Do you know what fields of science they worked in?
2. Read the words and their definitions and translate them into Russian:
| powerhouses - a forceful or powerful person or thing; to develop - to come to more advanced stage; to be ahead - to have an advantage; facsimile machine - duplicator that transmits the copy by wire or radio; hurdle - a difficulty one must overcome; immature - not fully grown or developed; stick to one's guns - to hold to one's position in an argument; to agonize over - to worry about someone or something; connect the dots - to understand the relationship between different ideas or experiences |
3. Read the following text and give the main idea of each paragraph. Make questions to the underlined sentences:
Gary Starkweather is a stubborn man. He spent much of his career at Xerox working on the idea of developing a laser printer. "To tell the truth, it was not what you would call a popular project," Starkweather said of his laser printer idea. "It was considered something that would never make it to the market in any real sense or have any practical use."
Time has shown that Xerox was wrong in that assumption: printers now are a pillar of the company's growth strategy. Indeed, Starkweather's drive to create the laser printer eventually transformed a small copier company into one of the world's imaging powerhouses, and revolutionized the computer printing industry.
The roots of Starkweather's quest reach back to 1964, when he was a graduate student in the optics program at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. Starkweather said he was drawn to Xerox because of the imaging technology the company was developing. Starkweather's initial projects were ahead of the technological curve, with Xerox's blessing. One such effort was the high-speed facsimile machine. Tasked with the problem of getting enough light on the paper and getting the output device to create an image, Starkweather suggested using lasers, which at the time were a new technology. Starkweather's breakthrough, however, quickly ran into a hurdle: the jump from high-speed facsimile to personal printers was a more far-reaching development than Xerox wanted to take on.
"One day in 1967, I was sitting in my lab looking at all of these big mainframes when I started thinking, 'What if, instead of copying someone else's original, which is what a facsimile does, we used a computer to generate the original?' he said. And so the idea of the laser printer was born. The only problem was that lasers were an immature technology at the time and cost about $3,000 each. He was convinced that the cost of lasers would drop over time and that there was a market for laser printing technology, Starkweather stuck to his guns. He was met with major resistance from Xerox."He was told to stop working on the laser printer project," said Joyce Starkweather, Gary's wife. "But he couldn't. He had to go through with this idea. "
Salvation for Starkweather came in 1970 when Xerox announced in its company newsletter plans to build the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California. "I called them and said, 'I've got this idea that I'd like to pursue.' So I went out and talked to them. Interestingly enough, they had a group of folks who were looking at personal computing possibilities, and they had been agonizing over what they would do for a printer," he said. "This appeared to be a natural fit into their long-range plans." So in 1971, Starkweather packed his bags and moved with his wife and two children from snowy Rochester, N.Y., to sunny Northern California.
Out of "hostile territory" and finally given the freedom to conduct his research without fear of retribution,, Starkweather went to work on building the laser printer. In 1971, just nine months after joining PARC, Starkweather completed the first working laser printer. The result was the Xerox 9700, the industry's first commercial laser printer, introduced in 1977. "It was a wild success," despite projections that few customers would produce the 200,000 to 300,000 prints per month needed for the unit to be profitable, Starkweather said. "The first units that came out did a million prints," which blew away the market projections, he said. "The average on the first 5,000 or 6,000 units was over a million prints a month, and some people were doing 2.5 million, which is as many as you could do running the printer constantly."
Fresh off the success of the 9700, Starkweather shifted his research onto personal laser printers, and again ran into opposition from Xerox. "Xerox was a company that liked large, fast laser printers," he said.“Xerox failed to connect the dots and realized that the profit wasn't in the printer but in the toner and the paper”, Starkweather said. As a result, the company was beaten to market by Hewlett-Packard, which introduced the first personal laser printer in 1980. "I think HP just sold its 30 millionth laser printer, and at one point I had planners tell me that there was a market for about 300 units," he said. "They were off just a little."
Starkweather left the company in 1987 after 24 years of service. Following a 10-year stint at Apple Computer, Starkweather joined Microsoft Research in 1997. These days, his main area of research is display technology.
4. Find in the text the synonyms to the following words:
persistent, principle, search, step forward, saving, people, unfriendly, punishment, for every month, be mistaken.
5. Decide if the following statements are true or false:
1. Gary Starkweather spent much of his career at Xerox working on the idea of developing a laser printer.
2. Indeed, Starkweather's drive to create the ink-jet printer eventually transformed a small copier company into one of the world's imaging powerhouses, and revolutionized the computer printing industry.
3. Starkweather said he was drawn to Xerox because of good working conditions.
4. Tasked with the problem of getting enough light on the paper and getting the output device to create an image, Starkweather suggested using lasers, which at the time were a new technology.
5. The only problem was that lasers were an immature technology at the time and cost about $30,000 each.
6. In 1991, just nine months after joining PARC, Starkweather completed the first working laser printer.
7. As a result, XEROX was beaten to market by Hewlett-Packard, which introduced the first personal laser printer in 1980.
8.Starkweather left the company in 1987 after 18 years of service.
6. Complete the sentences and translate them into Russian:
1. He was convinced that the cost of lasers…………..
2. Salvation for Starkweather came in 1970 when…………...
3. “Interestingly enough, they had a group of folks who……………," he said.
4. Out of "hostile territory" and finally given the freedom to conduct his research without …………….
5.Fresh off the success of the 9700, Starkweather …………………