专英 Creation of the Computer

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2、 makes us human, sets us apart from the rest of nature. People communicate in intricate（复杂的） ways about complex subjects, and the center of it all, a thinking machine, the computer. With it, our thoughts can be recorded. What once seemed impossible, now seems common place. Today computers are capabl

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5、魄辉暇潞住向鲁婉逛畜使邯上啼卧蔬入括百峪镁赠烙陵毖潘番录挡跃辱氖浆哼线演畜览嚼拴缠史暗孟姜疹素戒形腔婚茁术山太朱妙惯澈连设尖廷侄 Creation of the ComputerTo think, to reason makes us human, sets us apart from the rest of nature. People communicate in intricate（复杂的） ways about complex subjects, and the center of it all, a thinking machine, the computer. With it, o

6、ur thoughts can be recorded. What once seemed impossible, now seems common place. Today computers are capable of amazing tasks that boggle（使惊奇） the mind. But the evolution（演变） of a thinking machine, a computer engaged（保证） some of the greatest minds of the last two centuries. The story of the compute

7、r contains squandered（浪费的） chances, fortunate accidents, frequent miss-steps, fantastic insights（洞察力）, and unprecedented（空前的） genius. It is a story of a machine that helps win a war, figures in the creation of weapons（武装） of inconceivable（难以置信的） destruction, and sends us into space. The birth of the

8、 computer spawned（孵化） the growth of whole industries. Lead to the worlds greatest personal fortunes, and will increasingly affect the lives of everyone on earth.HIGH SPEED SMALL PACKAGEOur world is increasingly filled with countless wonders that would not have been possible without one machine, the

9、computer. Although computers are enormously（巨大的） intricate（复杂的）, their most basic component consists of simple devices that can be switched to either one of two states. On or off. The computer creates its magic by calculating with a speed and accuracy（精确的） that far surpasses its human inventors. Com

10、puters staggers the mind with their complexity, but simply put, a computer takes information, processes it, and outputs a result. Its all done with a unique partnership of hardware and software. Hardware comes in boxes, theyre the physical component such as the monitor and hard drive. Software comes

11、 on disks, Software consists of instructions（指令） that tells the computer what to do. One way to start this computational partnership is to type on the keyboard, providing input. The input is picked up by the Central Processing Unit or CPU, the computers brain. Using instructions provided by the soft

12、ware, the CPU processed the input. The magic behind the CPU is its blinding speed. Modern processors（处理器） are measured in MIPS, Millions of Instructions per Second. While processing, the CPU may retrieve data（检索数据） stored in Random Access Memory, known as RAM. Or data stored on a hard drive. Modern

13、RAM is so quick that every second it can send the equivalent of ten thousand type written pages of information to the CPU. And modern hard drives can store the equivalent（等价） of two hundred and fifty thousand pages of type written material. After processing, the CPU outputs information, often on a m

14、onitor. The whole procedure is usually so quick that it appears instantaneous（即时的）. Today, computers are so common place that wed take them for granted. But not long ago, computers only exist in the imagination of a few visionaries. The search for machines that could figure quickly and accurately ha

15、s seized the human imagination for thousands of years. In fact, the computers family tree has roots so deep in the past, its impossible to know exactly where they begin. CALCULATING BY STEAM By the early 19th century, the European industrial revolution was well underway（起步的）. And the development in

16、production and commerce（贸易） came from the maturing fields of engineering, navigation（航海）, surveying（土地测量）, finance（财政学）, and science. The practical application of these fields relied on volume after volume of tables. Tables for trigonometry, tides, interest rates, multiplication, and gravity. Tables

17、 were critical. The actual figuring was done by people who specialized in mathematical computations. Surprisingly, the people had a familiar job title, they were called computers. These human computers toiled over their tables incessantly, monotonously, and made mistakes. Typically, tables were full

18、 of errors. The requirement for accurate tables introduced one of the most eccentrically（反常的） and brilliant figures into the story of computers, Charles Babbage. Babbage was an extraordinary(非凡的) scientist; I mean Babbage was a great scientist. Babbage was a hundred years ahead of his time. You cant

19、 say that about many people, but you could say that about Babbage. Charles Babbage represented that extraordinary element of British society, the scientist aristocrat. Many were known for their eccentricities（古怪） and Babbage was no exception. As a youth, Babbage devised footwear with hinged boards i

20、ntended to allow him to walk on water. Never one to shook adventure, he tried them out himself, but flipped over and nearly drowned. Babbage demonstrated his brilliance in mathematics while attending Trinity college in Cambridge. In 1820, Babbage was checking the accuracy of calculations made for th

21、e royal astronomical society and kept finding errors. He reasoned that a machine can be constructed that would calculate the tables and directly print the results. He called the machine, the difference engine. He drew up plans for a section of the device and had it built with his own funds in 1822.

22、Babbage couldnt pay for the construction of the entire device. But since the greatest beneficiary（受益者） would be the British government and the people, he made the extraordinary step of petitioning（请愿） the government for the grant. In 1823, the treasury（财政部） provided the project with start up funds.

23、Government support for the computer industry is nothing new, its very much a big topic in the news today. And it will continue to be. Computing is an expensive proposition（主题） and it usually requires some government support if its going to get anywhere. Babbage hired a mechanical（机械的） engineer set t

24、o work on a complete design for the difference engine and immediately ran into difficulties. The mechanical machine shops of the time were not advanced enough to produce parts in the precise（精确的） measurements that Babbages plans required. So Babbage designed better machine tools, which would eventua

25、lly improve the entire state of British tool manufacturing. By 1829, Babbage has spent the fifteen hundred pound grant from the government and even more than that from his own funds. But only a few bits and pieces of the machine had been completed. Babbages project began to attract critics. He was p

26、lagued by several problems, one of his problems being his perfectionism（至善论） and another problem being that his work was not understood or appreciated by the people of his time. Babbage had many enemies, even Londons organ grinders despised him because he had tried to have them banned as their music

27、 interfered with his thinking. But the inventor continued to toil, and finally, in 1832, there were enough parts to assemble a section of the engine. It functioned perfectly. Solving equations and producing six digit results. But it was only a small part of the proposed machine. The skyrocketing cos

28、t and lack of results finally made the government pull its support from the project. Although disappointed by the cancellation, Babbage had contributed to the projects demise by suggesting that a new device he had conceived, the analytical engine would be vastly superior to his old design. Babbage,

29、in hindsight, probably should have finished the difference engine and seen how far he couldve gone with that before starting the analytical engine. Theres no question that analytical engine was more than he could handle. Babbage was obsessed with his new idea. With the analytical engine, Babbage ask

30、ed himself, why not build a machine that could solve any mathematical problem. At the age of 43, Babbage had the vision of a computer. A vision he pursued for the rest of his life. The extraordinary fact is that Babbages overall design for the analytical engine had many components analogous to those

31、 in a modern computer. The heart of the machine, the mill made the calculations, like the CPU of modern computers. An oblong structure, the store, held numbers to be used in the calculations. Like modern computer memory. Instructions and numbers could be feed into the machine using punch cards. Much

32、 of what we know about the workings of the analytical engine came from the writings of Ada, countess of Lovelace. Among the people who understood what Babbage was doing, was a women named Ada Augusta, who was the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet. She had studied mathematics as a child and had quite

33、a bit of talent. Ada met Babbage at one of his famous dinner parties that were often attended by luminaries of British science and engineering. Babbage demonstrated the working section of the difference engine for her and she was immediately captivated by it. She published a simple description of Ba

34、bbages vision for the analytical engine. Ada, wrote some descriptions of it and she also appended to these descriptions, a hypothetical way that this machine could solve an equation. And on the basis of those descriptions, people often called her the worlds first programmer. But she was never to pro

35、gram a real machine. As Babbage entered the last years of his life, his great work was unfinished. He had become cranky and suffered constant attacks by his many enemies. In 1871, when Londons organ grinders discovered that Babbage was ill, they surrounded his house and serenaded him, increasing his

36、 agony until he died. Only a small portion of the analytical engine was built in Babbages lifetime. Babbages vision of the computer fell into obscurity, and except for the detailed text by Ada, could well have been forgotten. Babbages machines which were never finished, which existed for the most pa

37、rt, on paper, were proto-computers. They were mechanical, they used gears, they used metal shafts, they werent computers in our sense of the term, that is they werent electronic digital computers, but they were abstractly and on paper, mechanical computers. It would be nearly one hundred years befor

38、e a programmable computation devise would again be conceived. SAVING THE CENSUS In the late eighteen hundreds the idea of a programmable computer was a distant dream. But the American dream was becoming a reality. America was on its way to becoming the worlds greatest industrial power, and opened it

39、s arms to immigrants from other lands. In the second half of 19the century, Americas population increased 35 percent each decade. Americas exploding population began to endanger one of its great institutions, the American census. The census, which is required by the constitution to be held every ten

40、 years, was still being done by old-fashion people making check marks on pieces of paper, and it simply couldnt keep up with the tremendous surge of population in the US. The crisis reached a head in 1887. The census bureau was still hand tallying the data from the 1880s census. Desperate for relief

41、, the bureau pleaded for any method that could speed up the counting of the 1890s census. The superintendent of the census had proposals for three systems. So he decided to stage a contest. Two the systems relied on hand counting. The third, developed by a young, rather humorless former MIT instruct

42、or name Herman Hollerith used punched cards. Punch cards would one day become the standard method of feeding high volumes of data into computers. Now where he got this idea, we are not sure. He may have been inspired by the fact that a conductor on a railroad, who punches your ticket when you hand i

43、t to him. Holleriths system beat the others easily. In the tabulation portions of the test, it was nearly ten times faster. The census bureau leased fifty-six of Holleriths machines at one thousand dollars a year each, and put them to work in July, 1890. Census bureau clerks use Holleriths machine t

44、o punch the cards and then to tabulate the results. Scores of operators were trained to used the puncher quickly and accurately. The tabulating was done with electricity. A metal pin that pin that passed through a card hole, made electrical contact with a cup of mercury, completing a circuit that wa

45、s registered on a tallying devise that consists of rows of clock like dials. Holleriths machine were a step towards the later development of computers. They significantly sped up the processing of information. The results of the 1890s census count were a triumph for Hollerith. In just six weeks, the

46、 population count of, six-two million, six hundred twenty-two thousand, two hundred fifty, was tallied. Hollerith became the talk of the scientific community. He rented an office and set himself up in business. He called his new enterprise, the Tabulating Machine Company. Hollerith had the census bu

47、reau business in his pocket and the future looked bright, but it turned out to be harder than it seemed. Holleriths natural aptitude for mechanical devices was obvious but he also proved himself to be a dogged business man. He drummed up business among one of the biggest industries of the day, the r

48、ailroads. With the increase in population and the push west, the railroads had grown into enormous organizations, with personnel, stations, cars and customers scattered all across the country. Hundreds of clerks produced tons of paper to help track and manage these vast empires. Hollerith convinced

49、the New York central railroad to try out some of his machines. The experiment wasnt a success. Holleriths machines could compute fast enough for census work, but couldnt keep up with the speed and volume of the railroad business. After three months, the machines were removed. Hollerith was short on

50、capital and faced ruined. He moved his family into his mother-in-laws house. He sold his assets, even his horse to raise money to redesign his machines, to improve their speed, reliability, and ability to make additions. Hollerith even customize the punch cards to business computations, such as addi

51、ng columns to store dollars and cents. After a solid year of tedious work, Hollerith returned to the New York Central and offered them free use of his new, improved, and faster computing machines for a year. Within three months, the railroads, the railroads were convinced, and contracted to lease th

52、e machines. The Tabulating Machine Company was back on track. Hollerith has avoided bankruptcy and now had more work than he could handle. And Hollerith, you could say, came along just in time. It was a combination of his invention making this available, but also the need out there required somethin

53、g like that, so it was a convergence of the social needs, or the social factors on the one hand and the invenitive pushing from the other hand. But Hollerith was weary, he was diagnosed with a bad heart and ordered to slow down. In 1911, Hollerith sold his shares in the Tabulating Machine Company fo

54、r over one million dollars. Holleriths former company was merged with three other and lead by master salesman Thomas Watson, grew into a major supplier of business equipment. In 1924, Watson renamed the enterprise, International Business Machines, IBM. Because of Hollerith, the name, IBM, would beco

55、me synonymous with computers. By the 1930s, as America limped out of the Great Depression, companies like Burrows and IBM, foresaw continued growth and success. Over the next decade, progress would be slow, it would take the destructive forces of World War II to give the computer its next great adva

56、nce. A COLOSSUS TO SOLVE AN ENIGMA World War II spurred the development of the true computer. And in the turbulent days before the German blitzkrieg smashed Poland, a young Polish engineer, walked into the British embassy in Warsaw and made an astounding proposition. He offered to sell the British,

57、the secret to the unbreakable German code machine, the Enigma. The British desperately wanted to crack the Enigma machine used by German commanders to encrypt to most secret radio messages. Radio is a wonderful piece of technology, but the very beauty of radio, the fact that you broadcast messages o

58、ut makes it very bad for military traffic because the enemies can read your messages as well as the person you intended to read. So you encrypt the message. British intelligence supplied the engineer with a fake diplomatic passport and smuggled him out of Warsaw. While guarded by French agents in Pa

59、ris, the engineer provided details on the code machines ingenious operation. In the Enigma, plugs were re-arranged to conform to that days code book combination. The power of Enigma was that his plug arrangement constantly varied how letters were coded though out a transmission. The number of letter variations was astronomical, so high that the Germans considered the machine to be unbreakable. But the British now knew how the machine worked. They realized that they could very quickly try different key combinations on a small p