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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What were the interests of Charles Babbage, a brilliant Englishman who lived in the 19th century?
(a) Prose and poetry.
(b) Mathematics, engineering, cryptography, railroads, and industrial machinery.
(c) The history of discovery and travel.
(d) Philosophy and psychology.

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

3. What was Claude Shannon fascinated with?
(a) Electronics.
(b) Communications.
(c) Cryptograms.
(d) Computing.

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

5. Seventeenth numerical tables were set up so that what factor could be learned about each number?
(a) The square root.
(b) Pi.
(c) The base number.
(d) The logarithm.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a bit?

2. What did MIT scholar Vannevar Bush create?

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

4. Who devised a way to multiply and divide numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms?

5. Why did businessmen immediately take to the telegraph?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was the purpose behind the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary?

2. Who invented the "first" telegraph?

3. How did the development of the written language assist Greek philosophers in advancing mankind?

4. Who was Claude Shannon?

5. Who first conceived the idea of a machine that could think and under what circumstances?

6. While Shannon worked on secret cryptography projects for the US government during World War II, what theory about information did he conceive?

7. What were the two stages of a "bit" as conceived by Claude Shannon?

8. Why did Ada Lovelace publish her mathematical arguments anonymously?

9. What innovation was made in the 17th century by Scot mathematician John Napier?

10. What impact did the electric telegraph have on the world?

(see the answer keys)

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