1、 毕业设计 (论文 )外文资料翻译 系 别 计算机信息与技术系 专 业 计算机科学与技术 班 级 姓 名 学 号 外文出处 附 件 1. 原文； 2. 译文 2012 年 3 月 1 History of computing Main article: History of computing hardware The first use of the word computer was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word cont
2、inued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations. Limited-function early computers The Jacquard loom, on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Man
3、chester, England, was one of the first programmable devices. The history of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies, automated calculation and programmability, but no single device can be identified as the earliest computer, partly because of the inconsistent application of that te
4、rm. A few devices are worth mentioning though, like some mechanical aids to computing, which were very successful and survived for centuries until the advent of the electronic calculator, like the Sumerian abacus, designed around 2500 BC of which a descendant won a speed competition against a modern
5、 desk calculating machine in Japan in 1946, the slide rules, invented in the 1620s, which were carried on five Apollo space missions, including to the moon and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient astronomical computer built by the Greeks around 80 BC. The Greek mathemati
6、cian Hero of Alexandria (c. 1070 AD) built a mechanical theater which performed a play lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes and drums that might be considered to be a means of deciding which parts of the mechanism performed which actions and when. This is the essence of p
7、rogrammability. Around the end of the 10th century, the French monk Gerbert dAurillac brought back from Spain the drawings of a machine invented by the Moors that answered either Yes or No to the questions it was asked. Again in the 13th century, the monks Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon built talki
8、ng androids without any further development. In 1642, the Renaissance saw the invention of the mechanical calculator, a device that could perform all four arithmetic operations without relying on human intelligence. The mechanical calculator was at the root of the development of 2 computers in two s
9、eparate ways. Initially, it was in trying to develop more powerful and more flexible calculators that the computer was first theorized by Charles Babbage and then developed. Secondly, development of a low-cost electronic calculator, successor to the mechanical calculator, resulted in the development
10、 by Intel of the first commercially available microprocessor integrated circuit. First general-purpose computers In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile loom by introducing a series of punched paper cards as a template which allowed his loom to weave intricate patterns auto
11、matically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an important step in the development of computers because the use of punched cards to define woven patterns can be viewed as an early, albeit limited, form of programmability. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully progra
12、mmable mechanical computer, his analytical engine. Limited finances and Babbages inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the device was never completed ； nevertheless his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engines computing unit (the mill) in 1888.
13、He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. This machine was given to the Science museum in South Kensington in 1910. In the late 1880s, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine-readable medium. Earlier uses of machine-readable media had been for co
14、ntrol, not data. After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards . To process these punched cards he invented the tabulator, and the keypunch machines. These three inventions were the foundation of the modern information processing industry. Large-scale automated data processi
15、ng of punched cards was performed for the 1890 United States Census by Holleriths company, which later became the core of IBM. By the end of the 19th century a number of ideas and technologies, that would later prove useful in the realization of practical computers, had begun to appear: Boolean alge
16、bra, the vacuum tube (thermionic valve), punched cards and tape, and the teleprinter. During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital
