Test Your Nerd Knowledge: Aug. 9, 2022

Here’s a review of this week’s questions:

1. Founded in Sweden in 1876, this company provides telecommunications solutions worldwide. What is its name?
2. The current CEO of SumZero is acknowledged as one of the founders of Facebook since Mark Zuckerberg co-opted his website Harvard Connection in 2004. What is his name?
3. Recognized as one of the first computer systems to use a mouse and a Graphic User Interface (GUI), this computer was introduced by Xerox in 1973. What was it called?

And here are the answers:

1. Ericsson. As its website states, Ericsson has been part of the tech boom for a long time, “…from manufacturing some of the first telephones, to managing networks that process a big part of the world’s data, we have a long history of shaping how the world communicates.” Ericsson rode the wave of emerging telephone technology until the 1990s, when their interests turned to the internet, specifically a project called Infocom Systems. By 1996, Ericsson realized that all three of its business areas — Mobile Telephones and Terminals, Mobile Systems, and Infocom Systems — were lined up to provide tremendous success for the company in the years to come.
2. Divya Narendra. Watching the movie, “The Social Network” provides one major takeaway regarding Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg in the film – Zuckerberg did not invent Facebook. Divya Narendra, played by Max Minghella in the movie, started Harvard Connection in a Harvard University dorm room in 2002. Twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss saw the potential in the site and joined forces with Narendra, and a year later, Zuckerberg joined their team. In 2004, Zuckerberg launched a website called “thefacebook,” basically stealing his team’s idea and making it his own. Narendra went on to sue Zuckerberg and received over $60 million in damages. He then launched SumZero, an online community for professional investors, in 2008.
3. Alto. When Xerox introduced the Alto in 1973, it marked a radical leap in the evolution of how computers interact with people, leading the way to today’s computers. By making human-computer communications more intuitive and user friendly, Alto and similar systems opened computing to wide use by non-specialists, including children. Regarded as a computer for “regular folks,” its introduction of GUI was years ahead of its time. Despite being considered a “personal computer,” Alto cost over $10,000, and was therefore out of reach for most American households at the time.