Computer Generations

1. In 1832, an English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage was commissioned by the British government to develop a system for calculating the rise and fall of the tides.

2. Babbage designed a device and called it an analytical engine. It was the first programmable computer, complete wit punched cards for data input. Babbage gave the engine the ability to perform different types of mathematical operations. The machine was not confined to simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. It had its own "memory", due to which the machine could use different combinations and sequences of operations to suit the purposes of the operator.

3. The machine of his dream was never realized in his life. Yet Babbage's idea didn't die with him. Other scientists made attempts to build mechanical, general-purpose, stored-program computers throughout the next century. In 1941 a relay computer was built in Germany by Conrad Zuse.It was a major step towards the realization of Babbage's dream.

4. Nothing epitomizes modern life better than the computer. For better or worse, computers have infiltrated every aspect of our society. Today computers do much more than simply computer.

5. But everything started in 1946s when the rapidly advancing field of electronics led to construction of the first general-purpose electronic computer in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. That device contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and had a speed of several hundred multiplications per minute. Its program was wired into the processor and had to be manually altered. This way the first generation of computers appeared. They were characterized by the fact that each computer had a different binary-coded program called a machine language that told it how to operate. This made the computer difficult to program and limited its versatility and speed. Other distinctive features of first generation computers were the use of vacuum tubes and magnetic drums for data storage.

6. By 1948 the invention of the transistor greatly changed the computers development. The use of the transistor in the computers began in the late 1950s. It marked the advent of smaller, faster elements than it was possible to create with the use of vacuum-tube machines. As a result, the size of electronic machinery has been shrinking ever since. Coupled with early advances in magnetic-core memory, transistors led to second generation computers that were smaller, faster, more reliable and more energy-efficient than their predecessors. Throughout the early 1960s, there were a number of commercially successful second generation computers used in business, universities, and government.

7. Jack Kilby, an American engineer, developed the integrated circuit in 1958. The integrated circuit combined three electronic components onto a small silicon disc, which was made from quartz. Scientists later managed to fit even more components on a single chip, called a semiconductor. As a result, computers became ever smaller as more components were squeezed onto a chip. They were computers of the third generation. Another third-generation development included the use of an operating system that allowed machines to run many different programs at once with a central program that monitored and coordinated the computer's memory.

8. After the invention of integrated circuits, the only place to go was down - in size. In 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer for use in the office, home and schools. The 1980s saw an expansion in computer use, made the personal computer even more affordable. The number of personal computers in use doubled in 1982. Ten years later, 65 million PCs were being used. Computers continued their trend toward smaller size, working their way down from desktop to laptop computers, which could fit inside a briefcase, then to palmtop which are able to fit inside a breast pocket. In direct competition with IBM's PC was Apple's Macintosh line, introduced in 1984 notable for its user-friendly design, the Macintosh offered an operating system that allowed users to move screen icons instead of typing instructions. Users controlled the screen cursor using a mouse, a device that mimicked the movement of one's hand on the computer screen.

9. Defining the fifth generation of computers is somewhat difficult because the field is in infancy. Using recent engineering advances, computers may be able to accept spoken word instructions and imitate human reasoning. The ability to translate a foreign language is also a major goal of fifth generation computers. Computers today have some attributes of fifth generation computers.

In fact, the fifth generation of computers is the beginning of artificial intelligence.

Notes:

1. to wire — впаювати

2. desktop — настільний комп’ютер

3. laptop — невеличкий портативний комп’ютер

4. palmtop — портативний комп’ютер

5. infancy — рання стадія розвитку

6. to epitomize — характеризувати, представляти

Ex. 8. Find in the text English equivalents to the following words and word-combinations.

1. Характеризувати; 2. універсальний; 3. змінювати; 4. зменшувати;

5. попередити; 6. втискувати; 7. спостерігати; 8. звільнення; 9. напрямок;

10. піктограма.

Ex.9. Match the English words with their Ukrainian equivalents.

1. to infiltrate a) бінарна програма

2. manually b) розвиток

3. binary-coded program c) магнітний носій

4. versality d) поєднувати

5. to couple e) фільтрувати

6. magnetic core f) вручну

7. affordable g) можливий

8. to mimic h) повторювати

9. human reasoning i) мислення людини

10. attribute j) властивість

Ex. 10. Insert the suitable words or word-combinations into the following sentences. The words are given below.

1. Nothing….modern life better than the computer.

2. The program was….into the processor and had to be manually altered.

3. The invention of the….greatly changed the computers development.

4. Computers became smaller as more components were….onto a chip.

5. Defining the fifth generation of computers is difficult because the field is….

Wired; transistor; epitomizes; squeezed; in infancy.

Ex.11. Find in the text and put down the answers to the questions in Ukrainian.

1. Who was the inventor of the first programmable computer?

2. What were distinctive features of the first generation of computers?

3. What characterizes the second generation of computers?

4. What characterizes the third generation of computers?

5. Is it easy to define the fifth generation of computers?

Ex.12. Read and translate the following text orally without a dictionary. List the main points in Ukrainian.

“Here comes the Robot”

The first robots appeared on Olympus: gold mechanical maids served Hephaestus, the god of fire, divine smith and patron of craftsmen. Attempts to create a mechanical being looking like a man and capable of carrying out his work have penetrated with the history of civilization. The robots of today, industrial automatons and mechanisms, have no sim­ilarity with man but, being faster and more accurate than him when working, replace him in carrying out monotonous, and dangerous work ...

The word "robot", which has become an international tech­nological term, was coined (создавать) in 1920 by the Czech writer Karel Chapek. He used it to designate a mechanical worker, looking like a man, possessing unusual physical strength, infinite capacity for work, and totally devoid of such human drawbacks as fatigue, distraction and emotions. Literature had known about such creatures long before Chapek. It is curious to note that all kinds of mechanical assistants described in literature suffered from anthropomorphism, i.e., they looked like a man. In practice there is absolutely no need for this.

The first robots, perhaps, did not yet have the right to be called such because they could not work by themselves, but worked only on operator's instructions, being in a safe place. The operators controlled a whole set of "multiarticulate" hands, carrying out necessary actions for maintaining, for example, nuclear reactors, manipulated in sterile conditions, etc. The first manipulators were very heavy and clumsy. But the more engineering thought developed, the fewer anthropo­morphous elements appeared. There were more flexible and mobile devices which could squeeze into narrow openings, move on flat vertical walls, and even on the ceiling.

By freeing man from routine physical Work, robots greatly change the content of labour, resolve the manpower shortage problem, and eliminate the need of man's presence in harmful and dangerous conditions. This is where the social significance of robot technology lies.

Most people have come across the term "industrial robots". These are programmable controlled automatic devices which replace man in performing functions that were once thought to be purely human operations. Nowadays several thousand industrial robots are already operating at enterprises across the country. But this is only a first step.

Robotics is the art and science of the creation and use of robots, i.e., in other words, robot technology. Today prac­tically all sectors of the economy and industry are looking forward to introducing industrial robots. But robot building is not simple and certainly not cheap. If every sector begins to build its own robots, it will be impossible to avoid unneces­sary duplication of research and development, and large sums will be wasted. Therefore the need is to concentrate all efforts in robot technology in one pair of hands, in a powerful inter-sectoral scientific and technical organization. Only in this way it is possible to ensure the maximum standardization of production of industrial robots and multipurpose automatic manipulators. There are two rational ways in the field of robotics. The first one is to build standardized modules-unified elements on the basis of which it will be easy to assem­ble, in different combinations, robots for the most varied of purposes. The second way is to create an inter-sectoral ex­change fund 4 of robots so that research and development of de­signers in different technical fields should be within the reach of all interested organizations and enterprises.

Thanks to scientists’ and designers’ efforts, the family of industrial robots, man's friendly mechanical assistants, has been growing rapidly both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Notes:

multiarticulate hands — багатосуставні руки

manpower shortage — брак робочої сили

to look forward — очікувати

inter-sectoral exchange fund— проміжний обмінний фонд

Ex.13. Discussion points.

1. What is a computer?

2. Computer Generations.

3. The family of industrial robots.