137 Technology Trivia Questions and Answers
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Easy Technology Trivia Questions
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Which manufacturing process is also known as additive manufacturing?
3D printing
Additive manufacturing builds an object layer by layer from digital instructions, which is why 3D printing is its familiar name. Subtractive processes such as milling instead remove material from a larger piece.
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Which company publishes Photoshop?
Adobe
Adobe publishes the Photoshop image-editing application.
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Which company acquired Twitch in 2014?
Amazon
The deal was worth about 970 million dollars in cash, announced in August 2014, making it Amazon's biggest acquisition to that point in its 21-year history. Google had reportedly agreed to buy Twitch itself for a similar price just weeks earlier before Amazon stepped in.
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Which startup, founded by Andy Rubin, did Google buy in 2005?
Android Inc.
Google paid a reported $50 million for Android Inc. in 2005, bringing Andy Rubin and his small team in-house. The software they were building shipped commercially three years later on the T-Mobile G1.
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What does API stand for?
Application Programming Interface
An API is a defined way for software components to request data or actions from one another. It lets a program use a service without needing to know how that service is implemented internally.
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Which number base does a computer use at the hardware level?
2
Each binary digit corresponds to a transistor switched on or off, since two clear voltage states are far easier for a circuit to distinguish reliably than ten. Bytes group eight of these bits together, giving 256 possible values.
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How many bits are in one byte?
8
A byte contains eight bits, and each bit can hold a 0 or 1. Eight bits allow 256 possible combinations, from 0 through 255 when interpreted as an unsigned number.
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What kind of connection is Bluetooth?
Short-range wireless communication
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless communication technology used to connect devices such as phones, headphones, keyboards, and speakers. It operates in the 2.4 GHz radio band.
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What does a CAPTCHA help determine about a visitor?
Whether a user is human
CAPTCHA is designed to distinguish human users from automated programs.
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What type of work was COBOL designed primarily to handle?
Business applications
COBOL was created for business and administrative data processing, including banking and large record systems. Its readable, English-like syntax helped it spread through industry.
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What was the .com domain originally intended to identify?
commercial organizations
The .com top-level domain was created for commercial organizations. It is now open to broad registration, so a .com address does not by itself prove that a site is a business.
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What translates high-level source code into machine code or bytecode before execution?
A compiler program
A compiler takes a whole program written in a high-level language and translates it ahead of time into machine code or bytecode that runs later. An interpreter instead works through the source line by line while the program runs, an assembler starts from assembly language, and a transpiler produces source code in another high-level language.
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What small piece of data does a website store in your browser so it can recognise you on your next visit?
A cookie
A cookie is a small piece of data a site asks your browser to keep, and the browser sends it back automatically with every later request to that site. That is how a site keeps you logged in, remembers a language setting, or holds a shopping basket between pages.
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What does CPU stand for?
Central Processing Unit
The central processing unit executes instructions and coordinates much of a computer's work. Its performance is often discussed in clock speed and number of cores.
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What does CSS stand for in web development?
Cascading Style Sheets
CSS controls the presentation of structured documents, including colors, spacing, fonts, and layout. The word cascading describes how rules from different sources are combined.
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What does DNS translate a website's domain name into?
An IP address
The domain name system works like a phone book for the internet. People remember names, but machines route by number, so DNS converts a name such as example.com into the numeric IP address of the computer that answers for it before the connection is made.
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In an email address, what does the @ sign separate?
The user and domain parts
The @ sign separates the local user portion from the domain portion of an email address.
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What transformation does encryption apply to readable data?
Turns it into ciphertext only a key can undo
The idea goes back to simple substitution ciphers such as the Caesar cipher, which shifted each letter a fixed number of places; modern algorithms like AES scramble data with keys as long as 256 bits.
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Which LAN standard commonly carries data over network cables?
Ethernet
Ethernet is the most widely used LAN standard for sending data over network cables. Modern Ethernet commonly uses twisted-pair copper or fiber-optic cables and can support speeds from megabits to hundreds of gigabits per second.
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Which company acquired WhatsApp in 2014?
Facebook
Facebook, Inc. acquired WhatsApp in 2014.
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Nokia, later the world's biggest phone maker, began in 1865 as a wood pulp mill in which country?
Finland
Fredrik Idestam opened a pulp mill in southern Finland in 1865 and a second beside the Nokianvirta river. The town of Nokia gave the company its name, and it moved into telecommunications a century later.
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What network security device filters unauthorized network access using configured rules?
Firewall
A firewall filters network traffic according to configured security rules, allowing authorized connections while blocking unauthorized access. Firewalls can examine details such as addresses, ports, and protocols to decide whether traffic should pass.
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In which year did Apple release the first iPhone?
2007
The first iPhone was unveiled in January 2007 and went on sale that June.
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Which pixel dimensions define Full HD resolution?
1920x1080
The p denotes progressive scan: every line of the frame is drawn in one pass, unlike the interlaced 1080i broadcast standard, where alternating lines are drawn in two separate passes.
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Which company acquired YouTube in 2006?
Google
Google completed its acquisition of YouTube in 2006.
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What does GPS stand for?
Global Positioning System
GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that allows a receiver to calculate its position and time. A receiver normally uses signals from multiple satellites to determine a location.
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What does GPU stand for?
Graphics Processing Unit
A GPU is designed to perform many calculations in parallel, especially those needed to draw images and video. Modern GPUs are also widely used for scientific computing and machine learning.
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What does GIF stand for?
Graphics Interchange Format
CompuServe introduced the Graphics Interchange Format in 1987 to move colour images between computers over slow connections.
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Which storage device traditionally records data on spinning magnetic platters?
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive stores data magnetically on rotating platters read by moving heads. Solid-state drives use flash memory instead, with no spinning parts.
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What does HDMI stand for?
High-Definition Multimedia Interface
HDMI carries digital audio and video between compatible devices such as consoles, computers, and televisions. A single cable can carry both kinds of signal.
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Which markup language structures a web page’s content?
HTML
HTML structures the content of a web page.
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What does the HTTP status code 404 conventionally mean?
Not Found
A 404 response indicates that the server cannot find the requested resource. It is different from 401, which indicates missing authentication credentials, and 503, which indicates temporary unavailability.
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What does HTTPS do to web traffic between a browser and a server?
Encrypts data in transit
HTTPS runs ordinary HTTP through an encryption layer called TLS, the successor to SSL, which also checks a certificate to confirm the server's identity before any data changes hands.
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In HTTPS, what does the final letter S traditionally stand for?
Secure
HTTPS is HTTP carried over a protected connection, commonly using TLS. The protection helps provide confidentiality and authentication between a browser and a server.
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What does HTTP stand for?
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the set of rules a browser and a web server follow to request and deliver pages. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first version at CERN around 1990.
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What does JPEG stand for?
Joint Photographic Experts Group
JPEG is named after the group that developed the image-compression standard. JPEG compression is usually lossy, trading some image detail for much smaller files.
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What does LAN stand for?
Local Area Network
A local area network connects devices within a limited area such as a home, office, or school. Ethernet and Wi-Fi are common ways devices join a LAN.
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Who created the Linux kernel?
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds began developing the Linux kernel in 1991, and contributors around the world have expanded it ever since. Linux is the kernel at the core of many servers, supercomputers, and embedded devices.
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What animal appears in the Linux mascot, Tux?
penguin
Tux is a penguin associated with the Linux kernel. The mascot was designed by Larry Ewing after Linux creator Linus Torvalds expressed a fondness for penguins.
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Which interface idea did the Macintosh do most to popularise?
The desktop metaphor
The Macintosh took the desktop metaphor mainstream: a screen treated like the top of a desk, with overlapping windows, folders, icons and a wastebasket, all pointed at with a mouse. The ideas were worked out at Xerox PARC, but the 1984 Mac put them in front of ordinary buyers, and every mainstream operating system since has copied the arrangement.
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Which type of malware do security agencies say offline backups are the main defence against?
Ransomware
Ransomware scrambles the files on a computer or across a whole network and demands payment, usually in cryptocurrency, for the key that unlocks them. Security agencies such as CISA advise keeping offline backups rather than paying, since payment buys no guarantee that the files come back.
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Which company acquired LinkedIn in 2016?
Microsoft
Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016.
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Which device converts a provider's signal for a home network and converts outgoing data back?
Modem
Modem is short for modulator-demodulator. It rides outgoing digital data on the carrier signal the cable or phone line uses, and strips the incoming carrier back down to plain data at the other end.
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What does Hertz measure when it is listed for a monitor?
Refresh rate
Hertz counts cycles per second, so a 144 Hz monitor redraws its whole image 144 times every second. That is a separate thing from response time, which measures how fast a single pixel can change from one colour to another.
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What was Nintendo's first major home console in North America?
NES
The Nintendo Entertainment System reached North America in 1985, two years after launching in Japan as the Family Computer, or Famicom. It is widely credited with reviving the American home console market after the 1983 crash, helped by Super Mario Bros. arriving alongside it.
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Philips, which gave the world the compact cassette and co-developed the CD, was founded in which country?
Netherlands
Gerard Philips and his father Frederik opened a light bulb factory in Eindhoven in 1891, and the town grew up around it.
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What does NFC stand for?
Near Field Communication
NFC enables short-range wireless communication, often when devices are brought within a few centimeters. Contactless payments and tap-to-pair accessories commonly use it.
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Which screen technology shows true black because each pixel switches off completely?
Organic Light-Emitting Diode
An Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) uses organic, carbon-based compounds that emit light when electricity passes through them, so each pixel produces its own illumination. This allows OLED displays to turn individual pixels completely off for deep black levels.
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Which licence category gives every user the right to redistribute a modified version?
Open source
Open-source software ships with the human-readable source code and a license granting anyone the right to read it, change it and pass the result on. That right is what allows thousands of unconnected people to improve the same program. The label says nothing about price: plenty of closed programs cost nothing, and open-source code can be sold.
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What kind of tool stores many login credentials in a single encrypted vault?
Password manager
A password manager holds every login in one encrypted vault that opens with a single master password, and it can generate a long random password for each site. That matters because the real damage in a data breach usually comes from reuse: one stolen password gets tried against every other account you own.
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What does PDF stand for?
Portable Document Format
PDF is designed to preserve a document's layout across different devices and software. It can contain text, images, fonts, vector graphics, and interactive elements.
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Which file format was designed so a document's exact page layout, fonts and images look the same on any device or printer?
PDF
A PDF fixes the position of every element on the page and embeds the fonts inside the file itself, so it reproduces identically whether it is opened on a phone or sent to a print shop. The other formats reflow their content to fit whatever window, screen or paper size they meet.
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Besides games, the PlayStation 2 could play movies in which format?
DVD
The PS2 launched in 2000, when a standalone DVD player often cost as much as the console itself, so many households justified the purchase as a cheap way into movies as well as games. Production continued until 2013, by which point Sony had sold more than 160 million units worldwide.
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What storage format helped the original PlayStation compete with contemporary consoles?
CD-ROMs
CD-ROMs gave the original PlayStation a storage-capacity advantage over cartridge media.
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What does PNG stand for?
Portable Network Graphics
PNG is a lossless image format that can include transparency. It is especially useful for screenshots, diagrams, and graphics with sharp edges.
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What does a browser's private or incognito mode not keep after you close the window?
Local browsing history
Closing a private window wipes that session's history, cookies and typed form entries from the device. It hides nothing beyond the device, though: the sites visited, the employer running the network and the internet provider all see the same traffic they otherwise would, and files you downloaded and bookmarks you saved stay where they are.
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What paired items are used in asymmetric cryptography?
A public and private key
The two keys are mathematically linked but not interchangeable. Anyone can scramble a message with the freely published public key, and only the holder of the matching private key can unscramble it. Run the pair the other way and it becomes a signature: something only the private key could have produced, which anyone can check with the public one.
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The Python programming language is named after what?
A British comedy troupe
Guido van Rossum was reading scripts from Monty Python's Flying Circus while building the language in 1989, and wanted a name that was short and slightly irreverent. The snake came afterwards, appropriated for logos and book covers. The language's documentation still runs on Python jokes.
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What does QR stand for in QR code?
Quick Response
QR codes are two-dimensional barcodes designed to be read quickly by cameras. They can encode text, URLs, contact details, and other data.
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What type of machine-readable symbol is a QR code?
A two-dimensional barcode
A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode: data is stored in a grid of black and white squares read both across and down, so one symbol can hold thousands of characters where a striped one-dimensional barcode manages a few dozen. It was invented in 1994 by Denso Wave to track car parts on Japanese assembly lines, and the three big corner squares tell a scanner which way up it is.
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What does RAM stand for?
Random Access Memory
RAM is working memory that lets a computer quickly access active programs and data. It is volatile, meaning its contents normally disappear when power is removed.
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Which type of computer memory loses everything it holds when the power goes off?
RAM
RAM is the fast working memory a computer uses for whatever it is doing right now, and it only holds its contents while it is powered, which is why unsaved work vanishes in a power cut. Files survive because they live on a drive, which keeps its data with the power off.
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What does ROM stand for in computing?
Read-Only Memory
Read-only memory stores data that is intended to remain available without ordinary rewriting. Firmware, such as code used to start hardware, is commonly stored in ROM-like memory.
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What is the name for a service that indexes the web so you can find pages by typing keywords?
A search engine
A search engine crawls the web, stores what it finds in an enormous index, then ranks those pages against the keywords you type. The window you read the results in is a separate thing: a browser.
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Which company introduced the Walkman?
Sony
Sony introduced the first Walkman portable cassette player in 1979.
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Samsung began in 1938 as a trading store in what is today which country?
South Korea
Lee Byung-chul opened a shop in Daegu in 1938 selling dried fish, noodles and local produce, decades before the company made its first electronics.
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What makes a message spam rather than ordinary marketing?
It was sent without the recipient ever asking for it
Spam is defined by consent, not content. A newsletter you signed up for is not spam no matter how hard it sells; the same message blasted to millions of addresses that never asked for it is. The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the word drowns out everything else on the menu.
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Which storage device stores data on flash memory chips?
Solid-state drive
A solid-state drive stores data in flash memory chips instead of spinning platters, so it has no moving parts. This makes it typically faster, quieter, and more resistant to physical shock than a traditional hard drive.
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Spotify was founded in which country?
Sweden
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon started Spotify in Stockholm in 2006 and opened the streaming service to the public in 2008.
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What was the standard storage capacity of a 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk?
1.44 megabytes
The familiar 3.5-inch high-density floppy stored 1.44 megabytes. That was enough for small programs and documents, but far less than even a modern photograph often requires.
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Two-factor authentication pairs your password with a factor of which kind?
Something you have or something you are
Authentication factors come in three kinds: something you know, something you have, and something you are. Two-factor means using two different kinds, so a password is paired with a phone, code generator or security key, or with a fingerprint or face scan. Two things you know, such as a password and a security question, count as one factor twice over.
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Which standard encodes characters from many writing systems?
Unicode
Unicode gives every character its own unique code point, covering Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Han, Devanagari and hundreds of other scripts, plus emoji. Older standards such as ASCII could represent only 128 characters.
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What does URL stand for?
Uniform Resource Locator
The format was formalized in 1994 in an internet standard, RFC 1738, drafted by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and other early engineers. A URL packs a scheme such as http, a host name, and a path together, telling a browser both which protocol to use and exactly where to look.
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What does USB stand for?
Universal Serial Bus
USB is a standard for connecting peripherals and transferring data, and it can also deliver power. Its familiar connectors have appeared in many different physical shapes over time.
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Which connector's plug can be inserted in either orientation?
USB-C
USB-C was designed with a reversible plug that works in either orientation.
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Which company created the Steam platform?
Valve
Valve created and operates the Steam digital distribution platform.
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What does VPN stand for?
Virtual Private Network
Many VPNs create an encrypted tunnel between a device and a network endpoint. They can help protect traffic on an untrusted network, but they do not make a user anonymous in every situation.
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At which organization was the World Wide Web developed?
CERN
The Web was developed at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory, to help researchers share information. CERN made the Web technology publicly available in 1993.
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Who invented the World Wide Web?
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web while working at CERN and created its foundational technologies, including HTML, HTTP, and the first browser and server. The Web runs on top of the Internet rather than being synonymous with it.
Medium Technology Trivia Questions
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Which pixel dimensions are commonly called 4K UHD?
3840x2160
Consumer 4K UHD is 3,840 by 2,160 pixels, four times the pixel count of 1080p Full HD. The name comes from the width sitting close to 4,000 pixels.
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How many character codes does standard ASCII define?
128
Seven bits provide 128 possible codes, covering control characters plus basic Latin letters, digits, and punctuation. ASCII is narrower than modern Unicode, which represents writing systems from around the world.
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In what year did Atari release the Atari 2600?
1977
Atari released the Atari 2600 in 1977, originally calling it the Video Computer System. Its interchangeable cartridges helped define the home-console market.
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What was Google originally called?
BackRub
The name referred to the project's habit of analyzing the back links pointing to a page to judge its importance. Larry Page and Sergey Brin built it as Stanford PhD students in 1996, two years before Google was incorporated.
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Which research organization developed the C programming language?
Bell Labs
Dennis Ritchie developed C at Bell Labs in the early 1970s.
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Bluetooth is named after a 10th-century king of which country?
Denmark
The standard is named for Harald Bluetooth Gormsson, the Danish king who united warring Danish tribes and brought part of Norway under one crown, much as the standard was meant to unite competing wireless protocols. The logo is a bind rune of his initials, Hagall and Bjarkan.
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What term describes a network of compromised computers controlled together?
Botnet
Each hijacked machine in the network is often called a zombie. Botnets are commonly rented out to flood targets with traffic in distributed denial of service attacks or to send bulk spam.
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Which computer defeated Garry Kasparov in a 1997 chess match?
Deep Blue
IBM's Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997.
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The Xbox took its name from which piece of Microsoft technology?
DirectX
The console was pitched internally as the 'DirectX Box', after the DirectX graphics and gaming layer in Windows. The name was shortened to Xbox before the 2001 launch.
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Roughly how much floor space did ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, take up?
About 1,800 square feet
ENIAC filled a room of about 1,800 square feet at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly the footprint of a small house, and weighed some 27 tons. It drew so much power that a myth grew up about the machine dimming the lights of Philadelphia.
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About how many vacuum tubes did ENIAC contain?
18,000
ENIAC used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, along with thousands of capacitors, switches, and relays. Its enormous component count made maintenance a constant challenge.
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Which company developed Unreal Engine?
Epic Games
Epic Games developed the Unreal Engine family of game engines.
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How many bits are in an IPv4 address?
32
IPv4 addresses contain 32 bits, usually written as four decimal octets such as 192.0.2.1. IPv6 expanded the address to 128 bits because the IPv4 space ran short.
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Which company originally developed the Java programming language?
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems developed Java in the 1990s, initially emphasizing portable programs that could run across different systems. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and now stewards Java.
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Who created JavaScript?
Brendan Eich
Brendan Eich created JavaScript at Netscape in 1995. It was designed quickly for browser scripting and later became one of the main languages of web development.
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Which image format commonly uses lossy compression?
JPEG
JPEG discards the detail the eye is least sensitive to, which is why the file is small and why a JPEG re-saved over and over slowly turns blocky. PNG and TIFF keep every pixel exactly as it was.
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Which programming language is famous for turtle graphics?
Logo
Logo is an educational programming language that became famous for its turtle graphics.
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Which company produced the first handheld cellular phone?
Motorola
Motorola produced the first handheld cellular phone, the DynaTAC prototype.
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What processor shift helped overcome the mid-2000s clock-speed wall?
Multicore design
Multicore processors improved performance by using multiple cores rather than relying mainly on higher clock frequencies.
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What is the core part of an operating system that controls memory, processor time and access to devices?
The kernel
The kernel is the innermost layer of an operating system. It decides which program gets the processor next, hands out and reclaims memory, and is the only code permitted to speak directly to the hardware. Everything above it, from the desktop to your apps, has to ask the kernel for those things.
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Which 1990s home console went on to sell more than 100 million units?
PlayStation
Sony's original PlayStation launched in Japan in December 1994 and became the first games console of any kind to pass 100 million units sold, finishing its life at around 102 million. The Nintendo 64 managed about a third of that, and the Sega Saturn barely a tenth.
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What term describes a fake message designed to steal login details?
Phishing
Phishing uses deceptive messages or sites to trick people into revealing sensitive information.
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What does the SIM in a phone's SIM card stand for?
Subscriber Identity Module
The Subscriber Identity Module stores the identity that ties a phone to a network account, which is why moving it moves your number.
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Logitech, one of the world's biggest makers of computer mice and keyboards, was founded in which country?
Switzerland
Daniel Borel, Pierluigi Zappacosta and Giacomo Marini founded Logitech in 1981 in the village of Apples, near Lausanne.
Hard Technology Trivia Questions
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A branding firm coined the name Wi-Fi to replace which technical name?
IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence
A branding firm invented the name to be catchier than IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence. The 'Wireless Fidelity' expansion was attached afterwards in marketing and later dropped.
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What was found trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II?
A moth
A moth became trapped between relay contacts in the Harvard Mark II in 1947 and was taped into the logbook.
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Which company developed the ARM processor architecture?
Acorn Computers
Acorn Computers developed the original ARM architecture in the 1980s.
-
Who led the team at Xerox PARC that created the Smalltalk language?
Alan Kay
Alan Kay led the Xerox PARC research group that created Smalltalk, one of the first fully object-oriented languages.
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What was eBay originally called?
AuctionWeb
eBay began in 1995 as an online marketplace called AuctionWeb.
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What was Alexander Graham Bell's light-based voice-communication device called?
The photophone
Bell's photophone transmitted voice using a beam of light in 1880. It is often viewed as an early predecessor of optical and fiber communications.
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Which codename did Microsoft use for Windows 95?
Chicago
Windows 95 was developed under the codename Chicago.
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Which earlier language, created by Grace Hopper, was the main model for COBOL?
FLOW-MATIC
COBOL was designed in 1959 by the CODASYL committee, which took Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC as its starting point. FLOW-MATIC was the first language to let business data processing be written in English-like statements rather than symbols.
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Which early computer helped break German military codes during World War II?
Colossus
Colossus was built at Bletchley Park to help break German Lorenz-encrypted messages during World War II.
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Which company created the QR code?
Denso Wave
Denso Wave developed the QR code in Japan during the 1990s.
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What did ENIAC use to read its input data?
Card readers
ENIAC used paper-card readers for input, drawing on equipment developed for business accounting machines. Magnetic tape and keyboards were not its normal input method.
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Which company developed Bluetooth technology?
Ericsson
Ericsson engineers developed the initial Bluetooth technology.
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Which company first developed PowerPoint?
Forethought
Forethought developed the presentation program later acquired and marketed by Microsoft as PowerPoint.
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Who led the team that created FORTRAN?
John Backus
John Backus led the IBM team that developed FORTRAN, whose name means Formula Translation. It became especially important in scientific and engineering computing.
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In which direction does the data track on a CD run?
From the centre outwards
Unlike a vinyl record, a CD carries a single spiral track that starts near the hub and winds outwards to the rim.
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Who created the Git version-control system?
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds created Git in 2005 to manage development of the Linux kernel. Git records changes as a distributed history that can be copied across many machines.
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What identifies a host at the network layer?
IP address
An IP address identifies a host at the network layer and helps route data to it across interconnected networks. It can be assigned dynamically, so the same device may use different IP addresses over time.
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What was Project Natal released as?
Kinect
Microsoft released Project Natal as the Kinect motion-sensing system.
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What message was sent when the first ARPANET login attempt crashed?
LO
The first ARPANET login attempt was meant to send LOGIN, but the system crashed after transmitting only LO.
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Who patented an early recording tape made from paper coated with iron powder?
Fritz Pfleumer
Fritz Pfleumer, an engineer working in Dresden, patented in 1928 a recording tape made by bonding iron oxide powder to thin strips of paper. AEG licensed the idea and built it into the first Magnetophon tape recorders, and later engineers replaced the paper with plastic film for audio and computer storage.
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Which computer ran the first successful program stored in electronic memory?
Manchester Baby
The Manchester Baby ran the first successful program stored in a computer's electronic memory in June 1948.
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Which organization developed the Mosaic browser?
NCSA
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications developed Mosaic, an early graphical web browser.
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Which language did Niklaus Wirth design in 1970 for teaching structured programming?
Pascal
Niklaus Wirth designed Pascal in 1970 as a language for teaching structured programming.
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What was Firefox first called?
Phoenix
The browser that became Firefox was initially named Phoenix.
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Which raster format uses DEFLATE compression with alpha transparency?
PNG
PNG uses lossless DEFLATE compression and supports alpha transparency. It can also preserve sharp, crisp edges in text and graphics without the compression artifacts common in lossy formats.
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Which company commercialized the Sholes and Glidden typewriter?
Remington
E. Remington and Sons commercialized the Sholes and Glidden typewriter in the 1870s, helping spread the QWERTY arrangement. Later manufacturers adopted the same layout.
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What SNES display setting produced scaling and rotation?
Mode 7
Mode 7 was the SNES display setting that enabled background scaling and rotation, creating a convincing pseudo-3D effect. It powered the racetrack perspectives in games like F-Zero and Super Mario Kart.
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Which company developed VisiCalc?
Software Arts
Software Arts developed VisiCalc, the pioneering spreadsheet program.
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Which IBM researcher introduced the relational database model?
Ted Codd
Ted Codd proposed the relational model in a landmark 1970 paper. Relational databases organize information into tables that can be connected through shared values.
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Which university sent the first message over ARPANET?
UCLA
A team at UCLA sent the first ARPANET host-to-host message to the Stanford Research Institute in 1969.
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What name did Tim Berners-Lee give his original browser?
WorldWideWeb
Tim Berners-Lee called his original 1990 browser WorldWideWeb; it was later renamed Nexus.
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Which 1973 research computer introduced the bitmapped screen, mouse and overlapping windows that later desktop machines copied?
Xerox Alto
The Alto was built at Xerox PARC in 1973 and never sold to the public; a few thousand went to universities and Xerox offices. Visitors who saw it demonstrated carried the ideas out with them, and the machine's screen was tall rather than wide because it was meant to look like a sheet of paper.
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Which research center developed Ethernet in the 1970s?
Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC developed Ethernet in the 1970s as a way to connect computers over a local network.
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Which machine did Konrad Zuse complete in 1941?
Z3
Konrad Zuse completed the Z3 in 1941 as an early programmable automatic digital computer.
Answered in full
These come up often enough that each one has its own page.
- Which company acquired Twitch in 2014?
- How many bits are in an IPv4 address?
- Which company originally developed the Java programming language?
- Which image format commonly uses lossy compression?
- Who created the Linux kernel?
For younger players
The easiest of these are collected on their own page: Technology trivia questions for kids.
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