Find the mistakes in the following letter and correct them

 

Dear Mr. Jackson I write to you to say how angry I am with the state of the road outside my house. It’s a really mess. A few days ago my neighbor has got the back wheel of her car stuck in one of the huge holes outside my gate. She was really upset and we will had to get two people from the garage to pull her out.

Why have we got these holes in the road? Well, because of the terrible weather we have late with all those ice and snow. But that was for two months. So why haven’t you done anything about it? You should send a road repair team around here as soon as possible. It will also be a good idea if you were better prepared in the future so you could get things done more quick. I hope hearing from you very soon about this problem.

MODULE 1

UNIT 1. HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

I. READING

1.1.Read and translate the text “The First Calculating Device”[15]

The First Calculating Device

Let us take a look at the history of computers that we know today. 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 16^th 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 17^th and 18^lh 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. Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishman, and Leibnitz, a German mathematician, independently invented calculus, another branch of mathematics. 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 – “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.

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 nature.

Study the meaning of the following words and word combinations:

· calculating device

· multiple

· abacus

· slide rule

· logarithm table

· calculus

· general-purpose

· to cut out the human being altogether

· to manipulate

· data processing

· tabulate the census

· means of coding

· to punch the holes

· punched card

· to perform

· unit of data

· keyboard terminals

· proliferation

1.2.Answer the following questions:

 

1.What was the very first calculating device?

2. What is the abacus?

3. What is the modern slide rule?

4. Who gave the ideas for producing logarithm tables?

5. How did Newton and Leibnitz contribute to the problem of calculation?

6. When did the first calculating machine appear?

7. What was the main idea of Babbage's machine?

8. What means of coding the data did Hollerith devise?

9. How were those electromechanical machines called and why?

10. What kind of computers appeared later?

1.3. Read and translate the text “The First Computer” [15]

The First Computer

In 1930, American named Vannevar Bush built the first analog computer. This device was used in World War II to help aim guns. Many technical developments of electronic digital computers took place in the 1940s and 1950s. Mark I, the name given to the first digital computer, was completed in 1944. The man responsible for this invention was Professor Howard Aiken. This was the first machine that could figure out long lists of mathematical problems at a very fast rate.

In 1946 two engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, J. Eckert and J. Maushly, built their digital computer with vacuum tubes. They named their new invention ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). Another important achievement in developing computers came in 1947, when John von Neumann developed the idea of keeping instructions for the computer inside the computer's memory. The contribution of John von Neumann was particularly significant. As contrasted with Babbage's analytical engine, which was designed to store only data, J. von Neumann's machine, called the Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, or EDVAC, was able to store both data and instructions. He also contributed to the idea of storing data and instructions in a binary code that uses only ones and zeros. This simplified computer design. Thus computers use two conditions, high voltage, and low voltage, to translate the symbols by which we communicate into unique combinations of electrical pulses. We refer to these combinations as codes.

Neumann's stored program computer as well as other machines of that time was made possible by the invention of the vacuum tube that could control and amplify electronic signals. Early computers, using vacuum tubes, could perform computations in thousandths of seconds, called milliseconds, instead of seconds required by mechanical devices.

 

Study the meaning of the following words and word combinations:

· analog computer

· digital computer

· to aim guns

· to figure out

· at a fast rate

· memory / storage

· to store data and instructions

· stored program computer

· binary code

· condition

· vacuum tube

· to amplify

· to perform computations

1.4. Answer the following questions:

 

1. When was the first analog computer built?

2. Where and how was that computer used?

3. When did the first digital computers appear?

4. Who was the inventor of the first digital computer?

5. What could that device do?

6. What is ENIAC? Decode the word.

9. What does binary code mean?

10. Due to what invention could the first digital computers be built?

1.5. Read and translate the text “The First Computer Models”[15]

Babbage's Analytical Engine

In 1832, an English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage was commissioned by the British government to develop a system for calculating the rise and fall of the tides.

Babbage designed a device and called it an analytical engine. It was the first programmable computer, complete with punched cards for data input. Babbage gave the engine the ability to perform different types of mathematical operations. The machine was not confined to simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. It had its own “memory”, due to which the machine could use different combinations and sequences of operations to suit the purposes of the operator.

The machine of his dream was never realized in his life. Yet Babbage's idea didn't die with him. Other scientists made attempts to build mechanical, general-purpose, stored-program computers throughout the next century. In 1941 are lay computer was built in Germany by Conrad Zuse. It was a major step toward the realization of Babbage's dream.