Read the text
Hundreds of electronic equipments are now used for scientific, industrial and everyday purposes. They help to do jobs better and more rationally than before and take over jobs that couldn’t be done otherwise. So, industrial electronic undoubtedly plays a very important role today. You can easily find many electronic types of equipment at home: a TV set, an MP3 player, a computer and many others.

The application and use of electronic equipments demand a good knowledge of their fundamentals.

In meters and lamps electricity flows in the wire. But inside any transistor or microchip (previously in radio tubes) electric current passes through the space or semiconductor separating certain parts in this detail. Such action is called electronic. It’s not difficult to imagine it because the same happens in lightning. There you actually see how electricity jumps through space.

The first electronic equipments used radio lamps. They were: a radio set, a TV set, computing machines (predecessors of modern calculators), computers, which occupied big rooms, tape recorders.

The next stage came when transistors were invented. The devices became more powerful and much smaller. The number of devices increased greatly, some multifunctional devices appeared. Computers and calculators became smaller.

The next period was the period of microchips. They helped to reduce big parts of devices.

The latest period of industrial electronics development is the period of total digitalization of all electronic devices, making them compatible with the computers. Photos are no longer made on film on memory cards, cassettes and video cassettes are out of use. Television is also becoming digital.

8.5 Answer the following questions

8.5.1 What types of electronic equipment can be found at home?

8.5.2 What was the first electronic equipment based on?

8.5.3 What is the difference between electric and electronic devices?

8.5.4 Did the first computers look like modern ones?

8.5.5 What devices became compatible with computers?