# Welcome to the computer world. Practice materials for 1st year students. Еранина Т.И - 11 стр.

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• ## Иностранный язык

- 11 -
UNIT 2
History of computers
Task 1. Read and translate the text. Choose the information in it to give a
summary of the text.
The first calculating devices
Let us take a look at the history of computers that we know
today. The very first calculating device used was the ten fingers of a
man's hands. This, in fact, is why today we still count in tens and
multiples of tens.
Then the abacus was invented. People went on using some
form of abacus well into the 16
th
century, and it is still being used in some
parts of the world because it can be understood without knowing how
During the 17
th
and 18
th
centuries many people tried to find
easy ways of calculating. J.Napier, a Scotsman, invented a mechanical
way of multiplying and dividing, which is now the modern slide rule
works. Henry Briggs used Napier's ideas to produce logarithm tables
which all mathematicians use today.
Calculus, another branch of mathematics, was independently
invented by both Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishman, and Leibniz, a
German mathematician. The first real calculating machine appeared in
1820 as the result of several people's experiments.
In 1830 Charles Babbage, a gifted English mathematician,
proposed to build a general-purpose problem-solving machine that he
called "the analytical engine". This machine, which Babbage showed
at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, was an attempt to cut out the human
being altogether, except for providing the machine with the necessary
facts about the problem to be solved. He never finished this work, but
many of his ideas were the basis for building today's computers.
By the early part of the twentieth century electromechani-
processing. Dr. Herman Hollerith, a young statistician from the US
Census Bureau successfully tabulated the 1890 census. Hollerith
invented a means of coding the data by punching holes into cards. He
built one machine to punch the holes and others to tabulate the
collected data. Later Hollerith left the Census Bureau and established
his own tabulating machine company. Through a series of merges the
company eventually became the IBM Corporation.
Until the middle of the twentieth century machines designed
to manipulate punched card data were widely used for business data
                                       - 11 -

UNIT 2

History of computers

Task 1. Read and translate the text. Choose the information in it to give a
summary of the text.

The first calculating devices
Let us take a look at the history of computers that we know
today. The very first calculating device used was the ten fingers of a
man's hands. This, in fact, is why today we still count in tens and
multiples of tens.
Then the abacus was invented. People went on using some
form of abacus well into the 16th century, and it is still being used in some
parts of the world because it can be understood without knowing how
During the 17th and 18th centuries many people tried to find
easy ways of calculating. J.Napier, a Scotsman, invented a mechanical
way of multiplying and dividing, which is now the modern slide rule
works. Henry Briggs used Napier's ideas to produce logarithm tables
which all mathematicians use today.
Calculus, another branch of mathematics, was independently
invented by both Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishman, and Leibniz, a
German mathematician. The first real calculating machine appeared in
1820 as the result of several people's experiments.
In 1830 Charles Babbage, a gifted English mathematician,
proposed to build a general-purpose problem-solving machine that he
called "the analytical engine". This machine, which Babbage showed
at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, was an attempt to cut out the human
being altogether, except for providing the machine with the necessary
facts about the problem to be solved. He never finished this work, but
many of his ideas were the basis for building today's computers.
By the early part of the twentieth century electromechani-