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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 limit the work to only proper English.
(c) To alphabetize all words.
(d) To provide the pronunciation of all words.

2. What jobs were created to handle the increasing number of telephone calls?
(a) Call center personnel.
(b) Office assistants.
(c) Switchboard operators.
(d) Secretaries.

3. How did the drummers of Africa differentiate between similar words?
(a) The main drummer was assisted by another drummer.
(b) The drummer added short descriptive phrases.
(c) The drummer had to let those receiving the message figure out the right words.
(d) The drummer added special emphasis.

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

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

6. How did people save money in sending telegraph messages?
(a) By bribing the operators.
(b) By not using it.
(c) By creating their own code.
(d) By compressing the message.

7. A new interest in what pursuit arose following the rise of the telegraph?
(a) Computer Science.
(b) The telephone.
(c) Writing.
(d) Cryptography.

8. What was Shannon able to theoretically compute by measuring a message in bits? By measuring information in bits, he could theoretically compute the maximum amount of information that could be transmitted through a given channel.
(a) The maximum amount of information that could be transmitted.
(b) The maximum size a message could be.
(c) The limits of computing.
(d) The virtual size of the message in microns.

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

10. What was used in the earliest known method of writing language?
(a) Pictures.
(b) Numbers.
(c) Codes.
(d) Zeroes and ones.

11. What code did Claude Shannon apply to relay switches which could either be open or closed?
(a) 0 and 1.
(b) 1 and 100
(c) .1 to .5
(d) 2 and 4

12. What caused the errors that were contained in the tables of logarithms that had to be calculated themselves?
(a) Calculations and printing errors.
(b) Printing errors.
(c) Under-educated workers.
(d) Calculations.

13. How did Bertrand Russell address conflicting results produced by the Principia Mathematica? the problem of these recursive paradoxes by simply making them against the rules of his formal system.
(a) Russell altered the Principia Mathematica to adjust for conflicting results.
(b) He implemented exceptions into the system.
(c) He made them against the rules.
(d) He ignored them since they were infrequent.

14. There was no "looking up" of information prior to what invention?
(a) Publishing houses.
(b) Pen and ink.
(c) Printing machines.
(d) Writing.

15. 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 bit.
(b) The transistor.
(c) The relay.
(d) The circuit.

Short Answer Questions

1. What were the two essential elements of Shannon's simple communication model?

2. Why were there so many message errors with the early telegraph?

3. Why did businessmen immediately take to the telegraph?

4. Who developed a system of logic that would not have been possible without writing?

5. What language do the drums of what is now Zaire mimic?

(see the answer keys)

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