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By John Graham-Cumming

THE GREATEST MACHINE THAT NEVER WAS

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5 Discuss:

a) What do you know about the hacking in your country?

b) What do you think is the best way of tracking hackers down? And how do you think they should be punished?

Computer programmer John Graham-Cumming keeps geek history alive by raising awareness for it's heroes and their inventions. John Graham-Cumming received his Ph.D. in computer security from Oxford University. A peripatetic programmer, he has worked in Silicon Valley, New York, the UK, Germany and France. In 2004, his open source POPFile program won a Jolt Productivity Award.

For additional information about the presenter go to

http://www.ted.com/speakers/john_graham_cumming.html

Computer science began in the '30s ... the 1830s. John Graham-Cumming tells the story of Charles Babbage's mechanical, steam-powered "analytical engine" and how Ada Lovelace, mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron.

Translate into Russian:

Mathematician, analytical engine, decimal, binary, cog, stack, steam, enormous, monstrosity, circle, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, compute, regularity, complicated, reappear, punch card, feed (fed) in, pattern, revolutionize, proven technology, tiny, amazing, underlie, compose, foundation, Jacquard loom, weave, dynamo, plotter.

Watch the video “The greatest machine that never was”

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_graham_cumming_the_greatest_machine_that_never_was.html

While watching:

Fill in the gaps:

a) Babbage himself was born at the end of the 18th century, and was a fairly famous ______. He held the post that ______ held at Cambridge, and that was recently held by ______ ______. He's less well known than either of them because he got this idea to make mechanical ______ ______ and never made any of them.

b) The thing he designed was this monstrosity here, the ______ ______. Now, just to give you an idea of this, this is a view from above. Every one of these circles is a ______ , a ______ of cogs, and this thing is as big as a ______ locomotive.

c) The memory is very like the memory of a computer today, except it was all made out of metal, stacks and stacks of cogs, ______ cogs high. Imagine a thing this high of cogs, hundreds and hundreds of them, and they've got numbers on them. It's a ______ machine.

d) This monstrosity over here is the ______ , the ______, if you like. Of course, it's this big.

e) The CPU could do the four fundamental functions of arithmetic -- so ______, ______, ______, ______ -- which already is a bit of a feat in metal…

f) All this cog ______ ______here is doing is what a computer does, but of course you need to program this thing, and of course, Babbage used the technology of the day and the technology that would reappear in the '50s, '60s and '70s, which is ______ ______.

g) Now, the reason they used punch cards was that ______, in France, had created the ______ ______, which was ______ these incredible patterns controlled by punch cards…

h) Ironically, born the same year as Charles Babbage was ______ ______, who would completely revolutionize everything with the ______, transformers, all these sorts of things. Babbage, of course, wanted to use proven technology, so steam and things.

i) Now, a hundred years later, this guy comes along, Alan Turing, and in ______, and invents the computer all over again. Now, of course, Babbage's machine was entirely mechanical. Turing's machine was entirely ______.

j) We could go back to Babbage's machine and just make it tiny. All those things are computers. There is in a sense a computing essence. This is called the ______ ______.

k) It used punch cards, which were being fed in, and it ran about ______ times slower the first ZX81. It did have a RAM pack. You could add on a lot of extra memory if you wanted to.

After watching:

1 Match the words in A with the words in B:

2 Answer the questions:

a) When was the first computer designed? Who invented it?

b) How many computing devices did he build?

c) What was the architecture of his analytical engine?

d) What was the memory like? How much did it have?

e) What functions of arithmetic could its CPU do?

f) How is this machine similar to CPUs today?

g) What is a punch card?

h) Who revolutionized his era with the dynamo and transformers and when?

i) What was the printing machine of Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2 like?

j) Who is considered to be the first programmer by some people? Why?

k) What idea did Ada Lovelace give to Babbage?

l) When did Alan Turing invent the computer again? Was it mechanical, electronic or theoretical?

m) What is a Church-Turing thesis?

n) Where is Babbage’s analytical engine held now?

3 Decide if the statements are true or false:

a) Charles Babbage built his mechanical computing machine in 1930s.

b) Babbage was a famous engineer.

c) His analytical engine was as big as a steam locomotive.

d) Babbage’s machine is very similar to modern silicon chips.

e) Jacquard loom was weaving incredible patterns controlled by wheels and steam.

f) Babbage wanted to use only proven technology like steam.

g) Babbage’s machine had got punch cards, CPU and memory.

h) Ada Lovelace was taught math not to become mad.

i) Alan Turing invented a music-box in 1936.

j) Babbage’s machine was about 10000 slower than the first ZX81.