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V. Answer the questions to the text.

1. What are the simplest applications of computers?

2. How will computers affect our lives in future?

3. How have computers changed since the first one introduced in the early 1940s?

4. What devices can be considered to be peripherals?

5. How much time do students spend playing computer games?

6. Have computers greatly increased human potential? Why?

7. Who invented the first computer?

8. How can modern scientists use computers in their research work?

VI. In the text find the words with similar meaning.

to remove; intelligence; greediness; sensitive; persistent; benefit; operation; to cause; cleverness; inventiveness.

VII. Complete the gaps in the sentences using the appropriate words from the previous exercise.

1. More genetic research will not alter the conditions in which people become ____ to many diseases.

2. If you have any technical ____, it is likely you will soon have a home network of PCs, printers, answering machines.

3. None of the projects seem to argue the ____ of this approach.

4. Material ____ equipment is used to increase output, control costs, and maximize productivity.

5. Human ____ has led to various technological developments through applied science.

VIII. Make collocations common to computer branch. Write the missing word.

1. to store …; 2. to run …; 3. word …; 4. … application; 5. peripheral …;

6. … processing; 7. silicon …; 8. worldwide …; 9. … banking; 10. integrated …; 11. … code; 12. operating … .

IX. Look through the text in Ex. III and complete the following sentences.

1. Computers could be linked together to …

2. Today computers are an inseparable part …

3. The first step towards the creation of computers was made…

4. Engineers apply computers …

5. User-friendly programs offer…

6. A computer can do very little …

7. A program is a set of instructions …

8. Computers today are hundred times…

9. Computer technology has opened a variety of opportunities for people …

X. Work in pairs. Read the text and tell your friend information according to the plan.

Student A – Text 1

Student B – Text 2

1. Invention (person, time, country)

2. Functions

3. Significance

Text 1

The first counting device – a mechanical “Calculating Clock” was invented by Wilhelm Schickard in 1624, but was forgotten for a time, so the man usually credited with inventing the first mechanical calculator is Blaise Pascal. Pascal, a French scientist and inventor, created a device in 1642 which, unlike the passive abacus, performed mathematical operations in an active manner. This calculator, called the ‘Pascaline’, could add and subtract numbers with up to eight digits, but was never used much because of its high cost and unreliability. German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz studied the Pascaline, and by means of an innovative gear system added a third function: multiplication, which was performed as a sequence of additions. The first mechanical calculator that could perform the four basic arithmetic functions was built by Frenchman Charles Xavier Thomas of Colmar more than a century later. Colmar’s ‘Arithometer’ of 1820 was widely used until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Text 2

There are three machines which have claimed the title of being the first electronic computer ever. In 1941, J. V. Atanasoff, a professor at Iowa State University, and Clifford Berry, a graduate student, designed the first all-electronic computer using Boolean algebra. Although Atanasoff’s machine used such advanced technology as vacuum tubes, it was still more like an electronic calculator than a computer. The Colossus, a computer designed by Englishman Alan Turing in 1943 exclusively for breaking German code messages during World War II was a second machine claiming the title of the first computer. The third “first computer” was also originally created for military purposes: the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), built by J. P. Eckert and J. V. Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania, was used for calculating trajectory tables of newly developed weapons. However, the ENIAC was not completed until 1945. Shortly after the war it was used in developing the hydrogen bomb and later for weather prediction, etc. The ENIAC weighed some 80 tons and used about 1,800 square feet of floor space.

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