Английский для Технических университетов и вузов файл принадлежит сайту www.crypower.ru

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 428.

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS

ДОПОЛНИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ТЕКСТЫ стр. 260

To be read after Lesson 4

Telecommunication

A group of people enter a room, the lights go down, the screens come... the videoconference is under way.

Tomorrow's scientific fiction has become today's new technol­ogy -a daily reality for global companies who recognise the impor­tance of regular communication between groups of people in different locations around the world.

Essentially the videoconference room resembles a usual confer­ence room. Delegates sit along one side of a table facing their col­leagues on screen on the other side. They can see, hear and talk to each other simultaneously and can present slides of diagrams, even pieces of equipment. The technology is relatively simple. A device called videocodec takes the picture, digitalizes it for transmission over a special network and reforms the picture at the other end.

The problem today is to manufacture codec to the new interna­tional standard and to improve picture quality through faster trans­mission speeds. Research and development is also focusing on mobile videoconferencing with broadcast quality pictures which enable to have instant communication with colleagues around the world.

There is no doubt about the effectiveness of videoconferencing, as the videoconference eliminates the working time lost through travel.

The First Travelling Post Office

The first travelling post office in the United States was Abra­ham Lincoln's hat. That was a strange place, indeed, for mail; but that is where it was kept. Lincoln was appointed postmaster of New Salem, a small Western town, about the year 1833. The postman visited the place once a week and brought the mail — a dozen let­ters, perhaps, and two or three newspapers — in his saddle (седло) bags. He was always met by Postmaster Lincoln who put the letters into his hat for safekeeping. Lincoln was also the clerk in the coun­try store, so he had a good opportunity to distribute the mail. But if people did not come for it, he put on his hat and delivered it. So New Salem was the first town in the US to have rural free delivery, even though the postmaster received very small pay for his work. At that time, stamps and envelopes were not used. When the sender of a letter paid the postal charges, the postmaster wrote PAID in the large letters on the face of the letter. But the postal rates were so high that the sender seldom paid them. Thus, the mailing charges were usually collected from the person who received the mail. The postmaster always held his postal receipts until a government rep­resentative came for them.