Review questions: Triumph of the Nerds

Student Name:

Section #

1. Who founded Apple Computer? Two names.

2. Who Founded Microsoft? Two names. Who is Steve Ballmer?

3. Who founded Intel? One name. What is the law named after him?

4. What was the name of the first PC, built from a kit? The company was MITS.

5. What was the homebrew computer club? Why was it important?

6. What was Xerox PARC? Four things on the Alto were critically important for the PC industry. What did they invent? What did Steve Jobs “steal” from Xerox PARC? What two ideas did he miss?

7. Why was the IBM PC so important? “Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM.”

8. What is reverse engineering?

9. Who reverse engineered the IBM PC? Company name.

10. What was CPM? What was DOS?

11. Why is Gary Kildall not the richest man on the planet?

12. What was the deal of a lifetime? Microsoft buying ________ from ____________ “for whatever usage we wanted for $_______”

13. Why did Bill Gates license the operating system to IBM instead of selling it?

14. What was OS/2? Why was it important?

15. Who is Larry Ellison? What does he think was the biggest blunder in the history of business? “________ gave away _____ _______ of their ___________, by accident.

16. What was the killer app that caused the demand for Personal Computers to explode? It is the ancestor of Excel. Why isn’t Dan Bricklin rich?

17. Why was Adobe systems important? What did they invent?

18. What was the “look and feel” case? Why was it important?

19. A guy on a yacht brags that he invented Ethernet. Who was he?

20. “The industry was measured by who had the most open system that was adopted by the most other companies”. Which company does this refer to?