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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 13.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. By 1930, what had replaced the telegraph as the most advanced means of communication?
(a) The telephone.
(b) Ship to shore communicators.
(c) The two-way radio.
(d) The computer.

2. What machine was constructed by Charles Babbage?
(a) The difference engine.
(b) The calculator.
(c) The difference analyzer.
(d) The computer.

3. The early telegraph had trouble functioning under what conditions?
(a) Migratory seasons.
(b) Fog and rain.
(c) Overuse.
(d) Sunny skies.

4. Why wasn't Shannon able to teach his computer to play a game?
(a) His boss nixed the idea.
(b) It would take to long to teach the machine the game.
(c) He found it wasn't possible.
(d) He thought he would be seen as non-serious.

5. What was the goal of James Murray when he wrote the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1879?
(a) To catalog the entire English language.
(b) To alphabetize all words.
(c) To provide the pronunciation of all words.
(d) To limit the work to only proper English.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Landauer disprove von Neumann's theory on the energy cost of information?

2. It had long been noted that physical traits were inheritable and that they had something to do with what other human element?

3. When were computers first unveiled?

4. How many years ago was the first language established?

5. What did cosmologist George Gamow immediately recognize about DNA as a code and proposed that it could be deciphered mathematically?

(see the answer key)

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