Reading and Oral Practice
The World of Computers (Part Two)Computers are part of the age of electronics that has also been responsible for such familiar consumer products as transistor radios. In computers, information is reduced to a simple code; in effect, it is a code which depends on „yes“ and „no.“ Inside the machine there are thousands of tiny switches which turn off for „no“ and on for „yes.“ Altogether, a computer system consists of five different sections, or units.
1. What are computers part of?
2. What happens in computers?
3. What is there inside the machine?
4. How many sections does a computer system consist of?
The storage section, as its name indicates, stores the information that the computer will need. It may consist of payroll data, charges against a credit account, deposits and withdrawals in a bank, or thousands of other kinds of information. Much of this material is stored on cards with holes punched in them, or on magnetic tape, or on other devices which are not part of the machine itself. The data are fed to the input unit of the computer, which „reads“ the information. A keyboard like the keyboard of a typewriter may be used to feed the data. On other computers, light from a TV camera may be turned into the computer code. On still others, the material on tape may already be reduced to the code.
5. What does the storage section do?
6. What may the information consist of?
7. How is much of this information stored?
8. Where are the data „read“?
9. What are some of the devices which can feed data to the
computer?
The control unit of the computer contains instructions for the processes which that particular machine can carry out. The control programs are usually set in advance by the manufacturer of the machine. The processing unit manipulates the information and instructions that have been given to the computer. What the computer is asked to do may be a simple matter of repeating the information on request, or it may be comparing, adding, subtracting, sorting, or differentiating the data which have been fed to it. Some of the processing can be extremely complex, as in the computers that control space flights or Industrial processes.
10. What does the control unit contain?
11. Who sets the control programs?
12. What does the processing unit do?
13. What are some of the things the computer may be asked to do?
14. What are examples of more complex processing?
The output, like the input, may be recorded on a number of different devices. It can be on punched cards or magnetic tape, fur example. It can also be connected to a keyboard that will automatically translate the code back into letters and numbers. It can appear on a tube like the tube in a TV set. Or it can be translated into, sound, like the recording to announce that a telephone number has been changed.
15. How is the output like the input?
16. What are two examples of output devices?
17. To what else can it be connected?
18. Where can it appear?
19. How else can it be translated?
It should be emphasized that a computer is really a system in which the computer proper the control and processing units is only one pan. The storage, input, and output devices are all necessary for providing and recording information. Sometimes the input and output devices can be located at a distance from the computer. In that case, terminals, which are connected to the machine by telephone wires, provide the input and receive the output.
20. What is the computer proper?
21. What else is necessary for the system?