Computer in Use. Маркушевская Л.П - 31 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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31
TEXT 6
Read the text and supply it with a suitable title.
Any U.S. school child knows that the first country to develop a computer was
the U.S. But few people know that the second country was the Soviet Union in 1950.
And still fewer people know that the first step was actually made in the Soviet Russia
in 1918 (a year after the socialist revolution) when M. Bonch-Bruevich developed an
electronic relay circuit with two stable states later known in the West as a trigger.
Academician Nikita Moiseyev visited western computer centres in the late 50s
and found that the Soviets were at a similar level of development in both methods
and computers themselves. Soviet advances slowed down, however, due to mistakes
in approaches towards developing the computer industry and shortage of funds which
were needed for the iron steel construction and transport industries. A vast housing
program was in progress, and the Eastern regions were being developed on a large
scale. Consequently, while the U.S.S.R. was well-equipped to deal with the world
energy crises of the 1970s, computer technology lagged.
At the turn of the 80s, however, the U.S.S.R. scored new successes in this
field. The Soviet electronics industry became one of the world's biggest producers of
electronic components. 30000 kinds of .components were exported to more than 30
countries, electronic components marked "made in the U.S.S.R." were used in
France, Britain, Italy and Spain. General Motors used to buy 150-180 million
resistors.
Exercise 1. Answer the question.
How did the electronic industry develop in the post-Soviet period?
Look for extra information of your own.
TEXT 7
Reading and extracting information.
EVOLUTION IN SIZE
Computers come in all sizes. Large ones are called mainframes. The
mainframes have been around the longest, and there are a lot of them, especially in
larger organizations.
The most powerful computers, however, are called supercomputers. The
supercomputers are so powerful that they are found in only a few of the larger
business organizations. Supercomputers most often are used for scientific
calculations.
The recent trend has not been to larger computers, but to smaller ones. In the
1970s, this trend got its start with minicomputers, or minis. These computers were
smaller than the mainframes but, in many cases, outperformed the larger units.

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