Have you ever cut, copied and pasted (粘贴) something on a computer? What about opening a file (文件) by clicking on it? These ideas and technologies were created by Larry Tesler, an American computer scientist.
Larry Tesler was born on 24th April 1945. He had a strong interest in computers in his early years. In high school, he started to show his talent for numbers. His teacher noticed it and told Tesler that his skill could be used in computer science. Tesler then became interested in computers and joined a programme where he could spend half an hour of computer time each week. During that time, he taught himself programming before he went to college! Eight years after graduating from Stanford University, Tesler took a job at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where he developed “cut”, “copy” and “paste”. Before his creation, people would edit (编辑) a text by physically cutting parts of printed text and gluing them elsewhere.
Tesler also got the idea that a user should be able to open a file by simply clicking on it. He hoped to make it easier for people to use computers.
Besides, Tesler realized the cheaper and better personal computer would be popular in the market, so he decided to push for low-cost computers. It turned out to be such a wise decision.
Tesler developed many new and creative programs and made life easier for many people. Sadly, the great scientist passed away on 17th February 2020 at the age of 75. However, he will always be remembered, for the great contributions(贡献) he made to society.
【小题1】What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 2 refer to? (第二段 it 指代什么)【小题2】How did Tesler learn programming?
【小题3】Translate the underlined sentence in the last paragraph into Chinese. (把最后一段划线句子翻译成汉语）
【小题4】Give the text a proper title. (给这篇文章起个合适的题目)
【小题5】Do you think Larry Tesler is creative and great? Why? (至少列举两个事实来说明）
