Great britain
GEOGRAPHICAL FACTS
Great Britain, formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is situated on the British Isles. The British Isles consist of Great Britain, Ireland and some 5,500 smaller islands. The total area of the United Kingdom is 244,027 square kilometers. Great Britain is divided into 92 administrative counties. Great Britain — is separated from Ireland by the Irish Sea and from the Continent by the English Channel and the Strait of Dover.
The surface of England and Ireland is rather flat. The highest mountain in the United Kingdom is Ben Nevis in Scotland (1343 m). There are many rivers in Great Britain but they are not very long. The chief rivers are the Severn (220 miles) and the Thames (215 miles).
Great Britain is known for its typically maritime climate with frequent rains, strong winds and continuous fogs.
The population of Great Britain is nearly 56 million people.
Great Britain is a parliamentary monarchy .Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the state.
The country is governed in her name by the Government. Parliament is the supreme legislative body. It consists of two Houses: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Prime Minister is usually the head of the party which is in power.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Great Britain is a highly developed industrial country. Shipbuilding is one of the principal industries of Great Britain.
Coal-mining, metallurgy, textile, shipbuilding are the older branches of industry. The new industries are the chemical, electrotechnical, automobile, aviation and electronics.
Big cities and towns such as London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Birmingham have enterprises of nearly all branches of industry, old and new.
London, Liverpool and Glasgow are the biggest English ports.
Agriculture is one of the largest and most important activities in Great Britain. The greater part of the land here is used for sheep-, cattle-, and dairy farming.
Computers in our life
A computer may be a person or a machine that takes in information (problems and data), performs reasonable operation on the information and puts out answers. We may consider as a computer a man, for example, who receives information, writes some of it on paper, operates a slide rule and by means of it solves some problems. Any device which can accept information, record and process it and then come out with a definite answer is a computer. There exist various types of mechanical devices which perform computing operations and are in wide use in science and industry, i.e. in laboratories, research institutes, in plants and offices. These are adding machines which add numbers accurately and quickly and print the results of computations on tape. There are also desk calculating machines which can add, subtract, multiply. Storage system or Memory is the unit which has the ability to store extensive programmes and instructions, refer to and modify them for operation. The Arithmetic unit operates on the data received i.e. it can perform high-speed calculations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It can produce results, i.e. provide answers to a large variety of problems by means of the Output unit all under the direction of the Control unit.
An up-to-date computer can solve a complicated problem many millions of times faster than a skilled mathematician. It handles thousands of calculations per second.
There are two main classes of computing equipment: analogue and digital. They work on different principles and yield different results. The digital computers can perform a much broader range of functions than the analogue computers. The application includes all forms of atomic control in science and industry and first of all in space exploration, in automatic piloting navigation and landing of space vehicles. Computer programming is the progress of the future. Computers will guide the first spaceships to Venus, Mars and other planets.
The state gives energetic support to the development of computer engineering. The Academy of Sciences established a network of computing centers all over the country. These centers work out new numerical methods, develop new ways and means of automated programming work.
They solve practical problems for various institutes and develop new types of electronic computers.