PRÁCTICA 1a: Reading Comprehension

http:// www.eingang.org/Lecture

Follow this link, and read the lecture. Read it through and find:

1. the device used in China as a calculating machine, 4000 years ago
The Abacus, the most common of which comes from China, was man's first attempt at automating the counting process. The abacus is not really an automatic machine; it is more a machine which allows the user to remember his current state of calculation while performing more complex mathematical operations than could be performed on hands and feet alone.

2. the first mechanical calculator
Pacal's Gear System; A one-tooth gear engages its single tooth with a ten-teeth gear once every time it resolves; the result will be that it must make ten revolutions in order to rotate the ten-teeth gear once. This is the way that an odometer works for counting kilometers: The one-tooth gear ir large enough so that it only engages the next size gear after 1 km has passed.

3. the scientist considered the "father of computing"
Blaise Pascal.

4. the machine used by H. Hollerith in 1890 to read the US census
Hollerith & Tabulating Machine; This machine was so successful that hollerith started a firm to market it which later became known as IBM.

5. the computer developed by Konrad Zuse in 1941
The computer known as Z3; It was controlled by perforated strips of discarded movie film.

6. the digital computer built by engineers at IBM and H. Aiken in 1950
The Harvard Mark-I; It remained in use at Harvard until 1959, even though other machines had surpassed it in performance, providing vital calculations for the navy in World War II.

7. the device designed by Alan Turing to perform logical operations
The Turing device, a hypothetical machine.

8. the giant machine which had more than 2,000 vacuum tubes
The ENIAC, the giant machine developed by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania.

9. the company that designed the first microprocessor in 1971
Intel; the microprocessor was a specialized integrated circuit which was able to process four bits of data at a time.

10. the creators of Microsoft
Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 approached Ed Roberts of MITS, the company who developed the Altair, and promised to deliver a BASIC compiler. The did so, and from the sale, Microsoft was born.

11. the first computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse
The first generation of Macintosh,

12. the main uses of the Web and where it was developed
The Web can used for looking up informatio on publications, shopping for books, computer or CDs, investigating staff or research at universities, downloading pictures, games or other files...