A: Participle I
Computers using vacuum tubes; the machine calculating mathematical problems; the computer keeping instructions in its memory; binary code storing data and instructions; the vacuum tube controlling and amplifying electronic signals; computers performing computations in milliseconds; electronic pulses moving at the speed of light; students coding the information by using a binary code; devices printing the information; keyboard terminals replacing vacuum tubes.
B: Participle II
The given information; the name given to the machine; the coded data; the device used in World War II; the invention named ENIAC; the machine called EDVAC; instructions kept in the memory; the engine designed for storing data; data stored in a binary code; vacuum tubes invented by J. Neumann; the general-purpose machine proposed by Ch. Babbage; the machine provided with the necessary facts.
Task 5. Before reading the text below, learn the following professional vocabulary:
analog computer
digital computer
to aim guns
to figure out
at a fast rate
memory / storage
to store data and instructions
stored program computer
binary code
condition , ,
vacuum tube () ()
to amplify
to perform computations
Task 6. Read and translate the text. Give the summary obit.
The first computers
In 1930 the first analog computer was built by American named Vannevar Bush. This device was used in World War II to help aim guns.
Many technical developments of electronic digital computers took place in the 1940s and 1950s. Mark I, the name given to the first digital computer, was completed in 1944. The man responsible for this invention was Professor Howard Aiken. This was the first machine that could figure out long lists of mathematical problems at a very fast rate.
In 1946 two engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, J. Eckert and J. Maushly, built their digital computer with vacuum tubes. They named their new invention ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator).
Another important achievement in developing computers came in 1947, when John von Neumann developed the idea of keeping instructions for the computer inside the computers memory. The contribution of John von Neumann was particularly significant. As contrasted with Babbages analytical engine, which was designed to store only data, von Neumanns machine, called the Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, or EDVAS, was able to store both data and instructions. He also contributed to the idea of snoring data and instructions in a binary code that uses only ones and zeros. This simplified computer design. Thus computers use two conditions, high voltage, and low voltage, to translate the symbols by which we communicate into unique combinations of electrical pulses. We refer to these combinations as codes.
Neumann stored program computer as well as other machines of that time were made possible by the invention of the vacuum tube that could control and amplify electronic signals. Early computers, using vacuum tubes, could perform computations in thousandths of seconds, called milliseconds, instead of seconds required by mechanical devices.
