andreeva_tia_nauchnyi_angliiskii_iazyk_vypusk_14_nauka

Computers today are running our factories, planning our cities, teaching our children, and forecasting the possible fu­ tures we may be heir to.

In the new age of exploration the computer is solving in milliseconds the problems a generation of mathematicians would need years to solve without its help. The small, fifty- nine-pound computer, which takes up only one cubic foot of space in the vehicle will do all of the mathematics needed to solve one billion different spacemanoeuvring, navigation, and re-rentry problems. Moreover, it translates the answer into simple numbers and tells the astronaut the attitude to which he must bring the spacecraft before firing the thrusters, and indi­ cate to him exactly how long they must be fired.

Even before a rocket is launched, it is flown from ten to a hundred times through space - computer-simulated space - on flights constructed of mathematical symbols, on trajectories built of information bits, encountering hazards that are num­ bers without menace. For one of the computer's greatest assets is its ability to simulate one or a million variants of the same theme. "What if?" is the question the computer can answer ac­ curately, swiftly, and over and over again. From this variety of possibilities, a trip from the earth to the moon can be simulated as often as necessary, with every possible trajectory plotted and every mile of the journey through space marked with symbolic signposts that will provide assurance that, mathematically at least, man has travelled this way before.

The computer can do far more than simulate the me­ chanics of space flight; it can furnish accurate models of life itself. In computer simulation, then, there may come the great breakthrough needed to convert the inexact social sciences -

61

the studies of man as a social being-into exact science. For the sociologist the problem has always been the lack of an adequate yardstick by which to measure and count. The one absolutely essential tool of science is the measuring device. Anything that can be counted, measured, quantified, can be studied with scientific accuracy. Now it becomes possible to perform controlled experiments, in which every factor that goes in is known in advance and the answers that come out are then valid.

With computer simulation you can have a series of prob­ lems in which you can figure out all the ramifications, all the permutations and combinations, and do it very quickly and know the different combinations that are at stake. So you can use it really as a means of controlled experiment. You can get a computer model of a city and play out all the different effects, so that if you decide, for example, to relocate traffic in one way you can trace out very quickly, on the model, the effects on in­ dustry locations, residential densities, and the like. And more important, when you have alternative plans of this kind you can then choose, and that is the fundamental aspect of all such no­ tions of planning. It allows you to have a sense of wider choice, to see therefore, the consequences of it and say, I prefer this scheme rather than another.

♦ Write a short summary on the text.

Text 40

Early Robots

We are surrounded by robots, big ones, little ones, and medium-sized ones, they serve mankind in thousands of ways every day.

62

You can find robots practically anywhere you look. In fac­ tories there are giant robots. They pick up great amounts of raw materials and pass them to other robots who press, stamp, and shape the raw material into a wide variety of things. Still more robots carry these things along assembly lines, where they are painted, polished and packed in boxes.

In the air, robots keep the jetliners on course. They tell the pilot if anything goes wrong with his airplane. In some cases, by the time one robot has told the pilot something is wrong, another robot has already fixed the trouble.

Whenever a rocket is launched, robots help guide it to its target. They make sure all its stages fire at the right time, and tell the rocket just when to eject its satellite into orbit.

In research laboratories, robots help scientists penetrate deeper into unknown areas. They go far out into space and deep under the sea to send back information from places where man cannot yet go himself. Robots help scientists see through to the inside of solid objects, and look far into the vast reaches of space. A robot even helps scientists study the data gathered for them by other robots. Robots come in all shapes and sizes. There are little ones no bigger than your little finger. There are big ones that take up thousands of square feet. Sometimes they are so big they are given an entire building all to themselves.

Yet it is not too easy to identify a robot by its size or shape. The only way to tell whether a device is a robot or not is to see how it works and what it does. If it can do things without being controlled directly by a human being, then it is a robot.

Robots are designed to do one single task, and no more. For example, robot that has only to control temperature does not need anything besides a sense of "feel".

Robot is not a machine in the usual sense of the word. A machine is a way of increasing man's strength through the

63

use of the principles of mechanics. A lever is a machine, one of the simplest. A giant press in a factory is a more complicated machine, but if it is directly controlled by a man, it is still no more than a machine.

But suppose a man puts an automatic control box on a ma­ chine. The control box tells the machine what to do, even when the man is not there. Then that man has created a robot.

A robot is a machine that can make certain decisions for it­ self without the presence of a human being. Of course, a man still has to set the automatic controls or the machine will not be able to make those decisions.

The Advantages of Robots. Because robots can "remem­ ber" the instructions a man gives to them, men can set the con­ trols on robots, and leave them. This gives men much more time to perform other tasks.

A robot can do many things that would be physically im­ possible for a man to do. Because robots are made of steel and special kinds of glass and plastics, they can operate where it is impossible for a man to work and stay alive.

Robots can do things faster than man. Giant computers are examples of this. These computers can do only the things that man teaches them, and only the things that man can do himself - but they can do them many times faster.

Where did Robots Come From? Like most of the things we have today, robots are the result of the contributions of hundreds of men throughout history. Men in many different countries and in many different fields of activity helped to build robots.

Man has always been interested in devices that would do things for him. That is why scientists and engineers have al-

64

ways tried to build machines and robots. A number of men, each of them using the ideas of those who had preceded him, put together the inventions of the past to make new ones. Some of these new inventions were robots.

Early Robots. One of the first Robots was a device to control the speed of a steam-driven machine to keep it from going too fast.

It was known that the speed of the machine could be con­ trolled by the amount of steam put into the engine. The best way to control the speed of the machine was to control the amount of steam. A device was built that would cut off the steam to the machine if it was going too fast.

The device was mounted on the shaft attached to the ma­ chine. The faster the machine went, the faster the shaft would revolve. As the shaft revolved, the heavy balls on the device had a tendency to fly outward. The faster the shaft went, the farther out the balls flew. When the balls flew outward, the levels to which they were attached moved the handle of the valve controlling the steam. If the machine went faster than it was supposed to, the balls caused the steam valve to close. This slowed the machine. When the machine slowed to the proper speed, the balls did not fly out so far. Then the steam valve opened again. This was a true robot, because it was selfregu­ lating. There was a relation between the input (steam) and the output (speed), the output controlling the input.

Real progress in robot making began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This was a period called the "Industrial Revolution". It was called a revolution because the inven­ tion of new kinds of machinery caused a sudden change in ways of making things.

At first these machines were controlled by human be­ ings. Man-had to feed raw materials to them by hand, con­ trol their speed, and turn them on and off at the right time.

65

This took a lot of time and effort. There was a need for a better method of control.

An old proverb says: "Necessity is the mother of inven­ tion". This means that an invention is the result of the need for it. Better ways of controlling machines were needed, so men began to invent robots.

Some of the first robots began to appear in cotton and woolen mills. Before the Industrial Revolution, cloth was made by hand. This was a slow, time-consuming process, and most cloth was made at home on hand looms. The invention of weaving machinery changed all this. Large factories containing hundreds of electrically powered looms were built.

Electrically powered machinery was much faster than oldfashioned hand-looms, but there was the problem of controlling it. If the thread broke, or if the wrong kind of thread went into the wrong machine, all sorts of trouble would result.

So some unknown cotton-mill mechanic had a bright idea. Why not use a device that would stop the machine if the thread broke? He tried it, and it worked. Someone else built a device that would stop the machine if the wrong kind of thread got into the process. These and other devices like them were among the first primitive robots.

Early robots were not entirely selfregulating. They were strictly on-off devices - they turned switches on and off. They could perform only one action, and would keep per­ forming that action no matter what happened as they were unable to operate under a variety of conditions. If a new situation arose, they were incapable of doing anything about it.

Many automatic devices were invented during the indus­ trial growth of the world. But it was not until electronic com­

66

puter gave machines a "brain" and a "memory" that true robots began to appear. Electronic computer could instruct them what to do under varying conditions.

The basic principle of all robots is that of finding a solu­ tion, trying it, rejecting it if it does not work, and trying another one. This is called the principle of "feedback".

Feedback is the process whereby a machine gives infor­ mation to the device controlling it. This information causes the control mechanism to make a change in the operation of the machine. The machine then sends more information to the control mechanism, telling it about the effect of the change. The controller then may order another change. It is a continuous process. Every time the controller tells the ma­ chine to do something, the machine feeds back information on what is happening.

Unless a device has a feedback mechanism of one kind or an­ other, it is not a robot. Feedback enables a robot to regulate itself, and self-regulation is the key to what is robot and what is not.

♦ Read the text. Make up a plan. Try to summarize the main idea ofthe text in afew sentences.

Text 41

Telecommunications and TV Centre

Different ways of sending messages over long distances have been known and employed for thousands of years. But most important developments in the field of telecommunica­ tions have been made over the last hundred years.

Most modem methods of telecommunication employ elec­ tricity. In 1820 it was discovered that an electric current could deflect a magnetic needle to the left or to the right, according to

67

the direction in which the current was flowing. This discovery made possible the invention of the telegraph.

The telephone, which transmits speech, was a later inven­ tion. All sources of sound vibrate the air in different ways. The vibrations of a voice speaking into the microphone of a tele­ phone cause vibrations in an electric current. This varying cur­ rent is carried along a wire to a receiver, in which a thin metal plate vibrates in the same way as the original voice.

Moving pictures can be sent by television. Originally only black-and-white pictures could be transmitted, and the distances over which they could be sent were relatively short. But colour television has now been developed, and telecommunication satellites have made intercontinental television transmission possible.

In order to coordinate all the TV centres in our country a new USSR TV Centre has been built. It also ensures contact with other countries through Intervision and Eurovision.

♦ Read the text. Work in pairs or small groups. Discuss modern methods of telecommunication, add some new information.

Text 42

Transmitting Pictures by Telephone

Pictures can now be sent over the telephone by sound sig­ nals. A new machine does this by looking at a picture and tell­ ing what it sees over the telephone to a similar machine at the receiving end, which then translates the sound signals it hears back into the form of a picture.

At the sending end, the photograph, drawing business form or document is placed in the machine. At the receiving end, the re­ production appears on ordinary paper. An illustration of ordinary letter size takes six minutes to be received and reproduced.

68

This is how the machine works.

Inside the machine optical devices rotate and pick up re­ flected light which is focused on and passed through a filter to a photocell or "electronic eye". The photocell generates a sig­ nal which is amplified to produce voltages of varying strength.

The voltages are converted into sound, and it is this audible signal which is transmitted over the telephone, just as music or voice is transmitted.

At the receiving telephone, the sound is reconverted to an electronic signal and then into a varying voltage. This voltage is applied to a drive mechanism. The mechanism is activated to extend and print out a corresponding dark area of the transmitting picture. The length of the document determines the time needed for transmission.

♦ Give a detailed retelling of the text in your own words.

Text 43

What is Color?

Centuries ago, men drew pictures of animals on the walls of their caves. Many of these drawings were in color. Men have always been attracted by colorful objects and have deco­ rated themselves, their homes, and their possessions with color. You will be able to discover a few facts about color with the aid of experimental evidence.

Isaac Newton, in a famous experiment, allowed a beam of light to enter a darkened room and strike a screen. When a prism was placed in the path of the beam of light, a band of rainbow-like colors was projected on the screen. He found that if the colored beams from this prism were passed through an­ other prism, the result was white light again.

69

Newton concluded that the beam of light from the sun was composed of the seven colors he observed: red, orange yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Such an arrangement of colors is called a spectrum, Newton projected this spectrum on screens of different colors. When the spectrum fell upon a blue screen, only the blue part of the spectrum could be seen; when a red screen was substituted, only the red could be seen.

If all the colors are reflected, an object looks white,. If no color is reflected, the object looks black.

Rainbows are produced as light passes through millions of tiny prisms - water droplets in the atmosphere. The rays of white light from the sun are broken up by the droplets to form the spectrum, or rainbow. The droplets also reflect the light to the earth, and you can see the rainbow.

♦ Read the text. Add some hew information about color.

Text 44

The Universe Origin

The puzzle of the birth and deaths of the Universe is one of the most exciting problems in science comparable in impor­ tance with the puzzle of the origin of life. According to the hot big bang theory which is widely accepted by astronomers to­ day, the Universe was bom at some time t = 0, about 15 billion years ago, in a state of infinitely high temperature and infinite energy density. The fireball expanded and cooled, with its en­ ergy being converted into particles that give rise to the material from which all the stars and planets were built.

Cosmologists have been able to sketch the broad outlines of the evolution of the Universe from the fireball state to the

70