COEN 1

Midterm 1

Name:______________________________________________________

Essay Questions

Please answer these questions on separate sheets of paper.
  1. Computer pioneers from Babbage on have developed their designs in order to solve specific problems. Explain what these problems were, explain the context that made it worth while to spend a lot of energy and money on addressing them, and comment whether the modern computers are capable of solving these problems and whether these problems are among those for which computers are mainly used.
  2. Explain the concept of the Killer Application using wordprocessing and spread-sheeting as examples.

HTML

1. Write HTML code for the following table of Bay Area members of Congress (with my apologies to Republicans):
MemberParty
SenatorsBarbara BoxerDemocrat
Dianne FeinsteinDemocrat
RepresentativesMichael HondaDemocrat
Nancy PelosiDemocrat
Zoe Lofgren Democrat
Anna G. Eshoo Democrat

2. Write HTML code for the following list:

  1. Warships:
    • Amphibs
    • Battleships
    • Carriers
  2. Support Ships:
    • Oiler
    • Hospital Ship

3. Show how to use the inline style property to set a heading 1 in red.

<h1 style = "color: red">Heading </h1>

4. Give HTML code that links the text "Go here" to the web page www.scu.edu/index.html

<a href="http://www.scu.edu">Go here</a>

(Scoring: Essay Questions: Letter Grade, weight 35% each, HTML questions: 1: 10%, 2: 10%, 3: 5%, 4: 5%.)

Question 1

In 1821 he poured with astronomer John Herschel over astronomical tables, getting disgusted at the many mistakes in them. These mistakes were not merely a nuisance to scientist, but since they were used for ocean navigation, errors in astronomical tables caused many shipwrecks (or at least the tables provided an easy explanation for unsuccessful navigators). No wonder that he was able to secure British Royal Navy funds to build a calculation machine that would generate accurate tables.

John V. Atanasoff aimed to reduce the laborious calculations necessary for research projects like his thesis. In 1939 he began to work on a electronic machine to find solutions for systems of linear equations.

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, developped before and during World War 2 electromechanical calculation machines that were needed for the complex calculations in aircraft design such as wing stability.

"The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself," Aiken wrote in 1937, although he would later joke that the computer was "only a lazy man's idea." Aiken talked IBM in giving him $200,000.- to build his machine, but also found support from the US Navy.

In January 1943, along with a number of colleagues in the British war time effort to break German codes, Turing began to construct an electronic machine to decode the Geheimfernschreiber (a super enigma) cipher. This machine, which they dubbed COLOSSUS, comprised 1,800 vacuum tubes and was completed and working by December of the same year.

Machley and Eckert were funded by the US Navy. The Navy needed faster ways to compute artillery firing charts. These charts took into account things like the wind and elevation to make sure that the bombs hit the right spot. The people that they had doing the calculations simply could not do them fast enough.

Question 2

A “killer app” is an application that gets people to buy a computer. In this sense, it creates a market. There have been a number of killer apps, such as databases for commercial mainframes. The killer apps for the personal computer were word processing and spreadsheeting.

Word processing is a step up from using the typewriter for publishing. A word processed document unlike a typed document can be easily revised. Its author can use fonts and spacing to produce a product that looks type-set. In addition, word processing offers a simple user interface (typically in the “what you see is what you get” style). Word processed documents can be stored and copied electronically. It can be exchanged by exchanging a floppy disk with the document on it. (The internet was invented after the word processor.) A laser printer allows the printing of word processed documents in typeset quality.

Simultaneously with word processing, spread-sheeting moved accounting onto computers. A spread sheet organizes mostly numerical data in cells. Some cells contain data depending on other cells (e.g. sums). The calculation of these contents is automatized. Besides ensuring accuracy, this allows also testing how the bottom line is affected by changes in the numbers. In addition, spread sheets could be converted to almost type set quality.