题目内容
What does the word "they"(Para. 3) refer to？
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Next year, at last, the first set of printed tables should emerge from a calculating "difference engine" built to Babbage's design. Babbage will have been vindicated. But the realization of his dream will also underscore the extent to which he was a man born ahead of his time.
The effort to prove that Babbage's designs were logically and practically sound began in 1985, when a team of researchers at the Science Museum in London set out to build a difference engine in time for the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth in 1992. The team, led by the museum's curator of computing, Doron Swade, constructed a monstrous device of bronze, iron and steel. It was 11 feet long, seven feet tall, weighed three tons, cost around $500 000 and took a year to piece together. And it worked perfectly, cranking out successive values of seventh-order polynomial equations to 31 significant figures. But it was incomplete. To save money, an entire section of the machine, the printer, was omitted.
To Babbage, the printer was a vital part of design. Even if the engine produced the correct answers, there was still the risk that a transcription or typesetting error would result in the finished mathematical tables being inaccurate. The only way to guarantee error-free tables was to automate the printing process as well. So his plans included specifications for a printer almost as complicated as the calculating engine itself, with adjustable margins, two separate fonts, and the ability to print in two, three or four columns.
In January, after years of searching for a sponsor for the printer, the Science Museum announced that a backer had been found. Nathan Myhrvold, the chief technology officer at Microsoft, agreed to pay for its construction (which is expected to cost $373,000 with one proviso: that the Science Museum team would build him an identical calculating engine and printer to decorate his new home on Lake Washington, near Seattle). Construction of the printer will begin—in full view of the public—at the Science Museum later this month. The full machine will be completed next year.
It is a nice irony that Babbage's plans should be realized only thanks to an infusion of cash from a man who got rich in the computer revolution that Babbage helped to foment. More striking still, even using 20th-century manufacturing technology the engine will have cost over $830 000 to build. Allowing for inflation, this is roughly a third of what it might have cost to build in Babbage's day-in contrast to the cost of electronic-computer technology, which halves in price every 18 months. That suggests that, even had Babbage succeeded, a Victorian computer revolution based on mechanical technology would not necessarily have followed.
Babbage wished to build a mechanical engine because______.
Spirit failed to talk to its controllers probably because of______.
Technology Transfer in Germany
When it comes to translating basic research into industrial success, few nations can match Germany. Since the 1940s, the nation's vast industrial base has been fed with a constant stream of new ideas and expertise from science. And though German prosperity (繁荣) has faltered (衰退) over the past decade because of the huge cost of unifying east and west as well as the global economic decline, it still has an enviable (令人羡慕的) record for turning ideas into profit.
Much of the reason for that success is the Fraunhofer Society, a network of research institutes that exists solely to solve industrial problems and create sought-after technologies. But today the Fraunhofer institutes have competition. Universities are taking an ever larger role in technology transfer, and technology parks are springing up all over. These efforts are being complemented by the federal progremmes for pumping money into start-up companies.
Such a strategy may sound like a recipe for economic success, but it is not without its critics. These people worry that favouring applied research will mean neglecting basic science, eventually starving industry of fresh ideas. If every scientist starts thinking like an entrepreneur (企业家), the argument goes, then the traditional principles of university research being curiosity-driven, free and widely available will suffer. Others claim that many of the programmes to promote technology transfer are a waste of money because half the small businesses that are' promoted are bound to go bankrupt within a few years.
While this debate continues, new ideas flow at a steady rate from Germany's research networks, which bear famous names such as Helmholtz, Max Planck and Leibniz. Yet it is the fourth network, the Fraunhofer Society, that plays the greatest role in technology transfer.
Founded in 1949, the Fraunhofer Society is now Europe's largest organisation for applied technology, and has 59 institutes employing 12, 000 people. It continues to grow. Last year, it swallowed up the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Communication Technology in Berlin. Today, there are even Fraunhofers in the US and Asia.
What factor can be attributed to German prosperity？
Which of the following is NOT true of traditional university research？
微信支付 
支付宝支付