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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 5.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word book by James Murray was first published in 1879?
(a) The Birth of Writing.
(b) Oxford English Dictionary.
(c) A Table Alphabeticall.
(d) The First Language.

2. 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) 1955.
(c) 1961.
(d) 1948.

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

4. What was provided in "A Table Alphabeticall"?
(a) The history of alphabets.
(b) Word meanings.
(c) New words.
(d) Alphabets of the world.

5. How were phonetic sounds represented in language?
(a) By images.
(b) By characters.
(c) By numbers.
(d) By codes.

Short Answer Questions

1. Before "A Table Alphabeticall", how were most catalogs and word lists arranged?

2. There was no "looking up" of information prior to what invention?

3. What new word did Claude Shannon, a mathematical researcher at Bell Labs, introduce in the in-house journal called "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"?

4. How were telegraph messages priced?

5. How did the drummers of Africa differentiate between similar words?

(see the answer key)

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