Task 2. Answer the question using the information of the text.

 

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 Ch.Babbage's machine? 8. How did electromechanical ma­chines appear and what were they used for? 9. What means of coding the data did Hollerith devise? 10. How were those elec­tromechanical machines called and why? 11. What kind of com­puters appeared later? 12. What new details had the computers of 1970s?

 

Task 3. Give English equivalents.

 

Вычислительное устройство; легкий способ вычисления; поэтому (вот почему); кратное десяти; изобрести механи­ческий способ умножения и деления; логарифмическая линейка; составить таблицы логарифмов; математический анализ; изобрести независимо (друг от друга); в результа­те; полностью исключить человека; кроме (за исключени­ем); обработка деловой информации; средство кодирова­ния информации; перфокарты; пробивать отверстия; оформить собранные данные в таблицу; работать с данны­ми на перфокарте; устройство, записывающее информа­цию блоками; единица информации; выполнять вычисле­ния; для научных целей; клавишный терминал.

 

Text 2.

The first computers.

 

In 1930 the first analog computer was built by American named Vannevar Bush. 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 Pennsilvania, 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, 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 volt­ age, 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 were 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.

Words:

 

analog computer — аналоговый ком­пьютер

digital compute — цифровой компьютер

to aim guns — наводить орудия на цель

to figure out — вычислять

at a fast rate — с высокой скоростью

memory / storage — запоминающее ус­тройство

to store data and instructions — запоминать информацию и команды

stored program computer — компьютер с занесенной в память программой

binary code — двоичный код

condition — режим, состояние, условие

vacuum tube — электронная (вакуумная) трубка (лампа)

to amplify — усиливать

to perform computations — выпол­нять вычисления