Development of robots

Real progress in robot making began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This was a period called the “Industrial Revolution”. The invention of new kinds of machinery caused a sudden change in ways of making things.

Before the Industrial Revolution almost everything was made by hand, piece by piece. After the Industrial Revo­lution almost everything was made by machines.

At first these machines were controlled by human beings. This took a lot of time and effort. There was a need for bet­ter methods of control.

An old proverb says: “Necessity is the mother of inven­tion.” Better ways of controlling machines were needed, so men began to invent robots.

Some of the first robots began to appear in cotton and woollen mills. But it was not until electronic computers gave machines a “brain” and a “memory” that true robots began to appear. Electronic brains give automatic devices a memory and can instruct them what to do under varying conditions. These devices are true robots, because they can take care of themselves.

Early robots were strictly on-off devices. They turned switches on or off when a thread broke in a loom or an auto­mobile conveyor moved to a certain point.

Notes:

human being ……….. thread ………………. loom ………………...

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Electric fish

The electric fish is mentioned in the oldest writings of man. History tells us that the Greeks and the Romans knew about it. They knew, for example, that any man coming into contact with the electric fish could obtain an electric shock. In later years, experiments were made to find out the nature and amount of the shock given by one of them called the electric eel. The so-called electric eel is found in the tropical waters of South America.

Small electric eels, only one inch long, can give a small shock. However, by the time they are 6 inches long their internal battery gives as much as 200 volts. When it is quite grown a good electric eel can generate 600-volts. When it is short circuited a current of lampere can be obtained. A two-metre long eel could light a dozen 50 watt lamps.

The electricity in the electric eel seems to be produced at will. Besides, the discharges take place at speeds from 10 to 100 per second. It is interesting to mention here that the eel’s head end is positively charged and the opposite end is negatively charged. By the way, the electric eel hаs some ability for finding polarity. Thus, if two charged elec­trodes are placed in water, even in the dark, the electric fish which is somewhere near the electrodes, will move to­wards the positive electrode, possibly thinking that it is the head of a friend.

Notes:

eel …………………... short circuit ………… discharge ……………

угорь короткое замыкание разряд

Machines aren’t free of errors

If you think of a world free of human error, a society that is regulated by the quiet clicking of a computer which makes no mistakes you will get disappointed.

Like us, the mechanical brains are showing signs of nervousness, indecisiveness. In taking human skills, the machines also have taken our human weaknesses.

An American engineer designed a computer with ears. It responded to carefully spoken numbers with a regulated “clack-click”, but one day it became excited by a movie camera spring that was being wound within its hearing, and went into a hysteria producing its clikety-clacks. It returned to normal state, but repeated the performance as soon as it again heard the spring being wound.

Several large computers have suffered nervous breakdowns that were not planned. It was a very human kind of breakdown suffered by a machine which worked too hard at an impossible job. All night long it clicked and clacked widely, and in the morning it was whirring angrily and gnashing its geer teeth in despair. Finally it stopped in a state of shock. It had been trying to divide by zero. Didn’t know any better!

So far translation machines are not quite perfect as they have limited vocabularies and one word must often do the work of several words.

The title of a Russian technical article ”New Uses for Hydraulic Rams” was translated “New Uses for Water Goats!” Another machine was asked to translate into Russian the expression. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”. The translation appeared to be more than strange: “Vodka is strong, meat is weak”.

The advocates of computers stand firm in their conviction that all computer mistakes are likely to he caused by wrong information people often feed the machines with. But manufacturers admit that the machines are not perfect; that a big computer can be expected to make a mistake about once a month. Mistakes are caused by worn-out tubes, loose connections in the machines or overheating and so on.

In the theory, robot mistakes can be prevented by using two robots, one to check on the work of the other.

Notes:

to click ……………………….. to clack ……………………….. “clack-click ……………….. clickety-clacks ……………….. Didn’t know any better! ……….. hydraulic ram ………………….. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. …………………………

трещать, щелкать слова, воспроизводящие пощел-кивание, издаваемое машиной Не придумала ничего лучше! гидравлический таран; другое значение этого слова – «баран» «Дух бодр, да плоть немощна».