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Ex. 14. Give English equivalents (two or three variants if possible) to the italicized words.
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1. We пришлось hear about the whole journey from beginning to end.
2. Тебе придётся speed up your rate of work if you должен finish it by the specified date.
3. Data is the particular information that должна be processed by the computer, e.g. numbers, names, measurements.
4. Scanners provide faster and more accurate data entry because humans не нужно type in the data.
5. Ему приходится look through vast amounts of economic data.
6. The Mark I computer должен был be used for calculations related to the development of atomic bomb.
7. Nowadays if you want to get a good job, you следует be computer literate.
8. In the Babbage’s Analytical Engine, instructions должны были be input by means of punched cards.
Ex. 15. Translate the sentences, paying attention to the equivalents of the modal verb must.
1. The ENIAC computer had to be rewired each time when its program was to be changed.
2. A program is a set of instructions that tell the computer what operations have to be carried out and in what order they should be done.
3. You will have to go through a series of dialogue boxes to install the software.
4. Ch. Babbage’s computing machine was to have the same components as a modern computer.
5. The video game called Space Invaders was so popular in Japan that the government had to quadruple production of the 100-yen coin because so many were being used in the machines.
6. Data, which is put into the computer for processing, is to be coded into a binary form.
7. If your modem and telephone share one line, the problem arises when someone else has to phone while modem is in use.
8. To protect the user from radiation, the special protection screen had to be placed between him and the monitor.
Ex. 16. Define the type of the conditional clause and translate the sentences.
1. If the system crashes, we will lose all our latest data.
2. Had Ch. Babbage got additional financing, he would have completed his Analytical Engine.
3. If we couldn’t feed the information in and get results out, computers wouldn’t be of much use.
4. Unless the graphic user interface had been devised, applications software would have been more difficult to use.
5. If you look at the screen for too long, you will get a headache.
6. If semiconductors hadn't been invented, the development of electronics would be much slower.
7. Provided we installed a fax machine and e-mail facility, we would not post so many letters every day.
8. If integrated circuits hadn't been developed, the size of computers would not have been reduced.
9. The data will not be sent on to the computer unless the operator presses an enter key on the keyboard.
10. If a person did the same job as a computer, he would be dead long before the job was finished.
Ex. 17. Match the if-clauses (1 to 6) to the main clauses (a to f) to make complete sentences.
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| 1. If the Apple Computer company had not introduced the GUI,… 2. If you or I add up two numbers of six figures without a calculator,... 3. If you had chosen a more complicated program,… 4. If I had the time,... 5. If robots are more widely used in industry,… 6. If we had an access to the database,… | a) your computer would have solved this problem. b) I would help you to solve the problem. But I must be off. c) their Macintosh computer would not have been successful. d) it will take us a lot of time. e) we would find the required information quickly. f) the number of workers will be reduced. |
Ex. 18. Complete the sentences with the required predicates. Consult the box. Are the sentences the first, second or third conditionals?
| 1. The virus ___ as soon as you ___ the infected floppy in your PC. 2. Consumers ___ the new software if it ___ so expensive. 3. If he ___ his invention, he ___ a lot of money. 4. Provided you ___ more than 10 CDs, we ___ the cost of each disk by 10%. 5. If you ___ on a source file in the list, the text editor ___ that file. 6. The office manager ___ the documents in time if the printer ___. | a) would use b) bought c) will spread d) would have typed e) had patented f) double click g) were not h) will open i) had been repaired j) would have made k) should reduce l) put |
Ex. 19. Read and translate the text.
HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER
Part I (Prehistory)
The ideas and inventions of many mathematicians, scientists and engineers paved the way for the development of the modern computer. The computer actually has three birth dates – one as a mechanical computing device (about 500 BC), another as a conception (1833) and the third as the modern electronic digital computer (1946).
The first mechanical calculator was the abacus. (See Figure 1) It was devised in Babylonia in about 500 BC. The abacus was the fastest calculating device for many centuries. It is still being used in some parts of the world because it can be understood without knowing how to read. Now, as then, it consists of a rectangular frame with thin parallel rods strung with beads1. Abacus beads can be used to perform such simple arithmetical operations as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Figure 1. The Abacus
The abacus remained the only means of calculation up to the 17th century. After the invention of logarithms, W. Oughtred constructed the first slide-rule in 1630. The slide rule represented a quick and easy way of multiplication, division and raising to power2.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, calculators more sophisticated than the abacus and the slide rule began to appear. Although a number of people contributed to their development, Blaise Pascal (the French mathematician and philosopher) and Gottfried Leibniz (the German mathematician, philosopher and diplomat) usually are singled out3 as pioneers.
B. Pascal designed the first adding machine in 1642. It was called the Pascaline (See Figure 2) The device could add and subtract six-figure numbers. Pascal invented the machine for his father, a tax4 collector, so it was the first business machine, too. He built 50 copies of his machine over the next 10 years, but most served as curiosities5 in parlors of the wealthy.
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Figure 2. The Pascaline
Numbers could be added by turning the wheels (located along the bottom of the machine) clockwise and subtracted by turning the wheels counterclockwise. Each digit in the answer was displayed in a separate window, visible at the top of the photograph.
Many scientists and inventors attempted to make improvements on Pascal's mechanical calculator. Gottfried Leibniz designed a special gearing system to enable multiplication on Pascal’s machine. In 1672, he also invented a calculating machine (called the Step Reckoner) capable of multiplying, dividing and extracting square roots. (See Figure 3)
Figure 3. The Step Reckoner
The original of Leibniz's Step Reckoner is now located in the Trinks Brunsviga Museum at Hannover, Germany. The turn of the crank (left) rotated several drums, each of which turned a gear connected to a digital counter.
The calculators of Pascal and Leibniz were unreliable, since the mechanical technology of the time was not capable of manufacturing the parts with required precision.
Few other mechanical devices built during the 19th century were related to computing. There was one major exception: the Jacquard loom6, invented in 1804 by a French weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard. (See Figure 4)The Jacquard loom was a marvel of the Industrial Revolution. It can be called the first practical information-processing device. The weaving of cloth on the Jacquard loom was controlled by punch cards that enabled the loom to weave any pattern automatically.
Figure 4. The Jacquard Loom.
At the top of the machine, you can see a stack of punched cards. They were fed into the loom to control the weaving pattern.
The Jacquard loom provided important lessons: (1) the sequence of operations that a machine performs could be controlled; (2) a punched card could be used as a means for controlling the machine; and, (3) the most important, a device could be directed to perform different tasks by entering instructions into it – i.e. making the machine programmable.
It can be said that, in the Jacquard loom, programming was invented before the computer. The close relationship between the device and the program became apparent nearly 20 years later, with Charles Babbage's invention of the first computer (to be described in the next part).
Notes: 1abacus bead – костяшка (элемент конторских счет);
2to raise to power – возводить в степень;
3to single out – выделять;
4tax – налог;
5to serve as a curiosity – служить диковинным украшением;
6Jacquard loom – жаккардовый ткацкий станок (для выработки крупноузорчатых тканей).
Part II (The Computer of the 19th Century)
When was the automatic computer invented? In the 1930s or the 1940s? If you think that, you are only off by a hundred years. A computer that was completely modern in conception was designed by Charles Babbage, the English mathematician, in the 1830s. But, as with the calculators of Pascal and Leibniz, the mechanical technology of that time was not prepared to realize the conception.
The idea of mechanical calculating mathematical tables first came to Babbage in 1812 or 1813. The mathematical tables of the 19th century – especially, logarithm tables used in navigation – were full of mistakes. The errors could be a life-and-death matter for sailors at sea. Babbage wanted to automate the production of the tables to ensure their accuracy.
According to one story, Babbage was lamenting over1 the errors in some tables to his friend Herschel, a famous astronomer. "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by means of steam." Babbage said. "It is quite possible," Herschel responded. (At that time, steam was a new and unexplored source of energy.)
Babbage decided to build a machine that could not only calculate the tables automatically but could print them as well. He called this machine the Difference Engine2, since it worked by solving difference equations. Nevertheless, the name isn't correct, as the machine created tables by means of repeated3 additions, not subtractions. (The word engine, by the way, comes from the same root as ingenious 4. Originally it meant a clever invention. Only later, it came to mean a source of power.)
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In 1823, Babbage turned to the British government to fund development. He obtained one of the first government grants for research and technological development anywhere in the world.
Babbage approached the project very seriously: he hired a machinist, set up a fireproof workshop, and built a dust-proof environment for testing the device. The full engine, however, was never built, at least not by Babbage. The government stopped financing the project. Joseph Clement, the machinist responsible for actually building the machine, refused to continue unless he was prepaid. In 1833, Babbage abandoned the project. (In 1854, by the way, a Swedish printer built a working Difference Engine based on Babbage's ideas.)
Figure 5. Babbage's Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is considered by many to be a direct forerunner of the modern computer. The photograph (See Figure 5) shows a small portion of the ingenious machine, which is now on exhibition at the Science Museum in London.
While working on the Difference Engine, Babbage began to invent ways to improve it. Inspired by Jacquard punched-card-controlled loom, he had devised something far more revolutionary: a general-purpose computing machine called the Analytical Engine5. It was the first programmable computer, complete with punched cards for data input.
Babbage's design was grandiose. The Difference Engine could only compute tables (and only those tables that could be computed by repeated additions). But the Analytical Engine could perform any calculation, just as Jacquard's loom could weave any pattern. The machine consisted of four basic components: the mill6, the store, the card reader and the printer. These units are the essential elements of each computer today. The mill was the calculating unit, analogous to the CPU in a modern computer; the store was where data were held prior to processing, exactly analogous to memory and storage in today's computers; the reader and the printer were the input and output devices.
The store was to be large enough to hold 1,000 50-digit numbers. This was larger than the storage capacity of any computer built before 1960. The locomotive-sized machine was powered by steam. It included more than 50,000 moving parts.
Babbage planned for his machine to do calculations with fifty-digit accuracy. This is far greater than the accuracy found in most modern computers and far more than is needed for most calculations. If the Analytical Engine had been completed, it would have been a 19th-century computer.
Babbage worked on the Analytical Engine for nearly 40 years. But, alas, the machine was not completed. The government had already invested thousands of pounds into the Difference Engine and received nothing in return. It didn't want to repeat its mistake.
Among those who were fascinated with Babbage's invention was a young woman named Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace. She was the only legitimate daughter of the famous English poet Lord Byron. She was a brilliant mathematician. She believed and fully realized the potentialities of the Analytical Engine. Ada took an active part in Babbage's experiments and even developed the demonstration program for the Analytical Engine in 1842. For this reason, she is recognized as the world’s first computer programmer.
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Notes: 1to lament over – сокрушаться, сетовать (по поводу чего-л.);
2Difference Engine – разностная машина;
3repeated – итеративное [многократное];
4ingenious – оригинальный, хитроумный;
5Analytical Engine – аналитическая машина;
6mill – зд. вычислительный блок.
EXERCISES
Ex. 20. Search the text for the equivalents of the following phrases:
1. подготовить почву, прокладывать путь;
2. самое быстродействующее вычислительное устройство;
3. представляет из себя прямоугольную рамку с параллельными спицами;
4. быстрый и лёгкий способ возведения в степень;
5. шестизначные числа;
6. налоговый инспектор;
7. извлекать квадратный корень;
8. производить детали с необходимой точностью;
9. вычислительное устройство для обработки информации;
10. последовательность операций, которые выполняет машина;
11. компьютер, полностью современный по концепции;
12. технология того времени;
13. претворить концепцию в жизнь;
14. расчёт математических таблиц при помощи механического устройства;
15. вопрос жизни и смерти;
16. обратился к Британскому правительству;
17. получил государственную субсидию;
18. забросить проект;
19. воодушевлённый жаккардовым станком, который управлялся при помощи перфокарт;
20. считывающее устройство (устройство для ввода данных с перфокарт);
21. приводилось в действие паром;
22. выполнять вычисления с точностью до 50 цифр;
23. повторять ошибку.
Ex. 21. Answer the questions using the opening phrases:
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