Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

265 person to learn in a few minutes. These features helped convince a skeptical public that the computer was practical for the home and small business. Jobs also introduced the idea of donating Apple Computers to thousands of California schools, thereby indirectly introducing his product into the homes of millions of students. Their second model, the Apple II, was the state-of-the-art PC in home and small business com- puters from 1977 to 1982. By 1983 the total company sales were almost $600 million, and it controlled 23 percent of the worldwide market in personal com puters. As the computer industry began to reach into homes and small businesses around the world, the need for many new products for the personal computer began to emerge. Martin Alpert, the founder of Tecmar, Inc., was one of the first people to foresee this need. When IBM released its first personal computer in 1981, Alpert bought the first two models. He took them apart and worked twenty-four hours a day to find out how other products could be attached to them. After two weeks, he emerged with the first computer peripherals for the IBM PC, and he later became one of the most successful creators of personal computer peripherals. For example, he designed memory extenders that enabled the computer to store more information, and insertable boards that allowed people to use different keyboards while sharing the same printer. After 1981, Tecmar produced an average of one new product per week. Alpert had neither the technical training of Noyce nor the com- puter clubs of Jobs and Wozniak to encourage his interest in computer engineering. His parents were German refugees who worked in a fac- tory and a bakery to pay for his college education. They insisted that he study medicine even though his interest was in electronics. Throughout medical school he studied electronics passionately but privately. He became a doctor, but practiced only part time while pursuing his pre- ferred interest in electronics. His first electronics products were medi- cal instruments that he built in his living room. His wife recognized the