The era of computers.

10.3.1. Thehistory of the computer is longer than most people think. An early mechanical computer called the Difference Engine was designed by British mathematician and scientist Charles Babbage in the 1830s. Babbage also made plans for another machine, the Analytical Engine, considered the mechanical precursor of the modern computer. Augusta Ada Byron, the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and one of only a few woman mathematicians of her time, was a personal friend and student of Babbage. She prepared extensive notes concerning Babbage’s ideas and the Analytical Engine. Her conceptual programs for the machine led to the naming of a programming language (Ada) in her honor.

10.3.2. One hundred years later, British mathematician Alan Turing proposed the idea of a machine that could process equations without human direction. The machine (now known as a Turing machine) resembled an automatic typewriter that used symbols for math and logic instead of letters. Turing’s machine was the theoretical precursor to the modern digital computer.

However, the first personal computer appeared only in 1975. Graphical user interfaces were first designed by the Xerox Corporation, and later used successfully by Apple Computer, Inc. Today the development of sophisticated operating systems such as Windows enables computer users to run programs and manipulate data in ways that were unimaginable in the mid-20th century.

10.3.3. Computers will become more advanced and they will also become easier to use. Improved speech recognition will make the operation of a computer easier. Virtual reality, the technology of interacting with a computer using all of the human senses, will also contribute to better human and computer interfaces. Standards for virtual-reality program languages—for example, Virtual Reality Modeling language (VRML)—are currently in use or are being developed for the World Wide Web.

The WWW was developed by British physicist and computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee as a project within the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. All necessary information is available on the Web, including anything you will need for your seminars in British and /or American Studies.

10.3.4. In case you don’t know it yet, there is Professional Foreign Language Training Chair site in the Internet (www.kafedrapip.net). It was designed by Nikolai Makarenko and is currently being administered by him. The site was created with a methodological idea in mind, which consists in creating a highly structured focal point for the educational effort paid by the stuff members and students alike. One of the resources available there is the list of useful links to other educational sites, all of which contain gigabytes upon gigabytes of information. You are very welcome to visit the site and become a regular contributor to on-line professional communication network.

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