Computer in Use. Маркушевская Л.П - 6 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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6
TEXT 1
Part I
Comprehensive reading
While translating the text pay special attention to the italicised sentences.
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY
In 1822 Charles Babbage, professor of mathematics at Cambridge University
in England, created the “Analytical engine”, a mechanical calculator that could
automatically produce mathematical tables, a tedious and error-prone manual task in
those days. Babbage conceived of a large-scale, steam-driven (!) model, that could
perform a wide range of computational tasks. The model has never been completed as
revolving shafts and gears could not be manufactured with the crude industrial
technology of the day.
By the 1880s manufacturing technology had improved to the point that
practical mechanical calculators, including versions of Babbage's Analytical engine,
could be produced. The new technology achieved worldwide fame in tabulating the
US Census of 1890. The Census Bureau turned to a new tabulating machine invented
by Herman Hollerith, which reduced personal data to holes punched in paper cards.
Tiny mechanical fingers "felt" the holes and closed an electrical circuit that in turn
advanced the mechanical counter. Hollerith's invention eventually became the
foundation on which the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) was
built.
Analog and digital calculators with electromechanical components appeared in
a variety of military and intelligence applications in 1930s. Many people credit the
invention of the first electronic computer to John Vincent Atanasoff. He produced
working models of computer memory and data processing units at the University of
Iowa in 1939 although had never assembled a complete working computer.
World War II prompted the development of the first working all-electronic
digital computer, Colossus, which the British secret service designed to crack Nazi
codes. Similarly, the need to calculate detailed mathematical tables to help aim
cannons and missiles led to the creation of the first, general-purpose computer, the
electronic numerical integrator and calculator ENIAC at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1946.
After leaving their university (arguing over the patent rights) developers of
ENIAC, J. Prosper Eckert and John Mauchly, turned to business pursuits. They also
had an ugly scandal with an academic colleague, John von Neumann, whom they
accused of having unfairly left their names off the scientific paper that first described
the computer and allowed von Neumann to claim that he had invented it. Eckert and
Mauchly went on to create UNIVAC for the Remington Rand Corporation, an early

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