Q 01/05

What word was the operator typing when the first ARPANET message, sent from UCLA in 1969, crashed after two letters?

A) hello

B) ready

C) login

D) start

Answer · why

C) login

Charley Kline got as far as 'l' and 'o' before the SDS 940 at Stanford Research Institute went down; the full word went through about an hour later.

Q 02/05

In which year were the first computers connected to the ARPANET, the network that grew into the Internet?

A) 1963

B) 1965

C) 1969

D) 1967

Answer · why

C) 1969

Four university sites were linked that first year, and the Network Control Program that made real applications possible arrived in 1970.

Q 03/05

The first successful host-to-host ARPANET connection in 1969 linked UCLA with which other institution?

A) Stanford Research Institute

B) MIT Lincoln Laboratory

C) University of Utah

D) UC Santa Barbara

Answer · why

A) Stanford Research Institute

Utah and UC Santa Barbara were the other two of the four original nodes, but the historic first link ran up the California coast to SRI in Menlo Park.

Q 04/05

Who created the email addressing format separating mailbox name from host name with an @ sign, in 1971?

A) Ray Tomlinson

B) Jon Postel

C) Larry Roberts

D) Vint Cerf

Answer · why

A) Ray Tomlinson

Tomlinson was working at BBN on the ARPANET when he picked the @ sign, a character that conveniently never appeared in anyone's name.

Q 05/05

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at which organisation?

A) Xerox PARC

B) Bell Labs

C) MIT

D) CERN

Answer · why

D) CERN

He wanted a way for physicists at the Geneva laboratory to share documents across incompatible computers, and hypertext over the Internet was his answ...