The first Computer Bowl sponsored by The Computer Museum was held in Boston in October 1988. The questions used are listed below. For a more detailed report see the January 1989 issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM v32n1). [Keep in mind these questions were posed in 1988! Some of the answers may be out of date.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND ONE QUESTIONS 1. Dick Heiser opened the world's first microcomputer store in West Los Angeles in 1975. Was it called Computerland, The Itty Bitty Computer Company, or The Computer Store? 2. Only 220 examples of this computer were produced at $666.66 apiece, but they helped launch a major microcomputer company. What was the computer? 3. Who wrote the first book about personal computers in 1974? 4. How long would it take to send the Encyclopaedia Britannica over a 2-gigabit fiber-optic cable? Would it be 2 seconds, 2 minutes, or twenty minutes? 5. Here's an early example of a computer accessory that's fairly common today. What is it? [photo shows a metal device looking roughly like a hand-held electric drill] 6. The letters in most software languages form acronyms. Which of the following two language names is not an acronym? FORTRAN or ADA? 7. We'll name the people, and you name the computer languages they invented: a. Kenneth Iverson b. John Backus c. John McCarthy d. Niklaus Wirth 8. What hi-tech company determined whether the 18 minute gap in the Nixon tape was deliberate? Was it IBM; Bolt, Beranek and Newman; or Tektronix? 9. LIFE is the name of a well-known computer game. Who won Scientific American's Game of LIFE contest by creating the first "glider gun"? Was is Bill Gosper or Donald Knuth? 10. Here's a four-part question, about computers in the movies. a. In what Disney movie do the main characters live inside a computer? b. What was the name of the robot in the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still?" Was it Robbie, Gort, or Braniac? c. What computer co-starred with Robert Redford in the film, "Three Days of the Condor": a PDP-11, an Apple II, or a Cray 1? d. What company worked with Disney to supply effects for the animated cartoon classic, "Fantasia"? Was it IBM, Hewlett Packard, or Sperry Rand? 11. What was the first name of the inventor of Boolean algebra? 12. Dartmouth College is famous for many computer firsts. Of the following three pioneering events, which did not take place at Dartmouth: the first remote computer linkup; the first AI workshop; or the first color video terminal? 13. Many people believe that ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer, but a recent article in Scientific American claims this honor should really go to another computer pioneer. Is this person Stibitz, Atanasoff, or Zuse? 14. The word "modem" is formed from what two words? 15. Is Silicon Valley South or North of Route 128? 16. Everybody's heard of Silicon Valley. Tell us the real geographical locations of the following places: a. Silicon Prairie b. Silicon Mountain c. Silicon Valley North d. Silicon Glen 17. In what year did the byte become standard? 1950, 1958, or 1964? 18. Was the first slide rule developed in 1620, 1750, or 1880? 19. A famous computer pioneer was also an opium addict and a gambler. Was it Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, or Norbert Weiner? 20. Ada Lovelace, of course, was the famous friend of nineteenth century computer pioneer Charles Babbage and a software pioneer in her own right. Was Ada Lovelace in favor of, or against, the idea of artificial intelligence? 21. What computer-related fact links Timex, Osborne Computer, and Southwest Technical Products? 22. What computer language inspired the design of the IBM Selectric type ball? FORTRAN, BASIC, or APL? 23. "More than iron, more than lead, more than gold, I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber." That's an excerpt from the first book written by a computer, entitled "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed". Who is the author? Is it Eliza, Racter, or Bard? 24. What is the purpose of the bench around the Cray 1 supercomputer? 25. What is a FLOP? 26. Here's some real trivia. We'll name the time period. You tell us what computer industry trade show is held during that period: a. January and June b. Mid-August c. Late April or early May ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND TWO QUESTIONS 1. What was the first home computer to sell a million units? The Apple II, the Commodore VIC-20, or the TRS-80? 2. Name two computer software languages developed by industry and user committees. 3. The Pizza Time Restaurant chain was started by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. What was the name of Pizza Time's mouse robot? 4. Is Rocky's Boots a program to teach children logic, a walking robot, or a PC bootstrap program? 5. During World War II the allies used computers to decode secret messages written by the Nazis on machines like this. Was this machine called the Ultra, the Ace, or the Enigma? [photo shows a wooden box with keys, lights, wheels, plug cords] 6. During World War II, Churchill received advanced word from a decoded Enigma message that the Germans planned to bomb a major British city. He was forced to let the attack happen to keep his knowledge of enemy communications a secret. What was the British city? Manchester, London, or Coventry? 7. The Bombe and Colossus are names of two computing devices developed during World War II. Were they used for designing the A-bomb; for cryptography; or for designing radar? 8. What was the first software company to go public on the NY Stock Exchange? 9. Which of the following did Bill Gates not do: drop out of Harvard; program the PDP-10; or have a one thousand-person 25th birthday party? 10. Who cofounded Microsoft along with Bill Gates? 11. Are computers mentioned anywhere in George Orwell's "1984"? 12. In 1888 William Burroughs was granted a patent. Was it for the printing adding machine, the difference engine, or the punched card? 13. How far can electricty travel in a nanosecond: 1.8 inches, 10.8 inches, or 108 inches? 14. Is CADUCEUS a high level language, a Data General Computer, or a medical diagnosis program? 15. What book about computers won a Pulitzer prize? 16. Tell us who wrote the following books: a. "The Art of Computer Programming" b. "The Third Apple" c. "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise" 17. What was the first tune generated by a computer, and where was it generated? 18. A rectifier changes AC current to DC. What does an inverter do? 19. Was the Model 33 a tape drive, a teletype machine, or a video terminal? 20. Ivan Sutherland described the first interactive graphics program. What was it called? 21. What is SABRE? 22. What US corporation bought the first industrial robot? General Motors, Dupont, or Martin Marietta? 23. Where is Research Triangle? 24. What company marketed the first digital watch? 25. This four-part question is about people in the microcomputer industry. a. Did Ella Fitzgerald sing at Steve Jobs' 30th birthday, NCC Pioneer's Day, or ENIAC's 40th birthday? b. Name a PC entrepreneur who has been knighted. c. What foreign-born computer pioneer was honored at the Statue of Liberty Ceremonies? d. What member of the Homebrew Computer Club had a dog named Rocky? 26. Is the divorce rate higher in Santa Clara county or Boston's Middlesex County? 27. How much did Charles Tandy pay for Radio Shack in 1963? $500,000, $20 million, or nothing? 28. In what year did a computer begin playing checkers? 1940, 1950, or 1960? 29. Most government-sponsored computer projects are funded by the military. What pioneering computer was funded by the Department of Agriculture?. Was it the Atanasoff machine, ENIAC, or UNIVAC? 30. According to John Backus, during the 1950s did it cost more to program computers, to rent them, or were the costs about the same? 31. In Boolean algebra, what is the value of 1 "ORed" with 1? Is it 0, 1, or 10? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND THREE QUESTIONS 1. What is the most widely installed PC operating system? 2. Of the following three terms, which does not describe a type of microprocessor: CISC, RISC, or WISC? 3. At what trade show was Visicalc first introduced? Comdex, the National Computer Conference, or the West Coast Computer Faire? 4. What was the first computer John Von Neumann used? The MARK I or the Pilot ACE? 5. The following question is about IBM. There are three parts. a. Who wrote "IBM's Billion Dollar Baby"? b. How many horizontal lines make up the IBM logo on computer screens? Is it 8, 13, or both? c. Finally, here's an vital question: Where is IBM's golf country club located: Poughkeepsie, Endicott, or Fishkill, New York? 6. Where did An Wang get his seed capital to start Wang Labs? From General Electric, IBM, or the Chase Manhattan Bank? 7. Who raised $500 to start a company by selling a version of the SpaceWar computer game ? 8. Was the US Festival Rock Concert sponsored by Stewart Brand, Steve Wozniak, or St. Silicon? 9. Some say the personal computer era began when a microcomputer appeared on the cover of the January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. Was that computer the IMSAI, the Altair, the Scelbi, or the Apple I? 10. This three-part question is about computer magazines. a. Six months before the famous Popular Electronics cover, another computer appeared on a magazine cover. The computer was the Mark 8. Was the magazine Scientific American, EDN, or Radio Electronics? b. What microprocessor was used in the Mark 8? c. Finally, what was the first computer magazine: was it Computers and Automation, Datamation, or ComputerWorld? 11. What computer company made the W2 form a reality in 1943? 12. What is the term for software permanently stored in ROM? 13. Is there a way to read a magnetic tape if you don't have a tape reader? 14. Are IBM's headquarters on Madison Avenue, in Poughkeepsie, or in Armonk? 15. We know of a least two high-level computer languages whose names read the same way backward and forward. What are they? 16. What was the only personal computer to be named after the state in which it was produced? 17. Was the Whetstone, a measure of computing performance, developed in the USA, the UK, or France? 18. Computer pioneer Alan Turing contributed to the design of one computer that was built. Was it ENIAC or the Pilot ACE? 19. Here's a three-part question, also about Alan Turing. a. Who received a Tony nomination for best actor for portraying Turing on Broadway this year? Was it Sir Lawrence Olivier, Ian McKellan, or Derek Jacoby ? b. What was the name of the play ? c. Where did Turing do his research during his stay in the United States? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND FOUR QUESTIONS 1. APL is a high-level software language. What do the letters in APL stand for? 2. What arcade game started the computer arcade craze? 3. What is the name of the government-funded computer network linking defense researchers? Is it Telenet, Comnet, or Arpanet? 4. What computer language uses turtles? 5. Here are three questions about CP/M. a. What does CP/M stand for? b. Who wrote it? c. What company did he work for at the time? 6. What company did Kentucky Fried Computers eventually become? Was it Apple, Northstar Computers, or Actavision? 7. What was the name of Coleco's ill-fated home computer? 8. The miniature circuits that make up today's computers are manufactured in so-called clean rooms to avoid contamination. Which is cleaner, a Class 100 clean room or a Class 10 clean room? 9. Here are five questions with no redeeming social merit whatsoever. We'll name the street address, and you tell us what the computer company is that's located there: a. 590 Madison Avenue b. 1700 Green Hills Road c. 20555 FM-149 d. 100 Throckmorton e. 16011 Northeast 36th Way 10. In 1921, Karl Capek used the Czech word for "worker" in his play, RUR. In the process, he coined a new word. What was the word? 11. Is the largest employer in Silicon Valley the Air Force, Lockheed, or Apple Computer? 12. Prior to their use in computers, punch cards were used in which of the following machines: silk weaving machines, calculators, or drilling machines? 13. This four-part question is all about punched cards. a. How many columns does an IBM standard computer punched card have? b. What shape are the holes in standard computer-readable punched cards? c. When punched cards first became popular in the 1890's, they had something in common with the dollar bill. What was it? d. What is the name used for the tiny round piece of paper created by punching paper tape? Is it pulp, chad, or fluff? 14. DIP switches are small switches found inside computers. Does the "P" in "DIP" stand for peripheral, package, or pixel? 15. What is the S100? 16. Is a picosecond shorter or longer than a nanosecond? 17. During the 1960s and 1970s, the eight major computer companies were referred to jokingly as "IBM and the seven dwarfs." How many of the seven dwarfs can you name? 18. On what machine did Digital Equipment's CEO Ken Olsen get his first computer experience? 19. What is the more common name for the IEEE 802.3 standard? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answers are next! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND ONE 1. The Computer Store 2. The Apple I computer 3. Ted Nelson (The title was "Computer Lib and Dream Machines") 4. Two seconds 5. A light pen, for the SAGE computer 6. ADA (actually, Ada) 7a. APL b. FORTRAN c. LISP d. Pascal 8. Bolt, Beranek and Newman 9. Bill Gosper at MIT 10a. "TRON" b. Gort c. PDP-11 d. Hewlett-Packard 11. George Boole 12. The first color video terminal 13. Atanasoff 14. Modulator and demodulator 15. South 16a. Dallas, Texas b. Colorado Springs, Colorado c. Portland, Oregon d. Scotland 17. 1964. The 8-bit byte became a standard with the IBM 360 computer. 18. In 1620, by William Oughtred 19. Ada Lovelace 20. Against 21. They have all dropped out of the microcomputer business 22. APL 23. Racter 24. The answer desired was "For cooling", but actually the bench seats are a cover for the power supplies. 25. It stands for FLoating point OPerations per second 26a. Consumer Electronic Show (CES) b. MacWorld Boston c. Spring COMDEX ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND TWO 1. The Commodore VIC-20 2. Ada and COBOL 3. Chuck E. Cheese 4. A program to teach children logic 5. The Enigma 6. The answer desired was "Coventry", but there is evidence that this never actually happened, so this should more properly be called a Computer Legend. 7. For cryptography 8. Cullinet Software in 1978 9. Have a one thousand-person 25th birthday party 10. Paul Allen 11. No 12. The Printing Adding Machine 13. 10.8 inches 14. Medical diagnosis program 15. "Soul of A New Machine", by Tracy Kidder 16a. Donald Knuth b. Jean-Louis Gassee c. Charles Babbage 17. "A Bicycle Built for Two" (or "Daisy, Daisy") at Bell Labs 18. Changes DC to AC 19. A teletype machine (used as a computer terminal in the seventies) 20. Sketchpad 21. American Airlines' computerized ticket reservation system 22. General Motors bought a UNIMATE 1 23. In North Carolina, near Chapel Hill 24. Hewlett-Packard 25a. Steve Jobs' 30th birthday b. Sir Clive Sinclair c. An Wang d. Steve Wozniak 26. Santa Clara county 27. Nothing. The company was virtually bankrupt and he agreed to pay the bills. 28. 1950. The machine was Manchester's MADM. 29. The Atanasoff machine. The Department of Agriculture provided $500 for the project during the 1940s. 30. About the same 31. 1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND THREE 1. DOS or MS-DOS 2. WISC. (CISC is a "complex instruction set computer" and RISC is a "reduced instruction set computer") 3. The West Coast Computer Faire in 1979 4. The Harvard Mark I, which he used in his work at Los Alamos 5a. Portia Isaacson of Future Computing b. Both -- there are two official versions c. Endicott 6. From IBM 7. Nolan Bushnell. He used the money to start Atari. 8. Steve Wozniak 9. The Altair 10a. Radio Electronics b. The Intel 4004 c. Computers and Automation, first published by Edmund Berkeley in 1950 11. IBM, by supplying the government with the equipment to track withholding pay 12. Firmware 13. Yes, by using a special magnetic powder or fluid 14. Armonk, NY 15. Ada and C 16. Ohio Scientific Challenger 17. The UK 18. The Pilot ACE 19a. Derek Jacoby b. "Breaking the Code" c. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND FOUR 1. A Programming Language 2. Pong 3. Arpanet 4. LOGO 5a. Control Program for Microcomputers b. Gary Kildall c. Digital Research 6. Northstar Computers 7. The Adam 8. Class 10 9a. IBM in Manhattan b. Borland in Scotts Valley, California c. Compaq in Houston, Texas d. Tandy-Radio Shack in Fort Worth, Texas e. Microsoft in Redmond, Washington 10. Robot 11. Lockheed 12. Silk weaving machines 13a. Eighty columns b. Rectangular c. They were the same size. The card was designed to use files built for storing dollars. d. Chad 14. Package 15. A data bus commonly used in early microcomputers 16. Shorter -- a trillionth versus a billionth of a second 17. Sperry Rand, Control Data (CDC), Honeywell, RCA, NCR, GE, and Burroughs 18. He worked on the Memory Test Computer for core memory for the Whirlwind 19. Ethernet ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The second Computer Bowl sponsored by The Computer Museum was held in Boston in April 1990. The questions used are listed below. For a more detailed report see the August 1990 issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM v33n8). [Keep in mind these questions were posed in early 1990! Some of the answers may be out of date.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND ONE QUESTIONS 1. The summer of 1977 was a major year for personal computers. In that year three famous PC's were introduced. What were they? 2. Ethernet was named a networking standard in 1980 in a joint public announcement by three famous computer companies. What were their names? 3. According to the Computer Industry Almanac, California has the most computer companies in America, with over 38% of the total. Massachusetts is number 2. Within plus or minus 5%, what is Massachusetts' share of the nation's computer companies? 4. In 1980, one of the largest public stock offerings of modern times was made by a computer company. The size of the offering was the largest since the Ford Motor Company's in 1956. What was the computer company? 5. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are best known for the Apple computer they developed. But they also teamed up to design a popular arcade game for Atari. What was the name of the game? Was it, Space Invaders, Breakout, Asteroids, or Space Wars? 6. What now defunct computer company used this animal as part of an advertising campaign? [photo of a Saint Bernard dog sculpture made out of electronic components] 7. The abacus was one of the earliest counting devices, probably originating in Babylonia and spreading to other countries. Of China, Greece, and Japan, which received the abacus first? 8. In the past, the Chinese used the abacus to do their national census. They stopped using it and replaced it with a computer. When did the Chinese dump the abacus in favor of computers -- was it 1972, 1977, or 1982? 9. In 1989, 16% of NeXT, Inc. was sold for $100M to what company? 10. In the comic strip "Doonesbury", Mark learns to program a computer. What computer does Mark use in "Doonesbury"? 11. In the comic strip "Bloom County", the character Oliver Wendall Jones has a personal computer. What is the name of that computer? 12. Again in "Bloom County", before getting his Banana Junior, Oliver Wendall Jones owned another computer. What was it? 13. The National Computer Conference reached its peak as a trade show during the 1980s. And in its best year 97,000 people attended. What year was that? Was it 1983, 1985, or 1987? 14. Comdex has become one of the dominant trade shows in the computer industry. In what year was the first comdex held? Was it 1978, 1980, or 1982? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND TWO QUESTIONS 1. During the development of computers in the 1930s and 1940s, what was not used for storing computer data: old movie film, aluminum tape, or snake scales? 2. The Cray II supercomputer has a nickname inspired by the froth created in its liquid cooling system. What is that nickname? 3. At least three computer companies were named after their founders but these founders no longer work for the companies. Can you name three of those companies? 4. Computer company CEO's are famous for their job hopping. I'll name the succession of computer companies worked for -- you name the CEO. a. IBM, Shugart, Seagate b. Prime, Apollo, Ardent, Stardent c. AT&T, Apollo, Honeywell-Bull 5. One computer company CEO is unlikely to leave his company. According to Computer Reseller News, he is the highest paid executive in the computer industry. Can you tell us his company and his name? 6. Compaq Computer Company made the Fortune 500 list in record time. How many years did it take Compaq to break into the Fortune 500? Was it two years, four years, or six years? 7. In desktop publishing we often refer to TIFF files. What do the letters in TIFF stand for? 8. What was the first major movie to use computer-aided animation: Soylent Green, Futureworld, or Star Wars? 9. The first use of the phrase "personal computer" was reportedly used to describe a computer built at MIT by some hackers. It cost nearly $3 million and it filled up one small room. What was the name of that personal computer? 10. What is the average annual sales volume for one salesperson in a typical retail computer store? Is it $172,000, $222,000 or $272,000? 11. The first university to ever have a computer science department celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Was that university: Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, the University of North Carolina, or MIT? 12. How much is the decimal number 27 expressed in hexadecimal? 13. Speaking of numbers, what is the ASCII decimal equivalent for the Escape key? 14. During World War II, the U.S. Army funded the development of the ENIAC computer. What did the Army want to do with the computer? Was it to calculate ballistic paths, decode secret messages, or design radar? 15. Hewlett-Packard calculators became famous for the unique approach they used to perform operations on numbers. The system was called RPN. What does RPN stand for? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND THREE QUESTIONS 1. In 1968, the New York Stock Exchange listed its first computer software company. What was the name of that company? 2. According to The Illustrated Handbook of Desktop Publishing, what is the opposite of "letterspacing"? 3. The Mayans were pretty good mathematicians. They developed their own numbering system but it was not a base ten system. What was their numbering system based on -- was it 5, 12, or 20? 4. According to Electronic Learning magazine, as of 1988, which of the following states required public school children to take at least one computer course before graduating from high school? Texas, Massachusetts, or California? 5. In 1971, the first home video game console was marketed using a patent originally granted to Sanders Associates. The company that sold the game was Magnavox. What was the name of the game? 6. At the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Westinghouse pavilion featured a robot that could do housework. What was the name of the robot? 7. Texas Instruments developed the first popular microcomputer-based toy. What was it called? 8. Immediately after the introduction of the IBM PC, the president of Apple Computer and the head of IBM's PC division met for the first time. Where did they meet? 9. If you were to hook up a MIDI interface, you would use a MIDI plug. How many pins are in a MIDI plug? 10. MIDI has become a standard for the interface between a computer and a musical instrument. What do the letters in MIDI stand for? 11. The Commodore PET computer was not named PET because it was thought of as something to keep around the house. PET was an acronym. What do the letters stand for? 12. When using a computer you might use a spooler. The word SPOOL is also an acronym. What do the letters stand for? 13. In 1989, the Softletter newsletter ranked the top ten software companies by revenue. The top five were Microsoft, Lotus, Ashton Tate, Wordperfect, and Autodesk. Can you the name at least four of the other five companies on the list? 14. The computer language Ada was named after a person. Who was it named after? 15. The first issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal was devoted entirely to a single computer language. What was it? 16. What was the predecessor of DBASE II called? 17. What famous computer pioneer designed the punch card machines used in the 1890 U.S. Census? Was it Babbage, Hollerith, or Lord Kelvin? 18. At least three software companies have renamed themselves after the names of their leading products. Can you name up to three of the companies, giving old names and new? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND FOUR QUESTIONS Some computers have become so famous in computer history that many people even know where they were developed. I'll give you the name of the location, you tell me what computer was developed there: 1. The place is Harvard. 2. The place is Iowa State College. 3. The place was the Moore School in Philadelphia. 4. The place was Bletchley Park in England. 5. And finally, the place was the University of Illinois. 6. Who was quoted as saying the following in Byte magazine in 1983: "I wasn't thrilled with the placement of those keys. But every place you pick to put them is not a good place for somebody. The left-hand shift key is where it is because we wanted to have the character-typing keys inside the control keys." Was it Steve Jobs, Don Estridge, or Rod Canion? 7. Who wrote "The Mythical Man-Month", a famous book about IBM's OS/360? Many successful computers have had somewhat less successful predecessors. I'll name the successful computer, you name its predecessor: 8. The Apple Macintosh. 9. The DEC PDP-8. 10. The IBM 360/90. 11. The term "desktop publishing" is now commonly used to describe the creation of high quality print documents on a desktop computer. Who first coined the phrase? Was it Jean Louis Gassee, Paul Brainerd, Bill Atkinson, or John Warnock? 12. Most of us have heard the story of why we call something that interferes with the proper operation of a computer a bug. Can you tell us what computer pioneer discovered that bug? 13. Can you tell us what kind of bug it was? 14. In what computer did she find the bug? 15. What company owns Compuserve? 16. The "Kansas City Standard" was developed as a standard for what storage medium? 17. An interlaced raster scan display monitor creates a picture by interlacing odd lines and then even lines. If the full interlaced picture is called a raster, what do you call one half of those lines? 18. Which of the following was not the name of a computer during the 1950s: Leprechaun, Mobidic, Babbage, or MANIAC? 19. What do the letters in the word "EPROM" stand for? 20. Many computer companies were founded by two people, for example, Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft. We will name the first partner; you name the second. Digital Equipment Corporation: Ken Olsen and who? 21. Computer pioneer Charles Babbage was a close friend of a famous British author who allegedly patterned a character in one of his novels after Babbage. was the author Sir Walter Scott, John Galsworthy, or Charles Dickens? 22. Was the 68000 instruction set modeled after that of the IBM 360, the Data General Nova, or the DEC PDP-11? 23. The original computer game "Adventure," featured a colossal cave and a maze of twisty little passages. These and other memorable locations in the game were inspired by actual cave formations in what state? Was it California, Tennessee, or Alaska? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answers are next! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND ONE 1. TRS-80, Commodore PET, Apple II 2. Intel, Xerox, DEC 3. 9.8% 4. Apple Computer 5. Breakout 6. Honeywell 7. Greece. It only came to China in 1200 AD. 8. 1982 9. Canon 10. PDP 11/70 11. The Banana Junior 12. IBM 6000 13. 1983 14. 1978 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND TWO 1. Snake scales 2. Bubbles 3. Shugart, Amdahl, Cray 4a. Al Shugart b. Bill Poduska c. Roland Pampell 5. John Sculley, Apple, $2.5 million 6. Four years 7. Tagged Image File Format 8. Futureworld, in 1976 9. TX-0. It wasn't really "built by hackers", though. 10. $372,000 11. The answer they were looking for was North Carolina, but that is incorrect! The oldest computer science department in the US (and possibly the world) is at Purdue University, founded in 1962. 12. 1B 13. 27 14. Calculate ballistic paths 15. Reverse Polish Notation ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND THREE 1. Computer Sciences Corporation 2. Kerning 3. 20 4. Texas 5. Odyssey 6. Electro 7. Speak and Spell 8. The Boston Computer Society 9. Five 10. Musical Instrument Digital Interface 11. Personal Electronic Transactor 12. Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line 13. Borland, Adobe, Aldus, Logitech, Software Publishing 14. Ada Lovelace, assistant to Charles Babbage 15. Tiny BASIC 16. Vulcan -- there never was a DBASE I 17. Herman Hollerith 18. SSI -> Wordperfect; Micropro -> Wordstar; Relational Technology -> Ingres ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND FOUR 1. Mark I 2. Atanasoff-Berry Computer 3. ENIAC 4. Colossus 5. ILLIAC 6. Don Estridge of IBM (referring to IBM PC keyboard layout in Byte, 11/83) 7. Fred Brooks 8. Lisa 9. The PDP-5 10. The IBM Stretch 11. Paul Brainerd 12. Grace Hopper. Actually this use of "bug" considerably predates computing. 13. A moth 14. Harvard Mark II 15. H&R Block 16. Cassette tape 17. A field 18. Babbage 19. Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory 20. Harlan Anderson 21. Charles Dickens 22. PDP-11 23. Tennessee ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The third Computer Bowl sponsored by The Computer Museum was held in San Jose at the San Jose Convention Center on April 26, 1991. The questions used are listed below. [Keep in mind these questions were posed in early 1991! Some of the answers may be out of date.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND ONE QUESTIONS 1. The last two letters in the names of many early computers were "AC", as in ILLIAC or ENIAC. What did the letters "AC" stand for? 2. How many data bits are there in the S-100 bus? 3. A computer language is named after a famous 17th century French mathematician. What was his first or given name? 4. Almost 10 years ago, in October 1981, Steve Jobs appeared on the cover of "Inc. Magazine". In that photo, was Jobs wearing a tee shirt, a bathing suit, or a shirt and jacket? 5. In the 1959 movie "Desk Set", Katherine Hepburn and her staff are worried they might be replaced by a computer being installed by Spencer Tracy. What was the name of that computer? Was it EMORAC, Calla Lilly One, or UNIVAC? 6. In the 1950s a computer company was the sponsor of a TV quiz show. Was that computer company IBM, RCA, Burroughs, or Remington Rand? 7. The quiz show was a well-known TV program at the time. Was it called "I've Got A Secret", "What's My Line", or "Beat The Clock"? 8. In the mid 1970s, one of the first real personal computers was introduced. The computer was named after a destination visited by the space ship Enterprise on the program "Star Trek". What was the name of that destination, and that computer? Was it IMSAI, SOL, Altair 8800, or Apple Two? 9. Who was the recipient of the first Turing Award? Was it John McCarthy, Donald Knuth, Edgstra Dijkstra, or Alan Perlis? 10. What does the term "BITNET" stand for? 11. Punch cards were initially developed in 1801 by a textile mill owner to automate the patterns woven into cloth by his textile loom. What was the name of the individual who first developed this application? 12. There are mainly two layouts for a computer keyboard -- the QWERTY keyboard and the Dvorak keyboard. However, several of the letters appear in the same position on both keyboards. How many of the alphabetic keys appear in the same place on both layouts? Is it two, four, six, or eight? 13. Can you tell me which are the two letters that are the same on both keyboards? 14. The mouse has become a standard computer input device. Who invented the mouse? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND TWO QUESTIONS 1. Who composed the Chinese room problem in an attempt to prove that computers can't think? 2. Some computer scientists are a bit odd -- one famous computer pioneer had a hatred for street musicians. Was this Pascal, Leibnitz, or Babbage? 3. "High Sierra" is the name of a CD-ROM standard. What is the origin of that name? Was it named after the chief designer's dog, a communications code word, or a hotel? 4. What was the first machine with an Ethernet interface? 5. There is a computer company whos name is AST Research. The name of the company came from the first initials of each of its three founders. Can you give me their names? 6. It's almost a cliche that many Silicon Valley companies started out in a garage. Of the following companies, which one did not start in a garage -- Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Televideo, or Sun? 7. One company that did start in a garage was Hewlett-Packard. The garage was on a street in Palo Alto. The two men were Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. What was the name of the street? 8. Digital Research Incorporated is often referred to as DRI. But in fact, when it was first formed it was called IDR. What did the letters stand for? 9. Which of the following was named after a person -- heap sort, quick sort, shell sort, or bubble sort? 10. What do the letters BCD stand for? 11. Before Seymour Cray cofounded Control Data, he was a computer engineer at what company -- Sperry Rand, IBM, or Honeywell? 12. What was the first encyclopedia to appear in CD-ROM form? 13. Three computer companies have the word "Packard" in their names. Can you name those three companies? 14. Ada Lovelace is often referred to as the first programmer. But her father's occupation had nothing to do with computers or math. What did Ada Lovelace's father do for a living? 15. A book entitled "Who Got Einstein's Office?" is about an institution where a lot of early computer research was done. What is the institution? 16. What book containing a bird's name is about illegal break-ins on computer networks? 17. The Book of the Month Club recently offered a new novel based on a computer theme. What was the name of the book -- was it "Goodbye Mr. Mips", "The Open Window Version 3.0", or "The Difference Engine"? 18. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a short story about a computer that wrote poetry and then eventually committed suicide. What was the name of that computer -- was it called EPICAC, MYCIN, or Dresden? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND THREE QUESTIONS 1. [holding up comptometer] This is a comptometer from The Computer Museum. The question is -- who developed the adding system for this machine? Was it Pascal, Leibniz, or Babbage? 2. The bit is a very common and important computer term. Who first used the word bit? Was it John Tukey, Donald Knuth, or John McCarthy? 3. LOGO has been a popular educational language for children. Who created LOGO? 4. Atari is the name of a personal computer company, but it is also a word in the Japanese language. What does Atari mean? 5. Among the early machines in the history on computers were the ENIAC, the ILLIAC, and the MANIAC. MANIAC was an acronym for mechanical and numerical integrator and computer. The question is -- where was the MANIAC built? Los Alamos, Livermore, or Cambridge, Mass.? 6. The word Sun in the company name Sun Microsystems is an acronym. What do the letters SUN stand for? 7. For years, BASIC was one of the most commonly used programming languages for personal computers. The word BASIC is an acronym. What do the letters stand for? 8. PLATO is the name of an educational software environment. PLATO is an acronym. What does it stand for? 9. In August 1981, nearly 10 years ago, a major new personal computer was introduced. What was the computer? 10. If you wanted to square all the integers from 1 to 10,000 -- which computer would you pick to get the job done most quickly? The TRS-80 Model I or the ENIAC? 11. While today we talk about the 80386 and the 80486 Intel processors, one of the earliest Intel chips was the lowly 4004. What was the first commercial application of the 4004? Was it used in an early personal computer, a factory process controller, a Japanese calculator, or a frequency modulator? 12. What do you call a local area network method that routes messages through each workstation on the network in turn? 13. 3COM is a well-known name in the local area network field. The company name is short form three separate words, each of which begin with the prefix "COM". What are those three words? 14. The database program DBASE IV is an upgrade of DBASE III, which is an upgrade of DBASE II. For what operating system was DBASE II originally written? 15. Deep Thought is now considered to be one of the world's best chess-playing computers. But way back in 1967, a computer, for the first time, beat a serious chess player during a state chess tournament in Massachusetts. The computer's designer was Richard Greenblatt. What was the name of the computer? Was it BORIS, Matemaster, Mac Hack IV, or EN PASSANT? 16. In 1679 a famous mathematician perfected the binary system of notation. Who was that mathematician? 17. Arcade-style video games are often thought of as male oriented. Yet a woman named Dona Bailey designed one of the most successful video games. Which game was it -- Centipede, Tempest, or Ms. Pac-Man? 18. According to an article in IEEE Spectrum magazine, what was the first video game to become popular with women players as well as men? 19. Computer Space, Pong, Spacewar, and Space Race are all names of computer video games. Which of these, in 1970, became the first commercial video arcade game? 20. A byte is usually defined as eight bits. What is the term for four bits? 21. The haloid process describes a process in which of the following activities: manufacturing ICs, soldering components, or photocopying? 22. What color is the stripe painted on the raised floor of the machine room in the AI Lab at MIT? 23. While working at Xerox, Gary Starkweather is credited with inventing the laser printer. When did that happen? Was it 1969, 1973, or 1977? 24. I'll give you two names. You tell me in what field they do research: Berliner and Schank. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROUND FOUR QUESTIONS 1. One piece of technology that has never quite made it is the picture phone. When and where was the picture phone first displayed? Was it the 1939 New York World's Fair, the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, or the 1964 New York World's Fair? 2. Which of the following machines is not a binary machine? Atanasoff Machine, Bell Labs One, UNIVAC, or CDC 1604? 3. How many jobs can an IBM S/360 computer execute at once? 4. John von Neumann is a well-known pioneer in the computer field. In what area did he get his first college degree? Was it chemical engineering, electrical engineering, or mechanical engineering? 5. What do the following three things have in common? BORIS, SHRDLU, MYCIN? 6. Roger Penrose wrote a book about artificial intelligence. What was its title? 7. There are several expert systems which have been developed for a variety of application areas. I'll name the expert system, you name the author. a. Hearsay b. MYCIN c. Dendral 8. What was the name of the first artificial intelligence program? Was it called The Logical Theorist, Logician, or QWERTYUIOP? 9. When the original Macintosh computer first came out, how much RAM did it have? 10. Where is the Charles Babbage Institute located? Is it in London, Washington D.C., or Minneapolis? 11. Here are three words -- MILLIAC, DILLIAC, and SILLIAC. One of those words was the name of a computer. Which one? 12. The computer magazine "ANTIC" is devoted to coverage of computers made by what manufacturer? 13. There is a famous vignette in which a well-known computer pioneer says "Let me show you a nanosecond" and the person holds up a short length of wire. Who is that computer pioneer? 14. In 1936, a paper that was perhaps the most important in the history of computer science was published. It was titled "On Computable Numbers". Who was the author? 15. The names of the people who worked on the development of a famous personal computer were etched on the inside of its case. What was the computer? 16. If you were using Lotus 1-2-3 and you wanted to center a label, what label prefix would you use? Would it be -- a caret, a quote, an apostrophe, or a back slash? 17. If you were using WordPerfect and the letters "POS" are blinking on the screen, what does that tell you? 18. What are the three operating modes of Windows 3.0? 19. We all know the term DOS, short for disk operating system. But there was also an operating system called SOS. What did the letters "SOS" stand for? 20. On what microcomputer was SOS used? 21. If I were configuring a peripheral and I entered the following input: "1200 N 8 1" -- what kind of peripheral would I be configuring? 22. On an external modem there are usually several LED indicators to provide you with feedback on what the modem is doing. Can you tell me what these indicators stand for: CD, OH, AA? 23. Computer pioneer Charles Babbage was interested in many different kinds of inventions. According to the book "Digital Deli", Babbage tried to invent which one of the following gadgets: a portable steam engine, a cotton candy machine, or shoes for walking on water? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answers are next! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND ONE 1. Automatic Computer 2. Eight 3. Blaise -- his last name was Pascal 4. Shirt and jacket 5. EMORAC 6. Remington Rand 7. What's My Line 8. Altair 8800 9. Alan Perlis, 1966 10. Because It's Time Network 11. Joseph Marie Jacquard 12. Two 13. A and M 14. Doug Engelbart ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND TWO 1. John Searle 2. Babbage 3. Hotel -- Del Webb's High Sierra Hotel and Casino 4. The Alto 5. Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, Tom Yuen 6. Sun 7. Addison Street 8. Intergalactic Digital Research 9. Shell sort 10. Binary coded decimal 11. Sperry Rand 12. Grolier's 13. Hewlett-Packard, Packard-Bell, Ferranti-Packard 14. He was a poet -- Lord Byron 15. Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton 16. "The Cuckoo's Egg" 17. "The Difference Engine" 18. EPICAC ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND THREE 1. Pascal 2. John Tukey 3. Seymour Papert 4. It means warning or check, from the game of Go 5. Los Alamos 6. Stanford University Network 7. Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code 8. Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations 9. IBM PC 10. TRS-80 Mode I in 0.66 seconds vs 6.00 seconds 11. Japanese calculator 12. Ring network 13. Communications, computers, compatibility 14. CP/M 15. Mac Hack IV 16. Gottfried Willhelm Leibnitz 17. Centipede, for Atari 18. Pac-Man 19. Computer Space 20. A nibble 21. Photocopying 22. Yellow 23. 1969 24. Artificial intelligence ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANSWERS TO ROUND FOUR 1. 1964 New York World's Fair 2. UNIVAC 3. One 4. Chemical engineering 5. They are all AI programs 6. "The Emperor's New Mind" 7. Hearsay -- Raj Reddy MYCIN -- Edward Shortlife DENDRAL -- Edward Feigenbaum 8. Logical Theorist 9. 128k 10. Minneapolis 11. SILLIAC 12. Atari 13. Grace Murray Hopper 14. Alan Turing 15. Macintosh 16. Caret 17. Num lock is on 18. Standard, Real, Enhanced (or 386 Enhanced) 19. Sophisticated Operating System 20. Apple II 21. A modem -- 1200 bps, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit 22. Carrier detect, off hook, auto answer 23. Shoes for walking on water -----------------------------------------------------------------------------