Q 01/05

A binary number uses only which two symbols?

A) 0 and 1

B) 1 and 2

C) 0 and 9

D) A and B

Answer · why

A) 0 and 1

Each digit is a bit, and eight of them make a byte that can hold any value from 0 to 255.

Q 02/05

Which mathematician formalised the modern binary system in his 1703 Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire?

A) Isaac Newton

B) Gottfried Leibniz

C) Blaise Pascal

D) René Descartes

Answer · why

B) Gottfried Leibniz

A Jesuit correspondent showed him the Chinese I Ching had arrived at binary notation independently, centuries earlier.

Q 03/05

Who coined the word 'byte' in 1956 while designing IBM's Stretch computer?

A) John von Neumann

B) Grace Hopper

C) Werner Buchholz

D) Claude Shannon

Answer · why

C) Werner Buchholz

He deliberately spelled it with a y so it could not be mistyped into 'bit'; a half-byte is a nibble.

Q 04/05

Why is 'byte' spelled with a y rather than as 'bite'?

A) In honour of IBM founder Byron Watson

B) It was a typing error that stuck

C) To match 'bytecode', which came first

D) To avoid accidental mutation into 'bit'

Answer · why

D) To avoid accidental mutation into 'bit'

Eight bits became the standard byte with the IBM System/360 in the 1960s.

Q 05/05

George Boole introduced Boolean algebra, the basis of digital circuits, in which 1847 book?

A) The Mathematical Analysis of Logic

B) The Laws of Thought

C) Principia Mathematica

D) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Answer · why

A) The Mathematical Analysis of Logic

His 1854 Laws of Thought expanded it; the term 'Boolean algebra' was only coined by Henry Sheffer in 1913.