高中英语新课标人教版(广东)高一(2)unit3 reading

（单词翻译）

Unit 3

WHO AM I?

Over time I have been changed quite a lot. I began as a calculating machine in France in 1642. Although I was young I could simplify difficult sums. I developed very slowly and it took nearly two hundred years before I was built as an analytical¹ machine by Charles Babbage. After I was programmed by an operator who used cards with holes, I could “think” logically and produce an answer quicker than any person. At that time it was considered a technological² revolution and the start of my “artificial intelligence”. In 1936 my real father, Alan Turing, wrote a book about how I could be made to work as a “universal machine” to solve any difficult mathematical problem. From then on, I grew rapidly both in size and in brainpower. By the 1949s I had grown as large as a room, and I wondered if I would grow any larger. However, this reality also worried my designers. As time went by, as was make smaller. First as a PC(personal computer) and then as a laptop, I have been used in offices and homes since the 1970s.

These changes only became possible as my memory improved. First it was stored in tubes, then on transistors³ and later on very small chips. As a result I totally changed my shape. As I have grown older I have also grown smaller. Over time my memory has developed so much that, like an elephant, I never forget anything I have been told! And my memory became so large that even I couldn’t believe it! But I was always so lonely standing⁴ there by myself, until in early 1960s they gave me a family connected by a network. I was able to share my knowledge with others through the World Wide Web.

Since the 1970s many new applications have been found for my. I have become very important in communication, finance⁵ and trade. I have also been put into robots and used to make mobile phones as well as help with medical operations. I have even been put into space rockets and sent to explore the Moon and Mars⁶. Anyhow, my goal is to provide humans with a life of high quality. I am now truly filled with happiness that I am a devoted⁷ friend and helper of the human race!