Tech trivia questions and answers
30 tech trivia questions with the answers and a fact for each: computers and the internet, phones and gadgets, engineering, the companies behind them and a couple of video games. Read them as a technology quiz for yourself, use them for a pub quiz round, or press the button and play a Tech round live with everyone answering on their own phone.
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The 30 tech quiz questions
- 1
Bluetooth wireless technology is named after what?
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AA Viking king
Harald Bluetooth united Denmark and Norway in the 10th century, and the Swedish engineers wanted a name for uniting devices. The logo combines his initials in runes.
- 2
What does USB stand for?
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AUniversal Serial Bus
The one connector everyone still plugs in wrong on the first try.
- 3
What does 'scuba' stand for?
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ASelf-contained underwater breathing apparatus
Jacques Cousteau co-invented the Aqua-Lung in 1943. The word became so common that it dropped its capital letters.
- 4
In which year was Facebook launched?
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B2004
Mark Zuckerberg started it in his Harvard dorm room as 'TheFacebook', open only to students with a harvard.edu address.
- 5
What does HTTP stand for?
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AHyperText Transfer Protocol
Defined by Tim Berners-Lee's team around 1990.
- 6
What does 'GPS' stand for?
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AGlobal Positioning System
It relies on around 30 satellites and was built by the US military. Civilian accuracy was deliberately fuzzed until President Clinton had the scrambling switched off in 2000.
- 7Video games
Nintendo's Mario made his debut in which game?
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BDonkey Kong
As 'Jumpman', a carpenter dodging barrels, in 1981.
- 8
Which company runs the search engine Bing?
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CMicrosoft
Bing launched in 2009 and, behind the scenes, also supplies the search results that Yahoo shows its users.
- 9
James Dyson made his fortune by reinventing which household appliance?
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CVacuum cleaner
Dyson built over 5,000 prototypes of his bagless cyclone cleaner before launching it in 1993.
- 10
Which company owns YouTube?
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DGoogle
Google bought it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, just 18 months after the first video, 'Me at the zoo', was uploaded.
- 11
Which 1972 table-tennis game was the first commercially successful arcade video game?
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APong
Atari's test machine in a California bar stopped working after a few days — because the coin box was jammed full of quarters.
- 12
The QWERTY keyboard layout was originally designed for which machine?
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AThe typewriter
Christopher Latham Sholes settled on it in the 1870s. It's often said the layout was chosen to stop the type bars jamming, though historians still argue about that.
- 13
Which company's logo is a 'swoosh'?
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BNike
Design student Carolyn Davidson drew it in 1971 and was paid $35. The company later gave her shares said to be worth over a million dollars.
- 14
In web design, what does HTML stand for?
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AHyperText Markup Language
Tim Berners-Lee described the first version in 1991 with just 18 tags. Its tags for headings and paragraphs are still used today.
- 15
In a web address, what does 'www' stand for?
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DWorld Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee put the first website online at CERN in 1991, explaining what the web was and how to use it.
- 16
Which company makes the Xbox games console?
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CMicrosoft
The first Xbox launched in 2001, and its rivalry with Sony's PlayStation has run ever since. The name started as 'DirectX Box', after a Microsoft graphics tool.
- 17
What was the name of the IBM computer that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997?
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ADeep Blue
Kasparov had won their first match a year earlier. He accused IBM of cheating, and the company retired the machine rather than give him a rematch.
- 18
What does 'PC' stand for when talking about computers?
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DPersonal computer
IBM's 1981 model made the term famous, and rivals sold 'PC compatibles' — the origin of the Mac-versus-PC divide.
- 19
Which social media app is best known for photo messages that disappear after they've been viewed?
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BSnapchat
Its ghost logo is called Ghostface Chillah. The founders famously turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook in 2013.
- 20
Which online encyclopedia, launched in 2001, is written and edited by volunteers?
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AWikipedia
The name joins 'wiki', a Hawaiian word for quick, with 'encyclopedia'. It now has tens of millions of articles in more than 300 languages.
- 21
What year did the first iPhone go on sale?
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B2007
June 2007 — and no App Store until a year later.
- 22
The first recorded computer 'bug' was literally…?
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BA moth
Taped into the Harvard Mark II logbook in 1947.
- 23
What was Amazon originally going to be called, before Jeff Bezos changed his mind?
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ACadabra
His lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver'. Bezos still owns relentless.com — it redirects to Amazon.
- 24
Which best-selling video game of all time lets players build entire worlds out of blocks?
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BMinecraft
Its Swedish creator Markus 'Notch' Persson sold it to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. It has since sold over 300 million copies.
- 25
Which company launched the Walkman portable cassette player in 1979?
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ASony
It made personal music portable for the first time. Sony went on to sell over 200 million cassette Walkmans.
- 26
What does the 'e' in email stand for?
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CElectronic
Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked email in 1971 and chose the @ symbol to separate the user's name from the machine's.
- 27Video games
Tetris was created in which country?
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CSoviet Union
Alexey Pajitnov built it in 1984 on an Electronika 60.
- 28
From 1913, what was revolutionary about the way Ford built the Model T?
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AIt used a moving assembly line
The moving line cut the build time from over 12 hours to about 90 minutes. Henry Ford said customers could have any colour 'so long as it is black'.
- 29
The first email was sent in which decade?
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B1970s
Ray Tomlinson sent it in 1971 — and picked the @ symbol while he was at it.
- 30
Which company makes the PlayStation games console?
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ASony
It began as a failed partnership with Nintendo on a CD add-on for the Super NES; Sony went it alone and launched the PlayStation in 1994.
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Tech quiz FAQ
Can I use these tech trivia questions for my own quiz night?
That is what the page is for. Read them out at a pub quiz, paste them into a work quiz or a family quiz night, and keep the answers hidden until the table has committed. If you would rather not keep score by hand, the button on this page runs a Tech round on everyone's phones.
Are the answers on the page?
Yes. Every question has a "Show the answer" toggle with the right option and a one-line fact, so you can quiz yourself first or read straight through with the answers open.
How do I play a Tech quiz round live?
Press "Play a Tech round". It opens the host page with the Tech category already picked. The room shows a join code, everyone else opens huddlequiz.com/join on their phone and types it, and ten questions later there is a winner on the board. No accounts and nothing to install.
Will the live game ask the same questions?
Some of them. The game draws at random from a bigger Tech pool, of which this page is a sample, so a live round mixes questions you have read here with ones you have not.
How hard are they?
Mixed. They are written for adults and teenagers at pub-quiz level, so a table of four should get most of them between them and argue about the rest.