Computers Don't Byte! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) had spent some years working on another project which he had called the Difference Engine, a type of mechanical calculator, although this venture never came fully to fruition. Undeterred, he started work on designing what became known as the Analytical Engine, a machine which used punched cards to input data, and became the forerunner of early computers. Unfortunately, due to funding and other problems, he was never able to see the first computers built from his designs, but his early pioneering work in the field led to him being known as the 'Father of the Computer'.

John Logie Baird was the inventor of the television, and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Michael Faraday was skilled in many scientific fields, but is best remembered for his work with electromagnetism and electricity.

Answer: Archimedes

The BBC Micro, also built by Acorn Computers, was the computer released in 1981 to be used in schools for teaching computing skills in conjunction with the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. The Acorn Archimedes was released in 1987 and was the first home computer as such.

In all, five different models of the Archimedes were released in 1987; the top-of-the-range model, the 440, cost an eye-watering recommended retail price of £2,299 on release, an extremely costly purchase, particularly in the 1980s! Subsequent Archimedes models included the popular Archimedes 3000 series which fortunately retailed at a more affordable price.

They are no longer made but are still popular as retro computers.

Answer: printer

Dot matrix and daisy wheel printers used a ribbon to strike keys in a way similar to an electric typewriter. Daisy wheel printers were so named because the shape of the 'wheel' which held the character set resembled the shape of the 'petals' of a flower. Both were much in use during the 1970s and 1980s. The downside to dot matrix and daisy wheel printers was that they were noisy to run, and although they are sometimes still in use today they have been largely superseded by the more modern (and considerably quieter) inkjet and laser printers.

Answer: F5

The function key F5 is used to refresh the page you are working on. F1 brings up the 'Help' page, with a box into which to type your query. F3 is used to activate a search feature for web browsers and other programmes, and highlights your search item when found. The F11 key is used to change your web page to full screen mode; pressing it again will toggle it back to how it was before.

Answer: Norton

Norton Security was developed by the Symantec Corporation which has its headquarters in California. It is one of the world's leading producers of security software. Other well-known names in this field are McAfee, AVG and Kaspersky. Firefox, Safari and Opera are all names of web browsers.

Answer: eBay

Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in September 1995 under the name 'Auction Web', which subsequently changed to eBay. eBay's headquarters is in San Jose, California. Together with his wife, he has many philanthropic ventures with their Omidyar Foundation.

Amazon was originally called Cadabra and was founded in 1994 by American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. Now a major virtual retailer, it started off selling books online before branching out into other goods. TripAdvisor is headquartered in Massachusetts and was founded in 2000 by Stephen Kaufer and others. Members write reviews of holiday destinations, hotels and restaurants etc. and mark their experiences according to a star-based system. These reviews can then be read by others to help them plan where to stay or visit. Mark Zuckerberg is CEO and joint founder of social networking site Facebook, which was introduced to the world in 2004. Next to search engine Google, Facebook is the second most visited site on the Internet.

Answer: Rolling on floor laughing

'ROFL' stands for 'rolling on floor laughing'. Similarly, this can also be written as 'ROTFL' which equates to 'rolling on 'the' floor laughing'. There are so many different acronyms for Internet slang and the list is growing and adapting all the time; one of the best known is 'LOL, for 'laughing out loud'. Speed in typing and space-limited requirements on such as Twitter posts, where a 'Tweet' is limited to a maximum of 140 characters, are among the reasons for this sometimes bewildering new way of communicating!

Answer: spreadsheet application

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application, and part of the Microsoft Office suite. Also in the suite are the word processing application called simply Word, presentation program PowerPoint and database management system Access, among others. Microsoft Office is the world leader in its field.

Answer: hidden object

The hidden object game series 'Mystery Case Files' was developed and released by Big Fish Games. The first instalment, 'Mystery Case Files: Huntsville', was released in 2005, to great acclaim. Other titles in the series include 'Madame Fate', 'Return to Ravenhearst', 'Shadow Lake', 'Dire Grove', '13th Skull' and more. The eleventh instalment, 'Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove, Sacred Grove' was published in 2014. Big Fish Games is based in Seattle and was founded in 2002 by Paul Thelen.

Answer: a line of text links across the top of a web page to aid navigation of the site

Breadcrumb navigation is used to help you find your way around a website more easily and quickly by clicking on text links at the top of the page. The advantage is that the links take up very little room on the page and, particularly on a large website, can be very time-saving.

The term was coined from the Grimms' Fairy Tale 'Hansel and Gretel', where the brother and sister of the title laid a trail of breadcrumbs to guide them home - the irony being that birds ate the breadcrumbs, which led to them being lost in the woods and finding the witch's house. Be assured that the computing type of 'breadcrumb trail' is less likely to lead to getting lost, the opposite in fact!