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In the beginningThe survival of any society depends on its ability to provide food, clothing and shelter for its people. Since these societies are also faced with scarcity decisions concerning What, How and for Whom to produce must be made. All societies have something else in common. They have an economic system or an organized way of providing for the wants and needs of their people. The way in which these decisions are made will determine the type of economic system they have. There are three major kinds of economic systems: traditional, command and market. Traditional Economy In a society with a traditional economy nearly all economic activity is the result of ritual and custom. Habit and custom also prescribe most social behaviour. Individuals are not free to make decisions based on what they want or would like to have. Instead, their roles are defined. They know what goods and services will be produced, how to produce them, and how such goods and services will be distributed. An example of traditional economy is the society of polar eskimo of the last century. For generations, parents taught their children how to survive in a harsh climate, make tools, fish and hunt their children, in turn, taught these skills to the next generation. The main advantage of the traditional economy is that everyone has a role in it. This helps kеер economic life stable and community life continuous. The main disadvantage of the traditional economy is that it tends to discourage new ideas and even punishes people for breaking rules or doing things differently. So it tends to be stagnant or fails to grow over time. I. Find equivalents:
II. Match the synonyms: decision, approximately, produce, shelter, to make, type, habitation, as, the community, major, concerning, to producer the society, main, nearly, about, kind, keep, product, solution. III. Match the antonyms: scarcity, last, advanced, to produce, to discourage, next, stagnant, stable, to encourage, to distribute, disadvantage, to accumulate, Uncommon, advantage, to consume, unstable, common, abundance. IV. Answer the following questions: 1. What does the survival of any society depend on? 2. What are all societies faced with? 3. What have all societies in common? 4. What determines the type of economic system? 5. What are the major kinds of economic systems? 6. What prescribes most social behaviour? 7. What is the role of individuals in a traditional economy? 8.What did polar eskimo teach their children? 9. What is the main advantage/disadvantage of the traditional economy? Command economy Other societies have a command economy — one where a central authority makes most of the What, How and for Whom decisions. Economic decisions are made at the top and people are expected to go along with choices made by their leaders. It means that major economic choices are made by the government. It decides goals for the economy and determines needs and production quotas for major industries. If the planning body wants to stress growth of heavy manufacturing, it can shift resources from consumer goods to that sector. Or, if it wants to strengthen national defence, it can direct resources from consumer goods or heavy manufacturing to the production of military equipment and supplies. The major advantage of a command system is that it can change direction drastically in a relatively short time. The major disadvantage of the command system is that it does not always meet the wants and needs of individuals. The second disadvantage of the command economy is the lick of incentives that encourage people to work hard. In most command economies today workers with different degrees of responsibility receive similar wages. In addition, people seldom lose their jobs regardless of the quality of their work. As a result, there is a tendency for some to work just hard enough to fill production quotas set by planners. The command economy requires a large decision-making bureaucracy. Many clerks, planners, and others are needed to operate the system. As a result, most decisions cannot be made until a number of people are consulted, or a large amount of paperwork is processed. This causes production costs to increase and decision-making to slow down. Thus, a command system does not have the flexibility to deal with day-to-day problems. I. Give the English equivalents for: командна економіка; економічний вибір; планові органи; зміцнювати національну оборону; центральні керівні органи; визначати потреби; основні галузі промисловості; переміщати ресурси; важка промисловість; споживчі товари; військове устаткування; у відносно короткий проміжок часу; рішуче змінювати напрям; задовольняли бажання та потреби людей; заохочувати людей наполегливо працювати; брак стимулів; витрати виробництва; незважаючи на; якість роботи; великий бюрократичний апарат, що приймає рішення; займатися щоденними проблемам; керувати системою; різний рівень відповідальності. II. Answer the following questions: 1. Who makes most of What, How and for Whom decisions in a command economy? 2. Who determines needs and production quotas for major industries? 3. What is the major advantage of a command system? 4. What disadvantages does me command economу have? 5. What does the command economy require? 6. The command system doesn't have the flexibility to deal with day-to-day problems, does it? Market economy In a market economy, the questions of What, How and for Whom to produce are made by individuals and firms acting in their own best interests. In economic term a market is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to come together to conduct transactions. Since consumers like products with low prices and high quality, producers in a market economy will try to supply such products: Those who make the best products for me lowest prices will make profits and stay in business. Other producers will either go out of business or switch to different products consumer can buy. A market economy has several major advantages that traditional and command economies do not have. First, a market economy is flexible and can adjust to change over time. When gas prices in the United States began to level off in 1985 and then decline in 1986, the trend slowly began to reverse. The second major advantage of the market economy is the freedom that exists for everyone involved. Producers are free to make whatever they think will sell. They are also free to produce their products in the most efficient manner. Consumers on the other hand are free to spend their money or buy whatever goods and services they wish to have. The third advantage of the market economy is the lack of significant government intervention. Except for national defence, the government tries to stay out of the way. As long as there is competition among producers, the market economy generally takes care of itself. The final advantage of the market economy is the incredible variety of goods and services available to consumers. In fact, almost any product can and will be produced so long as there is a buyer for it. I. Find equivalents:
II. Match the synonyms: a buyer, to desire, to make profits, to take care (of), to supply, to conduct transactions, interest, considerable, a purchaser, to allow, benefit, to get profits, variety, to manufacture, to arrange a deal, to provide (with), significant, to look after, tendency, lack, intervention, to permit, diversity, to produce, interference, trend, to wish, absence. III. Match the antonyms: to sell, advantage, high prices, to spend money, to decline, flexible, to go out of business, to save money, disadvantage, low prices, worst, to buy, credible, variety, best, uniformity, inflexible, to stay out of the way, incredible, available, to meddle with other people's business, unavailable, to stay in business, level off. IV. Match each term in Column A with its definition in Column B:
V. Define which of the following items best completes the statement:
VI. Answer the following questions: 1. Who asks the questions of What, How and for Whom to produce hi a market economy? 2. What is a market in economic term? 3. Who will stay in business in a market economy? 4. What advantages does market economy have? Explain it in details. 5. What does the final advantage of me market economy consist in? VII. Summarize the three types of Economic Systems. Use the table given below:
In the beginning ... The First Generation: 1946-1958 (The Vacuum Tube Years) The vacuum tube was an extremely important step in the advancement of computers. Vacuum tubes were invented the same time the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison and worked very similar to light bulbs. It's purpose was to act like an amplifier and a switch. Without any moving parts, vacuum tubes could take very weak signals and make the signal stronger (amplify it). Vacuum tubes could also stop and start the flow of electricity instantly (switch). These two properties made the ENIAC computer possible. The ENIAC gave off so much heat that they had to be cooled by gigantic air conditioners. However even with these huge coolers, vacuum tubes still overheated regularly. It was time for something new.
There were obvious differences between the transisitor and the vacuum tube. The transistor was faster, more reliable, smaller, and much cheaper to build than a vacuum tube. One transistor replaced the equivalent of 40 vacuum tubes. These transistors were made of solid material, some of which is silicon, an abundant element (second only to oxygen) found in beach sand and glass. Therefore they were very cheap to produce. Transistors were found to conduct electricity faster and better than vacuum tubes. They were also much smaller and gave off virtually no heat compared to vacuum tubes. Their use marked a new beginning for the computer. Without this invention, space travel in the 1960's would not have been possible. However, a new invention would even further advance our ability to use computers. Since the invention of integrated circuits, the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip has doubled every two years, shrinking both the size and cost of computers even further and further enhancing its power. Most electronic devices today use some form of integrated circuits placed on printed circuit boards-- thin pieces of bakelite or fiberglass that have electrical connections etched onto them -- sometimes called a mother board.
However what really triggered the tremendous growth of computers and its significant impact on our lives is the invention of the microprocessor. Ted Hoff, employed by Intel (Robert Noyce's new company) invented a chip the size of a pencil eraser that could do all the computing and logic work of a computer. The microprocessor was made to be used in calculators, not computers. It led, however, to the invention of personal computers, or microcomputers. It wasn't until the 1970's that people began buying computer for personal use. One of the Today we have all heard of Intel and its Pentium® Processors and now we know how it all got started. The computers of the next generation will have millions upon millions of transistors on one chip and will perform over a billion calculations in a single second. There is no end in sight for the computer movement.
Questions Directions: Answer each of the questions after reading the article above. Write in complete sentences. You must think and be creative with your answers.
http://www.brainpop.com/english/ Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1360
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two Americans, Presper Eckert, and John Mauchly built the ENIAC electronic computer which used vacuum tubes instead of the mechanical switches of the Mark I. The ENIAC used thousands of vacuum tubes, which took up a lot of space and gave off a great deal of heat just like light bulbs do. The ENIAC led to other vacuum tube type computers like the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) and the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer).
William Shockley, and Walter Brattain working at AT&T's Bell Labs invented what would replace the vacuum tube forever. This invention was the transistor which functions like a vacuum tube in that it can be used to relay and switch electronic signals.
Transistors were a tremendous breakthrough in advancing the computer. However no one could predict that thousands even now millions of transistors (circuits) could be compacted in such a small space. The integrated circuit, or as it is sometimes referred to as semiconductor chip, packs a huge number of transistors onto a single wafer of silicon. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Corporation and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently discovered the amazing attributes of integrated circuits. Placing such large numbers of transistors on a single chip vastly increased the power of a single computer and lowered its cost considerably.
(millions of transistors put onto one integrated circuit chip) and the invention of the microprocessor (a single chip that could do all the processing of a full-scale computer). By putting millions of transistors onto one single chip more calculation and faster speeds could be reached by computers. Because electricity travels about a foot in a billionth of a second, the smaller the distance the greater the speed of computers.
earliest personal computers was the Altair 8800 computer kit. In 1975 you could purchase this kit and put it together to make your own personal computer. In 1977 the Apple 
II was sold to the public and in 1981 IBM entered the PC (personal computer) market.