Who was the world-renowned French mathematician who devised what is thought to be the first digital computer in 1642?

Who is the only US president to have received a US patent?

Charles Babbage, who is also regarded as the "Father of Computing," was fed up with doing boring calculations that were mostly the same thing repeated over and over. Starting in 1822, he began designs for a calculating machine that would perform long calculations automatically. His plans for this machine, called the difference engine, were too advanced for his time and were not completed until over 150 years later. Which organization finished construction of Babbage's machine?

Abandoning his difference engine, Babbage actually invented a SECOND device - the analytical engine - that was also never constructed and only existed on paper. Even though Babbage's genius was far ahead of his time, one person understood it so completely that she was able not only to describe the uses of the analytical machine but also to write the algorithm for how it functioned. Who was this woman, who is often considered to be the first computer programmer?

The next major step in the automated computer was the development of something that was widely used for nearly a hundred years. What did Herman Hollerith and James Power develop in 1890?

Hollerith's business, the Tabulating Machine Company, was very successful, thanks mostly to its contract work for the US Census Bureau. In 1911, he sold his company for $1.41 million (over $35 billion in 2017 dollars), and it was eventually combined with three other companies to create a new conglomerate. What was the name given to this newly-formed tech company in 1924?

Who gave the first public demonstration of radio?

Orville Wright piloted the first successful flight of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903. How far did the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane go, and how long did it stay in flight?

Albert Einstein was named the winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" in what year?

George Stibitz invented a machine called the CNC and performed the first remote-access computing demonstration on it in 1940. What does CNC stand for?

War always creates opportunities, and World War II was no exception. There was a need for storing information about new weapons and tests that were performed with them. What was the name of the computer that was built at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942?

It was suggested by her math professor that programming pioneer Betty Holberton drop out of college and become a housewife and mother. Luckily, this woman stayed in school, because she went on to become one of the six original programmers of the computer built at the University of Pennsylvania. What did she major in?

How much floor space did this computer, unveiled in 1946, take up?

For a long period of time, the US space program named its space projects after Roman gods and goddesses. What was the first project to be named after a god or goddess?

What innovation capped off the "Miracle Month" in 1947?

American self-taught engineer Percy Spencer was working at Raytheon during World War II when an active microwave radar set melted a candy bar in his pocket. This eventually let to the development of the microwave oven. What was the candy bar in his pocket?

Military veteran Norman Woodland was focused on how Morse code was used to send information electronically. When creating UPC barcodes for product labels and pricing in the 1940s, he started to draw dots and dashes similar to the shapes used in Morse code in what medium?