The Chinese first made paper about 2, 000 years ago. China still has pieces of paper which were made as long ago as that. But Chinese paper was not made from the wood of trees. It was made from the hairlike parts of certain plants.

Paper was not made in southern Europe until about the year 1100. Scandinavia(斯堪的纳维亚半岛), which now makes a great deal of the world’s paper, did not begin to make it until l, 500. It was a German named Schaeffer who found out that one could make the best paper from trees. After that, the forest countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the United States became the largest paper producers. Today in Finland, which makes the best paper in the world, the paper industry is the biggest in the land. New paper-making machines are very big, and they make paper very fast. The biggest machines can make a piece of paper 300 meters long and 6 meters wide in one minute.

When we think of paper, we think of newspapers, books, letters, envelopes and writing paper. But there are many other uses. Only half of the paper that is made is used for books and newspapers, etc.

The world has been completely changed by computers. It is hard to imagine modern life without them. How many of us actually know where they came from, though? Anyone who has ever used a computer or a smartphone should pay respects to Alan Turing.

Alan Turing was born in London in 1912. From a young age, he showed an excellent ability for math. When he was 16, he knew about Albert Einstein’s work. Not only did he understand it completely, but he had his own ideas on how to add to it.

Later on, during World War II, Turing played an important role in researching German codes (密码). This made it possible for the Allies (同盟国) to understand German messages. After the war, Turing threw himself into making a machine that could do with information.

While Turing never actually built a computer, his idea formed the basis (基础) for all modern computers. Turing described a machine that had a tape. On the tape would be symbols that could be read by the machine. The machine could also add its own symbols, since its tape would not run out. Basically, Turing had described a computer program. Unluckily, he never saw how his ideas would change the world. Turing killed himself in 1954, but his work lives on in the computers we use every day.