He had never been to school or University but he studied privately and by the time he was twenty he became a skillful chemist and excellent linguist, speaking Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. Like his father, Alfred Nobel was imaginative and inventive, but he had better luck in business and showed more financial sense.
He was quick to see industrial openings for his scientific inventions and built up over 80 companies in 20 different countries. Indeed greatness lay in his outstanding ability those of a forward-looking industrialist.
But Nobel?s main concern was never with making money or even making scientific discoveries. He was always searching for a meaning to life, and from his youth he had taken a serious interest in literature and philosophy. Perhaps, because he could not find ordinary human love- he never married- he came to care deeply about the whole of mankind. He was always generous to the poor. His greatest wish, however, was to see an and to wars and he spent much time and money working for this cause until his death in Italy in 1896.
His famous will, in which he left to provide prizes for outstanding works in physics, chemistry, psychology, medicine, literature and peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. And so, the man who felt he should have died at birth is remembered and respected long after his death.
Wordlist
bankrupt- банкрот
cheerful- весёлый, радостный
explosive- взрывчатое вещество
weapon- оружие
peacetime- мирное время
landmine- мина
imaginative- образный
to show- показывать
quick- быстрый, быстро
to provide- обеспечивать
to respect- уважать
Answer the questions
1. Who was Alfred Bernhard Nobel?
2. When was Alfred Bernhard Nobel born?
3. What was discovered by him?
Text 11
The History of Computer Development
The rapidly advancing field of electronics led to construction of the first general-purpose electronic computer in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. It was Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer or ENIAC, the device contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and had a speed of several hundred multiplications per minute. Its program was wired into the processor and had to be manually altered.
Later transistors appeared. The use of the transistor in computers began in the late 1950s. It marked the advent of smaller, faster elements than it was possible to create with the use of vacuum-tube machines. Because transistors use less power and have a much longer life, computers alone were improved a lot. They were called secondgeneration computers.