[Purpose |
Objectives |
Before you begin |
Background |
Procedure |
Questions ]
Purpose: To get you started using online resources for this course
Objectives: After this lab you should be able to
- Email your instructor.
- Tell if you need assistance in using on the textbook website.
- Use the web to research questions regarding the past, present, and future of computing.
Before you begin:
- Before beginning this lab you should obtain your instructor's (or teaching assistant's) email address.
Background:
This assignment is intended to introduce you to the World Wide Web and to make sure you know about some sites with useful computer and computer science information. These sites can serve as useful resources throughout this course as well as in other studies.
Here are a few examples of websites that may prove useful along.
- Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is available in many languages. This is an example of a free website which relies on the support of many volunteers to create and edit its entries. Note the lack of online advertising.
- The website of the Computer History Museum is the online presence of a physical museum, supported by the non-profit museum and a cadre of volunteers.
- Webopedia is an online encyclopedia that focuses on technical subjects. Webopedia is an example of a website supported by advertising.
- Tom's Hardware has news articles, computer reviews and tutorial lessons on recent computer hardware, again advertising supported.
- How Stuff Works is a similar ad-supported website focused on tutorial material on how computers work.
- Wired Magazine has news articles on new technology and its social impacts. This is an example of the online version of a magazine, this particular one dedicated to high technology. Many traditional newspapers also have online articles, frequently from a technical or business section.
Other useful websites on computer science, computer technology, and computer history are supported by government agencies, university faculty or research centers, businesses, and individuals.
Procedure:
To finish this lab you are to answer the questions below and then email them to your instructor. It may be the case that your instructor prefers you not use email, so you may be instructed to hand these questions in on paper or in some other way – so follow the instructions you are given. There are two sets of questions and you should answer the set assigned by your instructor.
When you answer each question record the website or websites that you used. Websites and other sources of information on the Internet are given addresses called URLs, Uniform Resource Locators. The details of URLs will be given in Chapter 4 of the textbook. The URL of a website usually appears in a line at the top of a web browser and you can copy and paste it from there. If your instructor asks, also note what kind of website you used and your confidence in the quality of the information you found.
Before answering the question check out the compatibility of your computer and web browser with the Computer Science: An Overview web site. Go to Chapter 1, Lab 1, at this site and view the web page used in that lab. Does your web browser display the entire page properly? If not, report this to your instructor.
Question Set 1:
- Find two web sites that have information on the history of computing and list their URLs. Each web site has to be supported by a person or institution. For each of the web sites you found, who seems to be maintaining the web site? Which seems to be the most useful or credible?
- Go to the web site that you considered most useful or credible in step 1 and look up information on Alan Turing, a significant figure in the history of computer science. What German code did Turing help break during World War II? (The breaking of this code was very important to the Allied war effort.)
- One of the first inventors of the calculator was Blaise Pascal. Find a photograph of one of his calculators and give the date of the calculator, the URL of the photograph, and describe how many gears the calculator has.
- The computer industry has had its share of lawsuits between businesses fighting for priority and ownership of an invention. Find an example of an early lawsuit regarding who invented the computer and record gist of the dispute, the parties involved, and when the lawsuit occurred.
- Find out which university in the United States was the first to establish a department of computer science and when that department was established?
- Find a poem written by a computer program and record its URL.
- Find a web site with video of a walking robot. Record the web site URL to send it to your instructor. Can you view the video? If not, let your instructor know.
Question Set 2:
- The textbook mentioned Joseph Jacquard's loom, important because it was one of the first programmable devices. Find a photograph online of the loom and record the URL of the photograph. Also find out the size and nature of the punch cards used.
- Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of the software giant Microsoft, started their careers in software writing a program for one of the very first personal computers. What was the computer, and what software did they write? As an additional question, what was the controversy over this software? Submit the URL of a site you used to answer this.
- Despite humorous stories to the contrary, former Vice-President Albert Gore did not invent the Internet. (He only claims to have given it important support in Congress.) Who did invent the Internet? Give a short explanation of its invention and the parties involved.
- There are websites that provide automated translation between natural languages. To use auch a site, one types a sentence in English, selects English to Spanish, and the sentence is translated to Spanish. Find two of these websites and translate a sentence of your choice into the same language on both sites. Turn in the original sentence, the URLs of the translation websites you used, the results you got, and note any difference between the two results. Do you think automatic language translation is ready for professional use?
- The DARPA Grand Challenge has been a race of autonomous, robotic vehicles over desert roads. In the first year no robot vehicle finished, in the second year more that one vehicle finished. What was the first year of the Challenge, how far did the most successful robot vehicle get, and what was the name of the robot vehicle? In the second year which vehicle won, how long was the race, and how long did the winning vehicle take to complete the race?
- A turning point in the history of computers was the invention of the integrated circuit and the first microprocessor. Being able to put the circuitry of an entire computer on one chip, and then over time increase the complexity and decrease the cost of these chips, is the reason for the explosion of personal computers, video game systems, cell phones, calculators, networks, and almost every one of the technologies we depend on today. Who invented the first microprocessor and when?
- The free, volunteer supported online encyclopedia wikipedia.org is not without controversy since it allows almost anyone to edit almost any entry anytime. Often entries are edited with bias or mischief in mind. Find and briefly report on a specific case of controversy when wikipedia.org had an entry vandalized.
