The First Calculating Devices

Министерство образования и науки

Российской федерации

Федеральное агентство по образованию

Федеральное государственное образовательное учреждение

Высшего профессионального образования

«Чувашский государственный университет имени И.Н.Ульянова»

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК

СБОРНИК ТЕСТОВ ДЛЯ ЧТЕНИЯ И ПЕРЕВОДА

(для факультетов информатики и вычислительной техники)

Методическое пособие

Чебоксары 2009

 

Составитель: О.Я. Карпеева

 

 

Английский язык. Сборник текстов для чтения и перевода (для факультетов ИВТ): Метод. пособие / Сост. О.Я. Карпеева; ФГОУ ВПО «Чувашский государственный университет имени И.Н. Ульянова». Чебоксары, 2009. 53 с.

 

Данное пособие предназначено для изучения английского языка в области информационных технологий. Представленный материал позволяет углубить свои знания в английском языке и компьютерной грамотности . Пособие содержит тексты из оригинальной литературы, посвященные как теме «Компьютеры и информационные системы», так и обще техническим знаниям. Эти знания необходимы для уверенной ориентировки в мире информации и повышения технологических возможностей пользователя при работе с компьютером

Пособие рассчитано на студентов факультетов информатики и вычислительной техники высших учебных заведений и для других технических факультетов.

 

 

Утверждено Методическим советом университета

 

Отв. редактор д-р пед. наук, профессор Н.Г Краснов

 

What Is a Computer?

A computer is a machine with an intricate network of electronic circuits that operate switches or magnetize tiny metal cores. The switches, like the cores, are capable of being in one or two possible states, that is, on or off; magnetized or demagnetized. The machine is capable of storing and manipulating numbers, letters, and characters (symbols).The basic idea of a computer is that we can make the machine do what we want by inputting signals that turn certain switches on and turn others off, or magnetize or do not magnetize the cores.

The basic job of computers is processing of information. For this reason computers can be defined as devices which accept information in the form of instructions, called a program, and characters, called data, perform mathematical and / or logical operations on the information, and then supply results of these operations. The program, or part of it, which tells the computers what to do and the data, which provide the information I needed to solve the problem, are kept inside the computer in a place called memory.

It is considered that computers have many remarkable powers. However most computers, whether large or small, have three basic capabilities.

First, computers have circuits for performing arithmetic operations, such as: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and exponentiation.

Second, computers have a means of communicating with the user. After all, if we couldn't feed information in and get results back, these machines wouldn't be of much use. Some of the most common methods of inputting information are to use ter­minals, diskettes, disks and magnetic tapes. The computer's input device (a disk drive or tape drive) reads the information into the computer. For outputting information two common devices are used: a printer, printing the new information on paper, and a cathode-ray-tube display, which shows the results on a TV-like screen.

Third, computers have circuits which can make decisions. The kinds of decisions which computer circuits can make are not of the type: "Who would win the war between two countries?" or "Who is the richest person in the world?" Unfortu­nately, the computer can only decide three things, namely: Is one number less than another? Are two numbers equal? and, Is one number greater than another? A computer can solve a series of problems and make thousands of logical decisions without becoming tired. It can find the solution to a problem in a fraction of the time it takes a human being to do the job.

A computer can replace people in dull, routine tasks, but it works according to the instructions given to it. There are times when a computer seems to operate like a mechanical 'brain', but its achievements are limited by the minds of human beings. A computer cannot do anything unless a person tells it what to do and gives it the necessary information; but because electric pulses can move at the speed of light, a computer can carry out great numbers of arithmetic-logical operations almost instan­taneously. A person can do the same, but in many cases that person would be dead long before the job was finished.

The First Calculating Devices

Let us take a look at the history of computers that we know today. The very first calculating device used was the ten fingers of a man's hands. This, in fact, is why today we still count in tens and multiples of tens.

Then the abacus was invented. People went on using some form of abacus well into the 16th century, and it is still being used in some parts of the world because it can be understood without knowing how to read.

During the 17th and 18th centuries many people tried to find easy ways of calculating. J.Napier, a Scotsman, invented a mechanical way of multiplying and dividing, which is now the modern slide rule works. Henry Briggs used Napier's ideas to produce logarithm tables which all mathematicians use today.

Calculus, another branch of mathematics, was independently invented by both Sir Isaak Newton, an Englishman, and Leibnitz, a German mathematician. The first real calculating machine appeared in 1820 as the result of several people's experiments.

In 1830 Charles Babbage, a gifted English mathematician, proposed to build a general-purpose problem-solving machine that he called "the analytical engine". This machine, which Babbage showed at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, was an attempt to cut out the human being altogether, except for providing the machine with the necessary facts about the problem to be solved. He never finished this work, but many of his ideas were the basis for building today's computers.

By the early part of the twentieth century electromechanical machines had been developed and were used for business data processing. Dr. Herman Hollerith, a young statistician from the US Census Bureau successfully tabulated the 1890 census. Hollerith invented a means of coding the data by punching holes into cards. He built one machine to punch the holes and others to tabulate the collected data. Later Hollerith left the Census Bureau and established his own tabulating machine company. Through a series of merges the company eventually became the IBM Corporation.

 

Storage and processing Ch. Babbage's analytical engine

 

 

Until the middle of the twentieth century machines designed to manipulate punched card data were widely used for business data processing. These early electromechanical data processors were called unit record machines because each punched card contained a unit of data.

In the mid—1940s electronic computers were developed to perform calculations for military and scientific purposes. By the end of the 1960s commercial models of these computers were widely used for both scientific computation and business data processing. Initially these computers accepted their input data from punched cards. By the late 1970s punched cards had been almost universally replaced by keyboard terminals. Since that time advances in science have led to the proliferation of com­puters throughout our society, and the past is but the prologue that gives us a glimpse of the future.