Test Your Nerd Knowledge! — March 15, 2022
Here’s a review of this week’s questions:
- IBM introduced a product called Token Ring in 1984. What was it?
- In 1973, the grocery industry adopted this as the standard barcode for all grocers. What was it?
- What is the name of the American technology company that was founded in 1984 by Leonard Bosak and Sandra Lerner?
And here are the answers:
- Technology used to build local area networks. In a Token Ring configuration, all devices are connected in a ring or star topology. A token is a frame of data transmitted between network points. Only a host that holds a token can send data, and tokens are released when receipt of the data is confirmed. IBM developed token ring technology as an alternative to Ethernet. Today, token rings are considered inactive and obsolete. Enterprise organizations gradually phased out the token ring and adopted Ethernet technology, which dominates LAN designs today.
- The Universal Price Code. In 1967, IBM made the first computerized information management system. This was used by aerospace companies and NASA to handle complex, high-volume transactions. By the early 70’s, companies like Walmart and J.C. Penney were using the technology to categorize, organize and track warehousing processes, eventually adopting the UPC bar code to identify each item in an inventory. In 1973, when cashiers were still punching in all prices by hand, the UPC — and optical scanners — brought supermarkets into the digital age.
- Cisco Systems. According to its website, Cisco “was founded in 1984 by two computer scientists from Stanford University seeking an easier way to connect different types of computer systems.” Cisco Systems shipped its first product in 1986 and is now a multi-national corporation, with over 35,000 employees in more than 115 countries. Named for San Francisco, the city in which it was founded, Cisco provides the networking technology that is the gateway to computer-based communication. Cisco is now the worldwide market leader in routing, switching, unified communications, wireless communication, and security.