30

   Name: Ghulam Mustafa Name of Institute: Pakistan Shorthand Institute (Ghulam Mustafa) Personal Assistant in Women Development Department, Punjab Civil Secretariat Lahore.

700 Common Words Exercise No. 30 Longhand

Sometimes it seems that the more we know and the more we learn, the less remarkable we consider our learning and our knowledge to be. When other people can do something that we ourselves cannot do we think that they must be of much more worth than we ourselves are. Yet, as soon as we can do that same thing we think nothing of it, and begin to look round for something new to learn or to do. It even seems that we act in this same way in our thoughts about the new goods and the new machines that are so often and so readily put before us in these days. It is, perhaps, difficult to continue to find each new thing so very remarkable when new and better things follow one another at such a great rate. We still find ourselves greatly interested, however, when something quite new comes along. The first plane to fly over water looks a very poor thing if we see it now, but it certainly caused more talk and general interest than the largest and most modern plane causes today, let it have four engines or eight engines, or as many as the engineers wish. Planes are no longer new, and they are hardly even news. The public expects its engineers and its men of science to bring out newer and larger and better planes. For what does the public pay taxes, if not for such things, one might ask? The first manmade object to free itself from the earth’s pull and to fly off to outer distances may be worth several lines in the newspaper. The second such object may be much bigger and it may leave the earth much more quickly, but because it is not the first it cannot hope to get the interest of the public in the say way. In these days we have the most wonderful machines to do for us addition, division and other sums. A thousand sums in a second is nothing to such a machine. Quickly and still more quickly the figures fly, but the public hardly cares. It is probable that there was much more interest three hundred years ago in the first adding machine ever made. That first machine was made by a young man in the attempt to lessen the labours of his father, who was responsible for taxation and who worked long hours adding up figures. Further machines followed, and it is interesting to note that all those early machines were made by people working by themselves, all on their own. In these days the usual thing is for organized workers to act together in such matters. The first machine could work only country during the Machine Age, a hundred or more years ago, brought with it a growing demand for adding machines. Business and industrial growth took place side by side with the growth in the size of the banks and increased use of the credit system. It was natural that the time soon came when most banks and offices could not think of operating without the help of adding machines. Now we have machines that can do the most surprising and difficult pieces of work. Difficult sums that might take a man a year or more to do are carried out in a matter of minutes. If the machine goes wrong it knows that it has done so, and it takes action to put things right. These machines are said to have a memory; they are even said by some to think. In fact, some man somewhere has to do the thinking first, and the machine acts afterwards according to that man’s instructions. It cannot act by itself but can do only what it is told to do. It cannot, therefore, by said to have a mind and to be able to think. The machine can, however, store facts and figures and make use of them later, and in that way it perhaps can be said to have a memory. The machines are certainly wonderful but in our daily lives we hardly give them a thought. They represent just one of so many remarkable things, after all.



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