Q 01/05

What word was a UCLA programmer typing in 1969 when the ARPANET system crashed after two letters?

A) hello

B) ready

C) login

D) start

Answer · why

C) login

Login: only the 'l' and the 'o' went through before the crash, so the network's first message was 'lo'; a full login worked about an hour later.

Q 02/05

Which US government department funded the ARPANET, the network that grew into the internet?

A) Department of Energy

B) Department of Defense

C) Department of Commerce

D) Department of Education

Answer · why

B) Department of Defense

Department of Defense: the network was paid for by its Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had been set up in response to the Soviet launch of Sp...

Q 03/05

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

A) Stanford Research Institute

B) MIT Lincoln Laboratory

C) University of Utah

D) UC Santa Barbara

Answer · why

A) Stanford Research Institute

Stanford Research Institute: Douglas Engelbart's lab there went on to run the network's information center, which kept the table of host names and add...

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) Dennis Ritchie

D) Vint Cerf

Answer · why

A) Ray Tomlinson

Ray Tomlinson: he picked the @ sign because it never appeared in usernames and naturally read as 'user at host'.

Q 05/05

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

A) Oxford

B) Bell Labs

C) MIT

D) CERN

Answer · why

D) CERN

CERN: to win over staff, the lab put its telephone directory on the Web, and that dull listing became the new system's first popular use.