1998 年广东省普通高等学校本科插班生考试 英 语 试 题 Part I Reading Comprehension(40%) Passage I The computer is a wonderful machine
It is the most important invention since the type of engine used in cars
Today it has the greatest effect on science,industry,and business,but it is being used more in education and medicine
By the end of this century it will touch the lives of everyone,even people in distant villages
It is a revolutionary invention
The oldest kind of computer is the abacus used in China since the sixth century
In the seventeenth century an adding machine was invented,but the furst large,modern computer was built in 1937
A few years later a computer could do 5000 additions per second
Now the computations are so fast that they are measured in nanoseconds(毫微秒)
Today most computers have a memory