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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Each square of Turing's imaginary machine would have what coding?
(a) Relay switches.
(b) A 0 or a 1.
(c) Circuitry.
(d) Programming.

2. The telegraph invented by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail was based on what function?
(a) Logarithms.
(b) The Morse Code.
(c) Opening and closing the electric circuit.
(d) Capturing electrical impulses.

3. What culture grouped characters in categories such as tools, weapons, plants, animals, and buildings?
(a) The Italians.
(b) The Egyptians.
(c) The Chinese.
(d) The Inca Culture.

4. Who developed a system of logic that would not have been possible without writing?
(a) Aristotle.
(b) Euripedes.
(c) Plato.
(d) Socrates.

5. What is a bit?
(a) The smallest amount of useful information.
(b) The average size of piece of information.
(c) A micron of information.
(d) The size of a datum.

6. How was "A Table Alphabeticall" intended to help people?
(a) To understand the alphabets of the world.
(b) To better understand the use of words.
(c) To learn the history of language.
(d) The learn the alphabet.

7. In the prologue to "The Information", what year does Gleick identify as a crucial year in the history of information and computing?
(a) 1932.
(b) 1948.
(c) 1955.
(d) 1961.

8. What was changing language at the time the first English dictionary was developed?
(a) International trade.
(b) Increased population.
(c) Travel and conquest.
(d) Advanced education.

9. Who was the sixth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary?
(a) Mark Twain.
(b) John Simpson.
(c) Lord Byron.
(d) Thomas Edison.

10. What was difficult for people to accept about telegraph communications?
(a) That electricity was essential in sending the messages.
(b) Why a physical message wasn't necessary.
(c) That it wasn't a fraud.
(d) That people could understand the tapping sounds.

11. Claude Shannon and Alan Turing were working on separate cryptography project and shared what astounding possibility?
(a) That machines could take over the human race.
(b) That machines could have emotions.
(c) That machines could cure disease.
(d) That machines could think.

12. Why did Lovelace publish her mathematical arguments anonymously?
(a) She didn't want to embarrass her father.
(b) Women were not expected to engage in scientific or academic efforts.
(c) She didn't want to appear more intelligent than Babbage.
(d) She wasn't sure her arguments were correct.

13. What new word did Claude Shannon, a mathematical researcher at Bell Labs, introduce in the in-house journal called "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"?
(a) The circuit.
(b) The relay.
(c) The bit.
(d) The transistor.

14. Who wrote the work known as the Principia Mathematica?
(a) Edwin Hubble and Isaac Newton.
(b) Galileo and Copernicus.
(c) Aristotle and Epecruis.
(d) Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead.

15. What were conflicting statements created by the Principia Mathematica called?
(a) False positives.
(b) Non-conclusive results.
(c) Circular arguments.
(d) Recursive.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did the written language provide that helped to progress the intellect of mankind?

2. What was the goal of James Murray when he wrote the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1879?

3. What culture was the first to use a written language?

4. What was the main form of communication in the late 1940s?

5. What was the Morse code comprised of?

(see the answer keys)

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