ИСЗ-101 / Subj / 689-COMPUTER ENGLISH

Their break came when they developed an operating system called MS-DOS for the first IBM personal computer, and later managed to persuade other manufactures to standardize their systems to run MS-DOS. This standardization started a new computer industry boom throughout the 1980’s as MS-DOS took hold of the market and gained popularity, Microsoft also started developing applications such as word processors.

Microsoft announced Windows 1.0 in 1983, which promised a graphical user interface (GUI) better graphics and multitasking. However the final product was not released for another 2 years until 1985, with very few compatible applications Windows did not sell well.

Over the next five years Microsoft released a number of upgraded Windows 2.0 versions which added many programs, versatility and features. As Microsoft grew, its share price sky rocketed, and at the age of 31 Bill Gates became the youngest self-made billionaire in American history.

In 1990 Microsoft headed by Bill Gates created a new version of Windows called Windows 3.0 with a much improved GUI and features which sold more than 10 million copies, quickly followed by Windows 3.1, 3.11 and workgroups which added networking support. Building on their success Microsoft developed Windows 95 followed by Windows 98, 2000, Millennium Edition and the current versions Windows XP and Vista. Each new Windows release has seen Microsoft gain more market share and along with their popular applications such as Office, games etc has seen Bill Gates become the richest man in the world worth an estimated $46 billion.

Gates also has interests in other business having many investments and positions in company’s including Corbis Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Teledesic Corporation. In 1998 Gates gave up his role as CEO to focus on development of new technology and products.

Bill Gates married Melinda French Gates in 1994 and has three children, Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. Both Bill and Melinda are keen philanthropists starting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has committed more than $3.2 billion to global health, $2 billion to improve learning opportunities to low income families, $477 million to community projects and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Bill Gates development of software and programs has been his contribution to the revolution of computers and computer science.

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IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" (for its official corporate color), is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and offers infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

IBM has been known through most of its recent history as the world's largest computer company and systems integrator. With over 388,000 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest and most profitable information technology employer in the world. IBM holds more patents than any other U.S. based technology company and has eight research laboratories worldwide. Widely acclaimed for its highly talented workforce, the company has scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals in over 170 countries. IBM employees have earned three Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science. As a chip maker, IBM has been among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders in past years, and in 2007 IBM ranked second in the list of largest software companies in the world.

The company which became IBM was founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith, in Broome County, New York, where it still maintains very limited operations. It was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) on June 16, 1911, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. CTR's Canadian and later South American subsidiary was named International Business Machines in 1917, and the whole company took this name in 1924 when Thomas Watson took control. Watson built IBM into such a powerful force that the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit against them in 1952. IBM owned and leased more than 90 percent of all tabulating machines in the United States at the time.

Throughout his life, Watson maintained a deep interest in international relations. He was known as President Roosevelt's un-official Ambassador in NY and often entertained foreign statesman. In 1937, he was elected president of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and at that year's biennial congress in Berlin stated the conference keynote to be World Peace Through World Trade. That phrase became the slogan of both the ICC and IBM.

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"THINK". Watson summarized the IBM philosophy with a motto consisting of one word. A biographical article in 1940 noted that "This word is on the most conspicuous wall of every room in every IBM building. Each employee carries a THINK notebook in which to record inspirations. The company stationery, matches, scratch pads all bear the inscription, THINK. A monthly magazine called

Think is distributed to the employees. One might suppose this would be the inspiration behind naming IBM's very successful line of notebook computers and ThinkPads.

IBM makes everything from mainframes to personal computers (PCs) and has been immensely successful in selling them, chiefly to business. It has often been said that "Nobody has ever been sacked for buying IBM". The IBM PC in its various versions has been so successful that unqualified reference to a "PC" almost certainly means a PC from IBM, or one of the many brands of clone produced by other manufacturers to cash in on IBM's original success.

In May 1997, IBM's Deep Blue Supercomputer played a fascinating match with the reigning World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov. The event was captured live on the Internet, where 74 million chess and computing fans from 106 countries tuned in to witness the event in real-time. It was one of the most popular live events ever staged on the Internet during the 9-day event. Garry Kasparov was competing against much more than circuits and specialized chess processors. He was actually matching with the collective intellect of five highly trained developers and one international grandmaster. The match ended: Kasparov 2.5 - Deep Blue 3.5.

Apple

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer Inc., is an American multinational corporation which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system, the iTunes media browser, the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software, the iWork suite of productivity software, and Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products. The company operates more than 250 retail stores in nine countriesand an online store where hardware and software products are sold.

Established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976 and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was called "Apple Computer, Inc." for its first 30 years, but dropped the word "Computer" on January 9, 2007 to reflect the company's ongoing

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expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers. Apple has about 35,000 employees worldwide. For reasons as various as its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its distinctive advertising campaigns, Apple has established a unique reputation in the consumer electronics industry. This includes a customer base that is devoted to the company and its brand, particularly in the United States. In 2008, Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States.

In 1970, Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak had become friends with Steve Jobs, when Jobs had a summer job at the same business where Wozniak was working on a mainframe computer. According to Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, Jobs had the idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled PC board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandkids they had their own company. Together they sold some of their possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific calculator and Jobs' Volkswagen van), raised USD$1,300, and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs' garage.

In the late 1970s, Steven Paul Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both co-founders of Apple Inc., created one of the first commercially successful personal computers. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT's subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple Computer Inc. brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. Steve Jobs was listed as Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Businessman of 2007.

Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer who founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s. The Apple II gained much popularity, eventually becoming one of the best selling personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s. He is sometimes known as the "Other Steve" of Apple Computer, the better known Steve being co-founder Steve Jobs. He is of Polish descent.

Apple’s first logo depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Almost immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob Janoff’s “rainbow Apple”, the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic logos, and Jobs

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immediately took a liking to the bitten apple. While Jobs liked the logo, he insisted it be in color, as a way to humanize the company. Apple's first slogan, "Byte into an Apple", was coined in the late 1970s. From 1997– 2002, Apple used the slogan Think Different in advertising campaigns. The slogan had a lasting impact on their image and revived their popularity with the media and customers. Although the slogan has been retired, it is still closely associated with Apple.

Google

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments, acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google. The company was being identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work and as the most powerful brand in the world, according to Millward Brown. The Company describes its mission as follows: “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Larry Page was Google's founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share responsibility for Google's day-to- day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin.

The son of Michigan State University computer science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry's love of computers began at age six. While following in his father's footsteps in academics, he became an honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering. During his time in Ann Arbor, Larry built an inkjet printer out of Lego™ bricks.

While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry met Sergey Brin, and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Larry went on leave from Stanford after earning his master's degree.

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Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a bachelor-of-science degree with honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where he received his master's degree. Sergey is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as an honorary MBA from Instituto de Empresa. It was at Stanford where he met Larry Page and worked on the project that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc. in 1998, and Sergey continues to share responsibility for day-to-day operations with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Sergey's research interests include search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data. He has published more than a dozen academic papers. Sergey has been a featured speaker at several international academic, business and technology forums, including the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference.

Questionnaire on the 4th part:

1.Who was Bill Gates’ good friend and eventually a co -founder of Microsoft?

2.What company carries the motto “THINK”?

3.Who developed the MS-DOS operating system?

4.When was Google founded and started to operate?

5.What company is Steve Jobs co-founder of?

6.What was the name of the supercomputer that competed in a chess-match?

7.What is the biggest software company in the world?

8.Who built an inkjet printer out of Lego bricks?

9.Why did Apple drop the word “Computer” from its nam e “Apple Computer

Inc.”?

10.Who was Larry Page’s co-founder of Google? 11.What company is nicknamed the “Big Blue”? 12.Who was nicknamed the “Woz”?

Related Websites

http://www.funfactz.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/

http://speedingcomputer.com/

http://cs.joensuu.fi/kielikurssit/englanti/compukeyword.html - a multimedia

program for students studying computer science (key terms are presented)

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