11. The railways of Great Britain

The British Railways with their combination of speed and comfort provide a passenger service of a high quality. The maximum speeds are lower than the speeds over certain first class routes in France and Japan, but average speeds are higher on British Railways. 100 miles/h is regularly attained over many routes.

The density of traffic is very high. The running is all left – hand operation. All British Railways are operated by the government. The high speed trains will prepare the way for the introduction of the advanced passenger train ( APT ).

This streamline electric train is British hope for future. It will operate at 125 mile/h but is designed for speeds of 150 mile/h and more. Higher speeds make higher demands upon the track, and British Rail is paying constant attention to its stability and general efficiency.

British Rail and its European partners are already planning the new rail services. An hourly service of high speed trains will link London with Paris and Brussels. Through trains will run beyond London to major towns and cities.

12. London’s underground

London`s first underground railway of the “tube” type was opened in 1863.

In the early days the trains were driven by steam locomotives which burnt coal.

The deep tunneling came later, in 1890. Tunneling a tube through miles of clay, and sometimes sand and gravel is no easy task, and it was James Henry Greathead who developed the method which was to make most of London's tunnels possible.

London transport experience with tunnels brought them another record.

One of the longest continuous railway tunnels in the world is the 1714 mile tunnel on the Northern line.

There are numerous escalators which help to keep the traffic moving.

The first was installed in 1911. One of them at Leicester Square is over 80 feet in length.

On long escalators the speed is changeable. The "up" escalator runs at full speed when carrying passengers, but when empty it runs at half speed. Many of the new escalators have automatic control making more frequent service throughout the day possible.

Safety was always one of the main concerns of London transport. In spite of the fact that trains often follow each other within seconds, it is said that the London Underground is the safest form of transport in the world. Automatic signaling operated by the trains themselves. A program machine controls routs if changes are necessary, they are made automatically and with lightning speed. No changes can happen through human error.

New automatic driving systems are now being used. The air in the Underground is changed every quarter of an hour, and the temperature all year round is maintained at 69-79 degrees Fahrenheit.

13. From the history of computer

The educated man of 200 years ago did not need to know anything about science. The educated man of 25 — 30 years ago did not need to know anything about computers. But the educated man of today needs to have some significant knowledge of science and a little significant knowledge about computers.

The computer is no doubt the most amazing achieve­ment of mankind. It is a date storage system created by man. A human tells the machine what to do, when to do it and how it should be done.

The word computer comes from a Latin word which means to count.

Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago there were no such things as computers. Knotted ropes, marks in clay, the abacus are all methods of keeping track of numbers.

In 1833 an English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage, professor of Cambridge University designed the first computer. The mathematical programme for his ma­chine had been composed by Lord Byron's daughter.

The first programmer computer which operated success­fully was built in 1939 by H. H. Aiken, professor of Harward University.

In our country the first electronic digital computer MACM was constructed by the Ukrainian Academician S. O. Lebedev in 1950.

Such computers as BESM, Minsk, Ural, Razdan-3, M-20, M-220, Nairi-3, Strela, Dniepr were created in our country.

Nowadays computers greatly increase man's thinking capabilities of planning, analyzing, computing and con­trolling. Hundreds of computers are already in daily use. They penetrate almost into all spheres of our modern so­ciety, from nuclear energy production and missile design to the processing of bank checks, weather forecasting, manufacturing, research and medical diagnoses.

There are three kinds of computers: digital, analogue and hybrid. An analogue computer computes by using physi­cal analogue of numerical measurements. A digital com­puter computes by using numbers or digits. A hybrid com­puter is a machine which combines some of the properties of digital and analogue computers.

Invention of electronic computers is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. The significance of it can be compared with the invention of the steam-engine and the utilization of atomic energy.