How things work college course/Computer quiz

This quiz covers Wikipedia's Computer (Wikipedia permalink) and its links:  Turing machine * Busy beaver * Halting problem * 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 Computer. An excellent homework assignment might be to ask students to submit more quiz questions to Wikiversity.

Computer (Wikipedia article)
{The first English-language usage of the word "computer" referred to} - counting rods - an abacus - Roman numerals + a person {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 {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 {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 {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 {A system that uses levers, pulleys, or other mechanical device to perform calculations is called an analog computer} + true - false {A system that uses tables of numbers is called an analog computer} - true + false {Analog computers were phased out by the dawn of the twentieth century (circa 1900)} - true + false {Analog computers continued to be developed into the twentieth century} + true - false {The Turing machine permitted a solution to the halting problem} + true - false {The Turing machine could not have been invented until after the halting problem was solved.} - true + false {The Turing machine was a(n) ______ device} - digital - electromechanical - prototype + conceptual - analog {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 {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 {In London (circa 1935) thousands of vacuum tubes were used to} - calculate the value of &pi; + control a telephone exchange - count votes in an election - control a textile mill {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 {The Colossus, used to defeat the German Enigma machine during World War II in 1944, was} - Turing-complete - mechanical + electric digital programmable - electromechanical {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