In 1944, Harvard University physicist Howard Aiken built the forerunner of today's computer.
Aiken's Mark I was the first working digital binary computer. It used thousands of electrical switches that clicked on and off to compute data. When it was running, the switches sounded like the clicking of knitting needles.
Howard Aiken grew up poor in Indianapolis, Ind. He had to work his way through school, but he made it through Harvard.
Aiken, like Charles Babbage, had a prickly personality. While his computer, the Mark I, was being built, he drove the workers like slaves.
For 16 years the Mark I was used to solve the complex equations needed to aim the
U.S. Navy's big guns. But it was much slower than later computers, which use electronic components instead of switches.
Vocabulary:
message – сообщение, послание
highway - магистраль
digital computer – цифровая вычислительная
машина
device- устройство
submarine – подводная лодка
engine - машина
to store - хранить,вмещать
digit number – однозначное число
to take apart – разбирать на части
eventually - со временем
mean - плохой
to yell - кричать
forerunner – предшественник
railroad - железная дорога
flashing light - сигнальный свет
lighthouse - маяк
fortune-teller - предсказатель
binary- двоичный
switch - переключатель
to click on (off) – включаться (выключаться) со щелчком
to compute - вычислять
data- данные
knitting needle - спица (вязальная)
prickly - колючий
to drive - перегружать работой
slave - раб
equation - уравнение
to aim - целить
gun– орудие