About This Quiz
Computers are so much a part of our daily lives that it's sometimes hard to believe that only 60 years ago, they were rare, massive machines that required 10 men to run. How much do you know about the history of computing?CNC stands for "complex number calculator." Stibitz designed it for Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Project Whirlwind was completed in 1951, but the Navy never really used the simulator -- the Air Force ended up taking it over.
Murrow interviewed developer Jay Forrester on 'See It Now' in 1951. The computer screen read 'Hello Mr. Murrow.'
Advertisement
The ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than its competitors and covered 1,000 square feet.
The U.S. Navy was the first customer for the ERA 1101, which was introduced in 1950.
The UNIVAC I, manufactured by Remington Rand in the early '50s, cost about $1 million a pop.
Advertisement
Opinion polls had Stevenson winning in a landslide, but the UNIVAC correctly predicted an Eisenhower victory in 1952.
A group of MIT students developed SpaceWar! for the DEC PDP-1 computer in the early 1960s.
Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny worked at Dartmouth.
Advertisement
In 1971, programmer Ray Tomlinson sent out the first test e-mail over ARPANET. He claims it was 'something like 'QWERTYUIOP.'
Steve Wozniak was the primary designer on the Apple I, which debuted to much fanfare in 1976.
Wozniak had designed Breakout for Atari, so he adapted it for the Apple II.
Advertisement
The Osborne I, released in 1981, weighed 24 pounds and sold for $1,795. It had a 5-inch screen.
The Commodore 64 was in production from 1982 to 1993 -- according to CNN.com, more than 17 million units were sold.
LOGO was originally a drawing program designed for kids.
Advertisement
Microsoft really went all-out with its marketing of Word in 1983.
The Apple Lisa, introduced in 1983, had a hefty price tag ($10,000) and was ultimately a big dud.
Finnish student Linus Torvalds released the open-source Linux system to some Usenet news groups in 1991.
Advertisement
Doom, with its innovative 3-D graphics and first-person shooting, helped spawn an enormous gaming subculture.
Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo called it 'Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web.' Not so catchy.