Ex. 4. Read the text. Translate it into Russian.

When was the automatic computer invented? In the 1930s or the 1940s? If you think that, you are off by a hundred years. A computer that was completely modern in conception was designed in the 1830s. But, as with the calculators of Pascal and Leibniz, the mechanical technology of the time was not prepared to realize the conception.

The inventor of that nineteenth century computer – Charles Babbage – was an eccentric mathematician. Most mathematicians live personal lives not too much different from anyone else’s. They just happen to do mathematics instead of driving trucks or running stores or filling teeth. But Charles Babbage was the exception.

For example, all his life Babbage waged a campaign against London organ grinders and street musicians. He blamed the noise they made for the loss of a quarter of his working power.

Once Babbage counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory, publishing in 1857 a «Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows»: Of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by «drunken men, women or boys».

Despite his eccentricities Babbage was a genius. He was a prolific inventor. In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles. He also invented an ophthalmoscope, but although he gave it to a physician for testing it was forgotten, and the device only came into use after being independently invented by Hermann von Helmholtz. He also invented the skeleton key and the speedometer. Babbage also pioneered operations research – the science of how to carry out business and industrial operations efficiently.

Babbage was a fellow of the Royal society. He held the chair of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. The same chair once was held by Isaac Newton.

Ex. 5. Find the English equivalents in the text.

Эксцентричный математик, заниматься математикой, водить грузовик, держать магазин, пломбировать зубы, развязать кампанию против, винить за, плодотворный изобретатель, отмычка, член королевского общества, заведовать кафедрой.

 

Ex. 6. Make up a story using the phrases from ex. 5.

 

Ex. 7. Read the text. Translate it into Russian in written form.

The Difference Engine

Babbage's engines were among the first mechanical computers, although they were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. He directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was very similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, the control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit.

The mathematical tables of the 19^th century were full of mistakes. Even when the tables had been calculated correctly, printers’ errors introduced many mistakes. Often people who published new tables copied tables from existing ones, the same errors cropped up in table after table.

Babbage set out to build a machine that would calculate the entries in the tables and print them automatically. He called this machine the Difference Engine, because it worked by solving ‘difference equations’. But the name is misleading since it constricted tables by means of repeated additions, not subtractions. The first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high.

In 1823 Babbage obtained a government grant to build the Difference Engine. But he ran into difficulties and abandoned the project. In 1854 a Swedish printer built a working Difference Engine based on Babbage’s ideas.

 

Ex. 8. Find English equivalents in the text.

Разностное уравнение, машина, быть похожим (на), сложение, получить правительственный грант, вычитание, столкнуться с трудностями, забросить проект, таблица, ошибка (2).

 

Ex. 9. Answer the following questions.

1) What do Babbage’s machines and a modern computer have in common?

2) What was the aim of building the Difference Engine?

3) What kind of machine was the Difference Engine?

4) Was the Difference Engine built? Why?

 

Ex. 10. Read the text. Translate it into Russian. Give a summary of it.

The Analytical Engine

One of Babbage’s reasons for abandoning the Difference Engine was that he had been struck by a much better idea. Inspired by Jacquard’s punched-card-controlled loom, Babbage wanted to build a punched-card-controlled calculator. Babbage called this machine the Analytical Engine.

The Analytical Engine could carry out any calculation. All one had to do was to punch the cards with the instructions for the desired calculation. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping, and would have been the first mechanical device to be Turing-complete.

If the Analytical Engine had been completed, it would have been a nineteenth-century computer. But the Analytical Engine was not completed. The government had already sunk thousands of pounds into the Difference Engine and received nothing in return. It had no intention of repeating mistakes.

The government may have been right. Even if it had financed the new invention, it might have got nothing in return. For the idea was far ahead of what the existing mechanical technology could build. And this was true because Babbage’s design was grandiose. For instance, he planned for the Analytical Engine to do calculations with fifty-digit accuracy.

Even though the Analytical Engine was never completed a demonstration program for it was written. The author of that program is Augusta Ada Byron, later Countess of Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Ada was an excellent mathematician. She was good at languages and music and was fond of horse racing.

Ada became interested in Babbage’s Analytical Engine when she studied mathematics with one of the most well known mathematicians of her time Augustus de Morgan.

In 1842 Lady Lovelace discovered a paper on the Analytical Engine. The paper was written in French and Ada translated it into English and added her own notes.

To demonstrate how the Analytical Engine would work, Lady Lovelace included in her notes a program for calculating a certain series of numbers that was of interest to mathematicians. This was the world’s first computer program. And the author of that program has the honour of being the world’s first computer programmer.