRE? 22. What US corporation bought the first industrial robot? General Motors, Dupont, or Martin Marietta? 23. Where is Research Triangle? 24. What company marketed the first digital watch? 25. This four-part question is about people in the microcomputer industry. a. Did Ella Fitzgerald sing at Steve Jobs' 30th birthday, NCC Pioneer's Day, or ENIAC's 40th birthday? b. Name a PC entrepreneur who has been knighted. c. What foreign-born computer pioneer was honored at the Statue of Liberty Ceremonies? d. What member of the Homebrew Computer Club had a dog named Rocky? 26. Is the divorce rate higher in Santa Clara county or Boston's Middlesex County? 27. How much did Charles Tandy pay for Radio Shack in 1963? $500,000, $20 million, or nothing? 28. In what year did a computer begin playing checkers? 1940, 1950, or 1960? 29. Most government-sponsored computer projects are funded by the military. What pioneering computer was funded by the Department of Agriculture?. Was it the Atanasoff machine, ENIAC, or UNIVAC? 30. According to John Backus, during the 1950s did it cost more to program computers, to rent them, or were the costs about the same? 31. In Boolean algebra, what is the value of 1 "ORed" with 1? Is it 0, 1, or 10? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND THREE QUESTIONS 1. What is the most widely installed PC operating system? 2. Of the following three terms, which does not describe a type of microprocessor: CISC, RISC, or WISC? 3. At what trade show was Visicalc first introduced? Comdex, the National Computer Conference, or the West Coast Computer Faire? 4. What was the first computer John Von Neumann used? The MARK I or the Pilot ACE? 5. The following question is about IBM. There are three parts. a. Who wrote "IBM's Billion Dollar Baby"? b. How many horizontal lines make up the IBM logo on computer screens? Is it 8, 13, or both? c. Finally, here's an vital question: Where is IBM's golf country club located: Poughkeepsie, Endicott, or Fishkill, New York? 6. Where did An Wang get his seed capital to start Wang Labs? From General Electric, IBM, or the Chase Manhattan Bank? 7. Who raised $500 to start a company by selling a version of the SpaceWar computer game ? 8. Was the US Festival Rock Concert sponsored by Stewart Brand, Steve Wozniak, or St. Silicon? 9. Some say the personal computer era began when a microcomputer appeared on the cover of the January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. Was that computer the IMSAI, the Altair, the Scelbi, or the Apple I? 10. This three-part question is about computer magazines. a. Six months before the famous Popular Electronics cover, another computer appeared on a magazine cover. The computer was the Mark 8. Was the magazine Scientific American, EDN, or Radio Electronics? b. What microprocessor was used in the Mark 8? c. Finally, what was the first computer magazine: was it Computers and Automation, Datamation, or ComputerWorld? 11. What computer company made the W2 form a reality in 1943? 12. What is the term for software permanently stored in ROM? 13. Is there a way to read a magnetic tape if you don't have a tape reader? 14. Are IBM's headquarters on Madison Avenue, in Poughkeepsie, or in Armonk? 15. We know of a least two high-level computer languages whose names read the same way backward and forward. What are they? 16. What was the only personal computer to be named after the state in which it was produced? 17. Was the Whetstone, a measure of computing performance, developed in the USA, the UK, or France? 18. Computer pioneer Alan Turing contributed to the design of one computer that was built. Was it ENIAC or the Pilot ACE? 19. Here's a three-part question, also about Alan Turing. a. Who received a Tony nomination for best actor for portraying Turing on Broadway this year? Was it Sir Lawrence Olivier, Ian McKellan, or Derek Jacoby ? b. What was the name of the play ? c. Where did Turing do his research during his stay in the United States? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND FOUR QUESTIONS 1. APL is a high-level software language. What do the letters in APL stand for? 2. What arcade game started the computer arcade craze? 3. What is the name of the government-funded computer network linking defense researchers? Is it Telenet, Comnet, or Arpanet? 4. What computer language uses turtles? 5. Here are three questions about CP/M. a. What does CP/M stand for? b. Who wrote it? c. What company did he work for at the time? 6. What company did Kentucky Fried Computers eventually become? Was it Apple, Northstar Computers, or Actavision? 7. What was the name of Coleco's ill-fated home computer? 8. The miniature circuits that make up today's computers are manufactured in so-called clean rooms to avoid contamination. Which is cleaner, a Class 100 clean room or a Class 10 clean room? 9. Here are five questions with no redeeming social merit whatsoever. We'll name the street address, and you tell us what the computer company is that's located there: a. 590 Madison Avenue b. 1700 Green Hills Road c. 20555 FM-149 d. 100 Throckmorton e. 16011 Northeast 36th Way 10. In 1921, Karl Capek used the Czech word for "worker" in his play, RUR. In the process, he coined a new word. What was the word? 11. Is the largest employer in Silicon Valley the Air Force, Lockheed, or Apple Computer? 12. Prior to their use in computers, punch cards were used in which of the following machines: silk weaving machines, calculators, or drilling machines? 13. This four-part question is all about punched cards. a. How many columns does an IBM standard computer punched card have? b. What shape are the holes in standard computer-readable punched cards? c. When punched cards first became popular in the 1890's, they had something in common with the dollar bill. What was it? d. What is the name used for the tiny round piece of paper created by punching paper tape? Is it pulp, chad, or fluff? 14. DIP switches are small switches found inside computers. Does the "P" in "DIP" stand for peripheral, package, or pixel? 15. What is the S100? 16. Is a picosecond shorter or longer than a nanosecond? 17. During the 1960s and 1970s, the eight major computer companies were referred to jokingly as "IBM and the seven dwarfs." How many of the seven dwarfs can you name? 18. On what machine did Digital Equipment's CEO Ken Olsen get his first computer experience? 19. What is the more common name for the IEEE 802.3 standard? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answers are next! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND ONE 1. The Computer Store 2. The Apple I computer 3. Ted Nelson (The title was "Computer Lib and Dream Machines") 4. Two seconds 5. A light pen, for the SAGE computer 6. ADA (actually, Ada) 7a. APL b. FORTRAN c. LISP d. Pascal 8. Bolt, Beranek and Newman 9. Bill Gosper at MIT 10a. "TRON" b. Gort c. PDP-11 d. Hewlett-Packard 11. George Boole 12. The first color video terminal 13. Atanasoff 14. Modulator and demodulator 15. South 16a. Dallas, Texas b. Colorado Springs, Colorado c. Portland, Oregon d. Scotland 17. 1964. The 8-bit byte became a standard with the IBM 360 computer. 18. In 1620, by William Oughtred 19. Ada Lovelace 20. Against 21. They have all dropped out of the microcomputer business 22. APL 23. Racter 24. The answer desired was "For cooling", but actually the bench seats are a cover for the power supplies. 25. It stands for FLoating point OPerations per second 26a. Consumer Electronic Show (CES) b. MacWorld Boston c. Spring COMDEX ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND TWO 1. The Commodore VIC-20 2. Ada and COBOL 3. Chuck E. Cheese 4. A program to teach children logic 5. The Enigma 6. The answer desired was "Coventry", but there is evidence that this never actually happened, so this should more properly be called a Computer Legend. 7. For cryptography 8. Cullinet Software in 1978 9. Have a one thousand-person 25th birthday party 10. Paul Allen 11. No 12. The Printing Adding Machine 13. 10.8 inches 14. Medical diagnosis program 15. "Soul of A New Machine", by Tracy Kidder 16a. Donald Knuth b. Jean-Louis Gassee c. Charles Babbage 17. "A Bicycle Built for Two" (or "Daisy, Daisy") at Bell Labs 18. Changes DC to AC 19. A teletype machine (used as a computer terminal in the seventies) 20. Sketchpad 21. American Airlines' computerized ticket reservation system 22. General Motors bought a UNIMATE 1 23. In North Carolina, near Chapel Hill 24. Hewlett-Packard 25a. Steve Jobs' 30th birthday b. Sir Clive Sinclair c. An Wang d. Steve Wozniak 26. Santa Clara county 27. Nothing. The company was virtually bankrupt and he agreed to pay the bills. 28. 1950. The machine was Manchester's MADM. 29. The Atanasoff machine. The Department of Agriculture provided $500 for the project during the 1940s. 30. About the same 31. 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND THREE 1. DOS or MS-DOS 2. WISC. (CISC is a "complex instruction set computer" and RISC is a "reduced instruction set computer") 3. The West Coast Computer Faire in 1979 4. The Harvard Mark I, which he used in his work at Los Alamos 5a. Portia Isaacson of Future Computing b. Both -- there are two official versions c. Endicott 6. From IBM 7. Nolan Bushnell. He used the money to start Atari. 8. Steve Wozniak 9. The Altair 10a. Radio Electronics b. The Intel 4004 c. Computers and Automation, first published by Edmund Berkeley in 1950 11. IBM, by supplying the government with the equipment to track withholding pay 12. Firmware 13. Yes, by using a special magnetic powder or fluid 14. Armonk, NY 15. Ada and C 16. Ohio Scientific Challenger 17. The UK 18. The Pilot ACE 19a. Derek Jacoby b. "Breaking the Code" c. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND FOUR 1. A Programming Language 2. Pong 3. Arpanet 4. LOGO 5a. Control Program for Microcomputers b. Gary Kildall c. Digital Research 6. Northstar Computers 7. The Adam 8. Class 10 9a. IBM in Manhattan b. Borland in Scotts Valley, California c. Compaq in Houston, Texas d. Tandy-Radio Shack in Fort Worth, Texas e. Microsoft in Redmond, Washington 10. Robot 11. Lockheed 12. Silk weaving machines 13a. Eighty columns b. Rectangular c. They were the same size. The card was designed to use files built for storing dollars. d. Chad 14. Package 15. A data bus commonly used in early microcomputers 16. Shorter -- a trillionth versus a billionth of a second 17. Sperry Rand, Control Data (CDC), Honeywell, RCA, NCR, GE, and Burroughs 18. He worked on the Memory Test Computer for core memory for the Whirlwind 19. Ethernet ----------------------------------------------------------------------------