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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. Where was knowledge stored prior to the written word?
(a) Word of wise men.
(b) By legend.
(c) In tribal strongholds.
(d) In the mind.

3. Who devised a way to multiply and divide numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms?
(a) Thomas Fincke.
(b) Isaac Newton.
(c) John Napier.
(d) Aristotle.

4. What was the main form of communication in the late 1940s?
(a) The telephone.
(b) Letters.
(c) Special couriers.
(d) The telegraph.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. In what field was Charles Babbage an early pioneer?

3. What uses one symbol to represent one "minimal sound"?

4. What development was the last stage of writing?

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

(see the answer key)

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