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МИНОБРНАУКИ РОССИИ

Федеральное государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования

«Омский государственный технический университет»

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ ОБЩЕПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЙ СФЕРЫ ОБЩЕНИЯ

Методические указания для студентов информационного кластера

Омск Издательство ОмГТУ

2015

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Составители: М. В. Ласица, С. В. Богомолов

Методические указания содержат аутентичные тексты профессионального компьютерного дискурса, а также упражнения, направленные на формирование ключевых иноязычных компетенций студентов неязыкового вуза, развитие навыков профессионального общения на английском языке.

Предназначено для студентов, обучающихся по специальностям информационного кластера.

Печатается по решению редакционно-издательского совета Омского государственного технического университета

© ОмГТУ, 2015

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UNIT I

From the History of Computer Science

Pioneers in Computing

I. Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage (1791–1871), an English mathematician and inventor, got his education at Cambridge. He is credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer.

Babbage made notable contributions to computer science. The idea of mechanically calculating mathematical tables first came to Babbage in 1812 or 1813. Later he made a small calculator that could perform certain mathematical computations to eight decimals. Then in 1823 he

obtained government support for the design of a projected machine with a 20-decimal capacity. Its construction required the development of mechanical engineering techniques, to which Babbage of necessity devoted himself.

During the mid-1830s Babbage developed plans for the Analytical Engine, the forerunner of the modern digital computer. In this device he envisioned the capability of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions from punched cards, a memory unit in which to store numbers, sequential control, and most of the other basic elements of the present-day com-

puter. The Analytical Engine, however, was never completed. Babbage’s design was forgotten until his unpublished notebooks were discovered in 1937. In 1991 British scientists built Difference Engine No. 2 – accurate to 31 digits – to Babbage’s specifications.

to conceive – зд. задумать

to make contributions to – сделать вклад в decimal – десятичный

forerunner – предшественник to envision – предвидеть punched card – перфокарта

sequential control – последовательное управление

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II. Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada Byron, countess of Lovelace (1815– 1852) is an English mathematician, an associate of Charles Babbage, for whose prototype of a digital computer she created a program. She has been called the first computer programmer.

She was the daughter of famed poet Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke Byron, who legally separated two months after her birth. Her father then left Britain forever, and his daughter never knew him personally. She was educated privately by tutors and then self-educated but was

helped in her advanced studies by mathematician-logician Augustus De Morgan, the first professor of mathematics at the University of London.

Ada Lovelace became interested in Babbage’s machines as early as 1833 and, most notably, in 1843 came to translate and annotate an article written by the Italian mathematician and engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea “Elements of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Machine”. Her detailed and elaborate annotations (especially her description of how the proposed Analytical Engine could be programmed to compute

Bernoulli numbers) were excellent; “the Analytical Engine”, she said, “weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom

weaves flowers and leaves.” She supplemented the article translation with an elaborate set of notes of her own. These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program – that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the worldʼs first computer programmer.

Lovelace also developed a vision on the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.

It’s important to mention that the computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace.

countess – графиня

associate – союзник, единомышленник, партнер

Bernoulli numbers – числа Бернулли

Jacquard loom – жаккардовый ткацкий станок to supplement – дополнять

to carry out – выполнять

number-crunching – математические расчеты on behalf of – от имени, от лица

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III. Alan Turing

Alan Turing, in full Alan Mathison Turing (1912– 1954) is a British mathematician and logician, who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, biology and to the new areas later named computer science and artificial intelligence. Alan Turing graduated from the University of Cambridge (King’s College) and got his PhD degree at Princeton (USA).

In 1945, the war being over, Turing was recruited to

the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London to design and develop an electronic computer. His design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-program general-purpose digital computer. If Turing’s ACE had been built as planned, it would have had considerably more memory than any of the other early computers, as well as being faster. However, his colleagues at NPL thought the engineering too difficult to attempt, and a much simpler machine was built, the

Pilot Model ACE.

Alan Turing is also notable for being a code breaker (during the World War II he was the key figure to break the Enigma code, used by the German military for their radio communications) and artificial intelligence pioneer.

cryptanalysis – криптографический анализ artificial intelligence – искусственный интеллект

to recruit – нанимать, набирать (в штат сотрудников)

Automatic Computing Engine – автоматическая вычислительная машина code breaker – дешифровщик, криптоаналитик

After-Reading Activity

I. Answer the questions

Which scientist (Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing) …

1.… didn’t get a University degree but was self-educated and taught by private

tutors?

2.… got his education at the University of Cambridge?

3.… got his PhD degree at Princeton?

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4.… is known to be a computer designer, code breaker, and artificial intelligence pioneer?

5.… is called the 1st computer programmer in the world?

6.… designed the Automatic Computing Engine?

7.… was the child of the famous English poet?

8.… is the namesake for the programming language?

9.… designed the machine that was the prototype of the modern computer?

10.… analyzed Babbage’s work in the Sketch of the Analytical Engine?

II. Do you know what other computer scientists are famous for?

A. Make up sentences matching the names of computer scientists with their inventions (use reference sources if necessary)

Use the model:

	is/are known for inventing (build-					that/ which + suitable verb (be, include,
	ing, writing… etc.)					have, provide … etc.)
						www				knife-edge wheels and
	Charles Babbage									a space for only one
					(World Wide Web)
										button
	Tim Berners-Lee				the 1st computer mouse					the prototype of the
										modern computer
										the 1st all electronic,
	Ada Lovelace				the Analytical Engine					Turing-complete
										computer
	Vic Hayes				the Automatic Compu-					communication over a
					ting Engine (ACE)					wireless signal
	Douglas Engelbart				the ENIAC					the world’s 1st com-
										puter program
										a network of inter-
	Alan Turing				the Notes on Babbage’s					linked hypertext doc-
						Engine				uments accessed via
										the Internet
	J. Presper Eckert				IEEE 802.11					an early electronic
										stored-program com-
	John Mauchly				(Wi-Fi Technology)
										puter design

Example: Ada Lovelace is known for writing the Notes on Charles Babbage’s

Engine, that included the world’s 1st computer program

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B.What Russian (Soviet) pioneers in computer science do you know (e.g. Nikolay Brusentsov, Sergei Lebedev, etc.)? What are they known for?

C.What people are supposed to be the current architects of the Information Age? Give the names of computer scientists (famous IT people) of today. What are they known for?

III. Timeline Presentation

Think of 5 or more events in the history of computer science that you personally consider most important and make a Timeline Presentation.

The Most Important Inventions in Computer History

Example:

BC

19 century

20 century

21 century

Online examples:

Link 1 (http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/5382/History-of-the-Computer /#vars!date=1974-11-11_16:49:58!)

Link 2 (http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/10-most-important-inventions-for- computers)

Supplementary Reading

The Invention of the Internet

Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the telephone, the Internet has no single “inventor”. Instead, it has evolved over time. The Internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine life without it.

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THE SPUTNIK SCARE

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite into orbit. The satellite, known as Sputnik, did not do much: It tumbled aimlessly around in outer space, sending blips and bleeps from its radio transmitters as it circled the Earth. Still, to many Americans, the beach-ball-sized Sputnik was proof of something alarming: While the brightest scientists and engineers in the United States had been designing bigger cars and better television sets, it seemed, the Soviets had been focusing on less frivolous things – and they were going to win the Cold War because of it.

After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more seriously about science and technology. Schools added courses on subjects like chemistry, physics and calculus. Corporations took government grants and invested them in scientific research and development. And the federal government itself formed new agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to develop spaceage technologies such as rockets, weapons and computers.

THE BIRTH OF THE ARPANET

Scientists and military experts were especially concerned about what might happen in the event of a Soviet attack on the nation’s telephone system. Just one missile, they feared, could destroy the whole network of lines and wires that made efficient long-distance communication possible. In 1962, a scientist from MIT and ARPA named J.C.R. Licklider proposed a solution to this problem: a “galactic network” of computers that could talk to one another. Such a network would enable government leaders to communicate even if the Soviets destroyed the telephone system.

In 1965, another MIT scientist developed a way of sending information from one computer to another that he called “packet switching”. Packet switching breaks data down into blocks, or packets, before sending it to its destination. That way, each packet can take its own route from place to place. Without packet switching, the government’s computer network – now known as the ARPAnet – would have been just as vulnerable to enemy attacks as the phone system.

“LOGIN”

In 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.) The message – “LOGIN” – was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.

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THE NETWORK GROWS

By the end of 1969, just four computers were connected to the ARPAnet, but the network grew steadily during the 1970s. In 1971, it added the University of Hawaii’s ALOHAnet, and two years later it added networks at London’s University College and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway. As packet-switched computer networks multiplied, however, it became more difficult for them to integrate into a single worldwide “Internet”.

By the end of the 1970s, a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf had begun to solve this problem by developing a way for all of the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks to communicate with one another. He called his invention “Transmission Control Protocol”, or TCP. (Later, he added an additional protocol, known as “Internet Protocol”. The acronym we use to refer to these today is TCP/IP.) One writer describes Cerf’s protocol as “the ‘handshake’ that introduces distant and different computers to each other in a virtual space”.

THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Cerf’s protocol transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. Throughout the 1980s, researchers and scientists used it to send files and data from one computer to another. However, in 1991 the Internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an Internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.

Since then, the Internet has changed in many ways. In 1992, a group of students and researchers at the University of Illinois developed a sophisticated browser that they called Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Mosaic offered a user-friendly way to search the Web: It allowed users to see words and pictures on the same page for the first time and to navigate using scrollbars and clickable links. That same year, Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial purposes. As a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites of their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the Internet to sell goods directly to customers. More recently, social networking sites like Facebook have become a popular way for people of all ages to stay connected.

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UNIT II

Living in the Information Age

I. Pre-reading. Discuss the following questions:

1.Why сan computer be considered as one of the most significant achievements of the XX century?

2.What is the Information or Digital Age?

3.What spheres of life are computers used in?

II. Read the text and compare your answers to the above listed questions with the information from the reading passage.

Text A. Computers in Human Life

The Information Age, also called the Computer Age and the Digital Age, is the current era in human civilization, the access to and the control of information being its defining characteristic. The Information Age is coupled tightly with the advent of personal computers – perhaps the best invention and one of the most significant achievements of human thought. A computer does not necessarily mean a monitor, keyboard, mouse and a CPU. A computer is any machine or device that can compute and execute instructions given to it in the form of programs. So technically, even a cell phone is a computer. And so are desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and PDAs. Anything that can perform a series of operations on its own is a computer. This gives us the idea how great the role of computers is.

One of the most important advantages of computers is in the field of science for research and development. The satellites, the telescopes and almost all the research tools make use of computers. The role of computers in the medical field is also very important. Many high tech surgical machines and instruments are endowed with small computer systems so that any surgical process is recorded and monitored to avoid complications. Many clinical imaging processes are conducted with the help of computers, such as X-ray and CT scan, etc.

Computers are a must in the field of education. The Internet is a huge source of information. We surf the Internet and simply need to google to find any information. Different universities deliver online degrees, and distance learning is spreading dramatically.

Computers have greatly changed the way we do everyday things, such as working, shopping, entertaining. Many people now work at home as freelancers and communicate with their offices through the Internet. With the help of PCs we can shop or

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