Who invented the computer?

Computers developed from calculating machines. One of the earliest mechanical devices for calculating, still widely used today, is the abacus-a frame carrying parallel rods on which beads or counters are strung. The abacus originated in Egypt in 2000 b.c.e.; it reached the Orient about a thousand years later, and arrived in Europe in about the year 300 c.e. In 1617, John Napier (1550-1617) invented "Napier's Bones"-marked pieces of ivory for multiples of numbers. In the middle of the same century, Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662) produced a simple mechanism for adding and subtracting. Multiplication by repeated addition was a feature of a stepped drum or wheel machine of 1694 invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). In 1823, the English visionary Charles Babbage (1792-1871) persuaded the British government to finance an "analytical engine." This would have been a machine that could undertake any kind of calculation. It would have been driven by steam, but the most important innovation was that the entire program of operations was stored on a punched tape. Babbage's machine was not completed in his lifetime because the technology available to him was not sufficient to support his design. However, in 1991 a team led by Doron Swade at London's Science Museum built the "analytical engine" (sometimes called the "difference engine") based on Babbage's work. Measuring 10 feet (3 meters) wide by 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall, it weighed three tons and could calculate equations down to 31 digits. The feat proved that Babbage was way ahead of his time, even though the device was impractical because one had to turn a crank hundreds of times in order to generate a single calculation. Modern computers use electrons, which travel at nearly the speed of light.

Based on the concepts of British mathematician Alan M. Turing (1912-1954), the earliest programmable electronic computer was the 1,500-valve "Colossus," formulated by Max Newman (1897-1985), built by T. H. Flowers, and used by the British government in 1943 to crack the German codes generated by the coding machine "Enigma."

My plans for future When millions of young people leave school, they begin an independent life. Some of them start working, go into business, some of them continue schooling to receive a higher education.

While choosing a career you should take into consideration main demands that you want your future profession to meet: the profession must be interesting, you have to be sure of your future (that means that you will be able to find a job after graduation from the university), a profession must be well-paid, otherwise you won’t be able to support yourself and your future family.

During our school life we begin to think about our future life, our job. There are over 2000 professions in the world, so it is quite difficult to choose and to make a decision. Some follow their own choice and some follow their relation’s, teacher’s, parent’s advice, because they can guide them and help to make a decision concerning future plans.

I have never had a question, what I am going to do when I graduate from my school. I have known from childhood that I want to be a linguist. I have chosen this profession, because a knowledge of foreign languages and foreign cultures is growing in importance nowadays. Foreign languages are needed as the main and the most efficient mean of information exchange between the people of our planet.

Although there are 3000 languages, English is the most universal. It is the language of progressive science and technology, trade and cultural relations, and business. It is the universal language of international aviation, shipping, sports, medicine.

English is the official language in nearly forty countries. It is spoken by more than 350 millions people and also spoken as a second language in many parts of India and Africa. Besides, millions of people study English as a foreign language.

In our country English is very popular. It is studied at schools, colleges and universities. It is important for me to learn English because I want to know what is going on round me in the world.

With recent advances in technology, the world is changing rapidly in many fields, such as business, arts and medicine. These changes will affect me soon and it is important for me to read and keep up with these changes. In fact, learning English is the answer to a lot of the things that I need and want. And I can’t help mentioning the quotation: "Every man is the maker of his own fortune".

In conclusion I would like to say it is an advantage to choose our future career while at school. It gives us a goal to work towards and enables us to choose a right, suitable course of study. I’d like to mention also that if we don’t think about our future, nobody will think for us, so we just can’t have one. We must work hard to realize our wishes, because future is purchased by the present.

Sport

All over the world people of different ages are fond of sport and games. Sport not only helps people to become strong and to develop physically but also makes them more organized and better disciplined in their daily activities. In every town there are amateur clubs and keep-fit centers, where people can do aerobics, body-building or work with different training devices.  There are a lot of different kinds of sport: football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, track-and-field, water polo and many others. The main sport competition is the Olympic Games.  The Olympic Games have а very long history. They began in 777 BC in Greece and took place every four years. For the period of the Games all the wars stopped. So the Olympic Games became the symbol of peace and friendship. In 394 AD the Games were abolished. In 1894, а Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, addressed all the sports governing bodies and pointed out the educational value of sports. Two years later the first modern Olympic Games took place in Greece to symbolize the centuries old tradition. Russia joined the Olympic movement in 1952. In 1980 Moscow hosted the Twenty-Second Olympic Games. The latest Olympic Games were held in Sydney. Sydney was the host for the Games of the 27th Olympiad in 2000. About 200 countries took part in the competitions. There were 10000 athletes and 5000 officials. There were 27 sports on the program for the 2000 Olympic Games. Triathlon and Taekwondo were included in Sydney for the first time at any Olympic Games. Our Russian team took part in the Olympic Games too, we were the second in the overall count of won medals, after the USA team.  As for me, I like sport very much, but I like sport not only as a sport fan, but also as a sportsman. I had been training judo for 9 years, until I came to 11 form, I had to stop training because I had a lot of homework and I had not much time to train. But I don’t stop to go in for sport: sometimes in the morning or in the evening I run and sometimes I visit keep-fit center (trainer hall).

Cinema

Cinema plays an important role in the life of any society. It is an'available popular form of art. Lots of people find going to the cinema one of the best ways of spending their leisure time. The movie audience is predominantly a young one.

Due to numerous video facilities, cinema attendances have declined sharply. But there is no denying the fact that the cinema-going habit is still a strong one.

No matter how large the place you live in is (whether it's a big city or a small provincial town, or even a settlement) there's most likely to be a cinema there.

There are such genres of feature films as the western, the thriller, the musical, the drama and the comedy. The performance lasts from two or three hours and most cinemas have at least 4 performances a day. There is no doubt that a good cinema show is an excellent entertainment and quite cheap. Of late cinema screens in this country have been dominated by films produced in the USA. And this tendency is growing.

As for me, I'm fond of going to the cinema. It's a pity, I don't always have time for it. It's an open secret that we live in a very difficult time now. But people do need something amusing and pleasant, something to laugh at. That's why I give my preference to comedies. The last comedy, I saw, is "Crocodile Dandy". The film tells about amusing adventures of a young lovely woman - reporter and a strong and brave crocodile hunter. At first, their relations were not friendly. She even looked down on him and he in return neglected her. But after he rescued her out of some difficult situations, their relations became more friendly. A happy end is an essential feature of American films. The same is true of this comedy. The main characters fall in love with each other in the end of the film.