计算机专业英语第三版 Unit 1

Passage One
universally adv. 普遍地
random adj. 随机的 access n. 存取,访问
大连理工大学出版社
Passage One The Introductwenku.baidu.comon of ENIAC
Key Words
electronic adj. 电子的，电子学的 numerical adj. 数字的,数值的 integrator n. 积分器 calculator n. 计数器 vacuum tube n. 电子管 multiplier n. 乘法器 divider n. 除法器 decimal n. 十进制的 punched card n. 穿孔卡片 counter n. 计数器
大连理工大学出版社 transistor n. 晶体管
Passage Two
auxiliary adj. 辅助的 magnetic adj. 磁的,磁性的
The Advancement of the Computer
RAM capacities increased from 8,000 to 64,000 words in commercially available machines by the 1960’s, with access times of 2 to 3 ms (milliseconds). These machines were very expensive to purchase or even to rent and were particularly expensive to operate because of the cost of expanding programming. Such computers were mostly found in large computer centers operated by industry, government, and private laboratories—staffed with many programmers and support personnel. Late in the 1960s the integrated circuit, or IC, was introduced, making it possible for many transistors to be included on one silicon chip. Therefore, the computers became even smaller and cheaper while their memory capacities became larger.
Unit One
History of the Computer
The Introduction of ENIAC
Passage One
Training target: In this part, our target is to train your reading comprehension. We have made the flexible sentences strong black and marked the subject, predicate and have object of them. Try to grasp the main idea of these sentences.
shortcoming n. 缺点 Hungarian adj. 匈牙利的
Passage One
大连理工大学出版社
The Introduction of ENIAC
Von Neumann contributed a new awareness of how practical, yet fast computers should be organized and built. These ideas, usually referred to as the stored-program technique, became essential for future generations of highspeed digital computers and were universally adopted. Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) designed by Von Neumann was built in 1952. This computer used 2,300 vacuum tubes, but its speed was 10 times faster than ENIAC which used 18,000 vacuum tubes. And the most important, Random Access Memory (RAM) was used.
electronic adj. 电子的, 电子学的 numerical adj. 数字的, 数值的 integrator n. 积分器 calculator n. 计数器
Passage One
大连理工大学出版社
The Introduction of ENIAC
The start of World War II produced a large need for computer capacity, especially for the military. New weapons were made for which trajectory tables and other essential data were needed. In 1946, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly, and their associates at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high-speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC. The size of ENIAC’s numerical “word” was 10 decimal digits, and it could multiply two of these numbers at a rate of 300 per second, by finding the value of each product from a multiplication table stored in its memory. ENIAC was therefore about 1,000 times faster then the previous generation of relay computers.
Passage One
trajectory table 弹道表
大连理工大学出版社
The Introduction of ENIAC
ENIAC used 18,000 vacuum tubes, about 1,800 square feet of floor space, weighed 30 tons and consumed about 180,000 watts of electrical power. It had punched card I/O, 1 multiplier, 1 divider/square rooter, and 20 adders using decimal ring counters, which served as adders and also as quick-access (0.0002 seconds) read-write register storage. The executable instructions making up a program were embodied in the separate ―units‖ of ENIAC, which were plugged together to form a ―route‖ for the flow of information. ENIAC was commonly accepted as the first successful high-speed electronic digital computer (EDC) and had been used from 1946 to 1955,
大连理工大学出版社 vacuum tube n. 电子管
Passage One
punched card n. 穿孔卡片 counter n. 计数器
The Introduction of ENIAC
but it had a number of shortcomings which were not solved, notably the inability to store a program. A number of improvements were also made to ENIAC from 1948, based on the ideas of the HungarianAmerican, mathematician John Von Neumann (Pic 1.2)who was called the father of computer.
大连理工大学出版社
The Advancement of the Computer
Passage Two
Training target: In this part our target is to train your reading speed. You should pay more attention to “keywords”. We have marked keywords in some paragraphs. You can quickly grasp the main idea of the sentences and paragraphs by these keywords, the rest can be practiced by yourself. It will raise your reading speed.
关键词 大连理工大学出版社
The Advancement of the Computer
The use of the transistor in computers in the late 1950s marked the coming of the secondgeneration computers. The most notable change was that transistors replaced vacuum tubes. This meant that the advent of smaller, faster, more reliable and less expensive computers than that were possible with vacuum-tube machines. In addition, the second-generation computers were given auxiliary storage, sometimes called external or secondary storage. Data were stored outside the computer on either magnetic tapes or magnetic disks. Using magnetic tapes or magnetic disks for input and output operations increased the speed of the computer.
主语、谓语、宾 语 大连理工大学出版社
The Introduction of ENIAC
Electronic computer was one of the greatest inventions in the 20th century. Once talking about computer, we have to think of the birth of ENIAC(Electric Numerical Integrator And Calculator)( Pic 1.1).