Exercises

• Read and translate the following international words, mind the parts of speech.

Mechanical (adj), automatic (adj), design (v, n) electromagnetic (adj), transistor (n), characteristic (adj), method (n), sensory (adj), expert (n).

• Master the active vocabulary. Give the English for the following notions.

Умножать, прибавлять, изобретать, производить, завершать, считать, поколение, кристалл (чип), емкость (мощность), надежный.

• Insert the correct word from the active vocabulary. The words are offered to you, one word is extra.

Punched cards, generation, transistors, supercomputers, vacuum, multiplication, electronic, abacus, silicon, chips.

• The oldest form of mechanical calculating devices was the … .

• In the 17^th century Leibnitz invented the first machine, which performed … by repeated addition.

• A system of … … controlled the sequence of operations.

• The first … computer was constructed in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania.

• The first… computers were very large in size and used thousands of … tubes.

• The use of … instead of vacuum tubes in the second generation computers made them smaller, more powerful and more reliable.

• In the third generation computers there were … instead of transistors.

• All computers of the present time, from the microcomputers to the … belong to the fourth generation.

• Arrange the items of the given outline in the order according to the text.

• Ch. Babbage’s contribution to the automatic computer development.

• The abacus, the oldest form of mechanical calculating devices.

• The first generation computer.

• Calculating devices of the 17^th century.

• The first electronic computer (ENIAC).

• The fourth generation computer.

• The first completely automatic digital computer.

• Future computer development.

• The second and third generation computer systems.

• Find in the text the facts about the scientists who contributed into the development of computers.

• Compare the main characteristics of the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th generation computer systems.

• Give the historical account of the computer development.

The constituent parts of the computer Text 1

Modern computers are of three types: analog, digital, and hybrid. An analog computer uses physical analogs of numerical measurements, such as length, rotation, voltage, etc. People design analog computers for specialized fields (hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, industrial control, etc.). A digital computer is a binary machine, which represents 0 and I electrically. Through binary arithmetic, in which all numbers are strings of 0s and Is, the computer can represent any letter, number or symbol on its keyboard in the binary code. If a number (for example, 100) must have seven digits for its binary representation, we say that it contains seven bits. The term bit is an abbreviation for "Binary digIT". An 8-bit string is a byte. A hybrid computer is a machine which combines some of the characteristics of digital and analog computers.

Text 2

The constituent parts of a computer are called hardware. Computers vary greatly in their internal organization, but every digital computer has a processor, memory, an input device to receive information, and an output device to transmit information. Computer's architecture is the internal logical linkage of the processor to the memory and peripherals, that is, input and output devices.

Text 3

The computer stores and manipulates binary representations in primary memory and records results in secondary memory. Primary memory is organized into bytes and words. A word is a larger-than-byte-sized group of bits. We need words to store large numbers. Secondary memory is organized into files. Internal memory is a term for primary memory, since its location is within the computer. Secondary memory is called external memory as it usually consists of recording devices that are outside the computer. Typical recording devices are magnetic disks and cassette tapes. Disks may be floppy or hard. Some manufacturers of floppy disks call them minidisks, flexible disks, or diskettes. Hard disks can store much more information than floppy disks, their access is faster.

Text 4

Although the computer can represent any kind of information, it is necessary to tell the computer what kind of information it is currently representing. Data types include integers, reals, characters, and character strings (or strings). The computer manipulates data of different types in different ways. It performs arithmetic operations on integers or reals. It can move data of any type from one place in memory to another. It can compare pieces of data of the same type, rank integers or reals in magnitude and alphabetize characters or character strings.

Text 5

All computers can accept input from many sources and send output to many directions. Microcomputers in particular can accept input directly from a keyboard, by reading a disk, by communicating with another computer over a telephone line. Other input devices are: a touch screen, a mouse, a joystick, a light pen, etc. Output devices for microcomputers and larger computers include printers, plotters, music and speech synthesizers.