How things work college course/Computer quiz

This quiz covers Wikipedia's Computer (Wikipedia permalink) and its links: w:Turing machine * w:Busy beaver * w:Halting problem * w:Bombe. For another quiz on this topic, see Turing machine quiz.

Testbank contains randomized versions of this quiz for classroom use. For more information on printing these quizzes, see How to use testbank.

For on-screen use, this version of the quiz can be used as a pre-reading activity for Wikipedia:Computer. An excellent homework assignment might be to ask students to submit more quiz questions to Wikiversity.

Computer (Wikipedia article)

1 The first English-language usage of the word "computer" referred to

	counting rods
	an abacus
	Roman numerals
	a person

2 Babbage's account of the origin of the difference engine in the 1820s was that he was working to satisfy the Astronomical Society's desire to improve The Nautical Almanac.

	true
	false

3 Babbage's account of the origin of the difference engine in the 1820s was that he was working to satisfy the Astronomical Society's desire to predict lunar eclipses

	true
	false

4 Babbage's use of punch cards in the 1930s to solve a problem posed by the Astronomical Society was later adopted to the Jacquard loom.

	true
	false

5 Babbage's use of punch cards in the 1930s to solve a problem posed by the Astronomical Society was preceded by such use on the Jacquard loom.

	true
	false

6 A system that uses levers, pulleys, or other mechanical device to perform calculations is called an analog computer

	true
	false

7 A system that uses tables of numbers is called an analog computer

	true
	false

8 Analog computers were phased out by the dawn of the twentieth century (circa 1900)

	true
	false

9 Analog computers continued to be developed into the twentieth century

	true
	false

10 The Turing machine permitted a solution to the halting problem

	true
	false

11 The Turing machine could not have been invented until after the halting problem was solved.

	true
	false

12 The Turing machine was a(n) ______ device

	digital
	electromechanical
	prototype
	conceptual
	analog

13 This algorithm halts if it starts at 0:
* Add 3
* If the number is divisible by 10, divide by 10
* Stop if the number exceeds 100
* Go to top

	true
	false

14 This algorithm halts if it starts at 0:
* Add 3
* If the number is divisible by 10, add 10
* Stop if the number exceeds 100
* Go to top

	true
	false

15 In London (circa 1935) thousands of vacuum tubes were used to

	calculate the value of π
	control a telephone exchange
	count votes in an election
	control a textile mill

16 The Bombe was a(n) ______________ device used (circa 1940) to defeat the Enigma machine in World War II.

	mechanical
	electric digital programmable
	Turing-complete
	electromechanical

17 The Colossus, used to defeat the German Enigma machine during World War II in 1944, was

	Turing-complete
	mechanical
	electric digital programmable
	electromechanical

18 The chronological order by which electronic computers advanced is:

	transistors, integrated circuits, and then tubes
	tubes, transistors, and then integrated circuits
	integrated circuits, tubes, and then transistors
	tubes, integrated circuits and then transistors