Computer Evolution

Unit 1

Text Study: Computer Evolution.

Additional Text: From the History of the Computers.

Grammar: The Present Continuous Tense.

Text Study

I. Pre-reading Exercises

1. Repeat the words in chorus:

An abacus, to arrange, a wheel, an engine, the forerunner, binary, bulky, unreliable, thousands, frequently, a core, to squeeze, due to, to etch, launched, fibre.

2. While reading the text you will come across a number of international words. Try to guess what Ukrainian words they remind of you:

Calculations, mechanical, programmer, au­tomatically, generation, silicon, integrated, plastic, metal, standard, graphical, optics, experts, molecules.

3. Pay attention to some grammatical points:

1) The abacus emerged in Asia. 2) It allowed people to make calculations using moving beads arranged on a rack. 3) Charles Babbage started to build his Analytical Engine. 4) Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer, called Z3, working on the binary system. 5) Second generation computers were able to reduce computational time from milliseconds to microseconds, or millionths of seconds. 6) Second-generation computers were smaller, faster and more reliable than first-generation computers. 7) Memories were made of magnetiza­ble cores. 8) The integrated circuits that are being developed have been greatly reduced in size.

II. Reading

Read the text and be ready to find in the text the answers to the following questions:

· What generations of a computer are given in the text?

· What are the characteristic features of the fifth generation?