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If you have mobility or motor impairments, repetitive stress injuries, or you find typing on a keyboard difficult in any way, there's an alternative. Dictation lets you talk instead of type, and voice-to-text transcribes what you say into words on the screen. It's among the Mac's many features.
All you have to do is set it up and get going.How to enable and use DictationBasic dictation is essentially always enabled by default — you just need to activate it. Click into a text area like a document or the address bar of your web browser. Double-press the Fn key. A microphone will appear on your screen and if it's receiving audio, you'll see activity inside of it.Speak the text you want to type. You can speak, including brackets, percent signs, and more. You can also say phrases like 'caps on' to turn on capital letters.Click Done under the microphone icon or press the Fn key once when you're finished dictating.The more you use Dictation, the more it learns how you speak — like your accent and cadence.
It may seem finicky at first, but as you use it more, it'll get better and better. On how to dictate punctuation and formatting, as well. How to change your Dictation languageDid you know that you can dictate your text in multiple languages? Here's how. Open System Preferences from your Dock or Applications folder.Click Keyboard. Click Dictation.Click the drop-down next to Language.
Click Add Language.Click the checkboxes next to languages that you wish to add.Click OK.To use those languages, you can switch to the default dictation option at any time by going to System Preferences Keyboard Dictation Language and selecting your current language from the dropdown menu. How to enable and use Enhanced DictationEnhanced Dictation enables you to dictate without an internet connection, and dictate continuously; this means that your words will convert to text more quickly since they're being processed locally on your device. Open System Preferences from your Dock or Applications folder.Click Keyboard. Click Dictation.Click the checkbox next to Use Enhanced Dictation. Enhanced Dictation will take several minutes to download if you haven't done so already.Once enabled, you can use Enhanced Dictation the same way you would regular dictation. Press the Fn key twice when your cursor is in a text field. If the microphone shows up, speak what you want to be typed and click Done or press the Fn key once.
How to change the Dictation keyboard shortcutWhile the Fn key on your Mac's keyboard is the default trigger for dictation, you can change that in the Dictation section of the keyboard preference pane. Open System Preferences from your Dock or Applications folder.Click Keyboard. Click Dictation.Click the drop-down menu next to Shortcut.Click an option in the list or click Customize to create your own (seems like only the arrow keys work).How to enable/disable Dictation CommandsDictation Commands allow you to do things with your text just by speaking. For example, you can select a whole paragraph, go back to the beginning, or replace a phrase with another phrase.You can only use Dictation Commands with. Click the Apple menu button on the top left of your screen. Click System Preferences.Click Accessibility. Click Dictation in the menu on the left.
You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it.Click Dictation Commands. Click the checkbox next to each dictation command you'd like to disable. They're all enabled by default.Click Done in the bottom right corner of the window.Reading through the Dictation Commands list is a great way to learn all the things you can do with text just by speaking to your Mac. You can also click the checkbox next to Enable advanced commands, which will enable system commands.How to enable the dictation keyword phraseWant to feel like you're in a sci-fi movie? Enable the dictation keyword phrase and you'll be able to use dictation commands even when you're not dictating.
So you can be all 'computer, replace 'boots' with 'cats',' and the phrase will be replaced in your text. It's a bit finicky, but when it works, it's so cool!You have to have for this to work. Click the Apple menu button on the top left of your screen. Click System Preferences.Click Accessibility. Click Dictation in the menu on the left. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it. Click the checkbox next to Enable the dictation keyword phrase.Enter a keyword phrase if you want to change it from 'Computer'.
(But if you leave it as 'Computer', you sound like the captain of a spaceship!)Now when your cursor is in a text field, you can just say the keyword phrase and your dictation command and it'll do it.How to enable a sound when a command is recognizedYou have to have for this to work. Click the Apple menu button on the top left of your screen.
Click System Preferences.Click Accessibility. Click Dictation in the menu on the left. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it.Click the checkbox next to Play sound when command is recognized.How to enable/disable output mute during dictationIf you accidentally open a website with an autoplay video or you're listening to music but want to dictate something quickly, you can mute audio output during dictation so that you don't have to manually fiddle around with volume.You must have to use this feature.
Click the Apple menu button on the top left of your screen. Click System Preferences.Click Accessibility. Click Dictation in the menu on the left. Sony handycam dcr hc26e drivers for mac. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it.Click the checkbox next to Mute audio output while dictating.Dictation accessibility in macOS CatalinaIn macOS Catalina, Apple has opted to change things up a bit regarding dictation and accessibility. While there was previously a section for accessibility options for dictation in System Preferences, those capabilities have been folded into the new Voice Control accessibility feature. Voice Control is a greatly expanded set of capabilities that allow you to control every aspect of your Mac, including text entry, with your voice.Great accessories for your Mac.
History of computingA computer might be described with deceptive simplicity as “an apparatus that performs routine calculations automatically.” Such a definition would owe its deceptiveness to a naive and narrow view of calculation as a strictly mathematical process. In fact, calculation underlies many activities that are not normally thought of as mathematical. Walking across a room, for instance, requires many complex, subconscious, calculations.
Computers, too, have proved capable of solving a vast array of problems, from balancing a checkbook to even—in the form of guidance systems for robots—walking across a room.Before the true of computing could be realized, therefore, the naive view of calculation had to be overcome. The inventors who laboured to bring the computer into the world had to learn that the thing they were inventing was not just a number cruncher, not merely a calculator. For example, they had to learn that it was not necessary to invent a new computer for every new calculation and that a computer could be designed to solve numerous problems, even problems not yet imagined when the computer was built. They also had to learn how to tell such a general problem-solving computer what problem to solve. In other words, they had to invent programming.They had to solve all the heady problems of developing such a device, of the design, of actually the thing.
The history of the solving of these problems is the history of the computer. That history is covered in this section, and links are provided to entries on many of the individuals and companies mentioned. In addition, see the articles.
Early history Computer precursors TheThe earliest known calculating device is probably the. It dates back at least to 1100 bce and is still in use today, particularly in Asia. Now, as then, it typically consists of a rectangular frame with thin parallel rods strung with beads.
Long before any systematic positional notation was adopted for the writing of numbers, the abacus assigned different units, or weights, to each rod. This scheme allowed a wide range of numbers to be represented by just a few beads and, together with the of zero in India, may have inspired the invention of the Hindu-Arabic. In any case, abacus beads can be readily manipulated to perform the common arithmetical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—that are useful for commercial transactions and in bookkeeping.The abacus is a digital device; that is, it represents values discretely. A bead is either in one predefined position or another, representing unambiguously, say, one or zero. Analog calculators: from Napier’s logarithms to the slide ruleCalculating devices took a different turn when, a Scottish mathematician, published his discovery of in 1614. As any person can attest, adding two 10-digit numbers is much simpler than multiplying them together, and the transformation of a multiplication problem into an addition problem is exactly what logarithms enable. This simplification is possible because of the following logarithmic property: the of the product of two numbers is equal to the sum of the logarithms of the numbers.
By 1624, tables with 14 significant digits were available for the logarithms of numbers from 1 to 20,000, and scientists quickly adopted the new labour-saving for tedious astronomical calculations.Most significant for the development of computing, the transformation of multiplication into addition greatly simplified the possibility of mechanization. Calculating devices based on Napier’s logarithms—representing digital values with physical lengths—soon appeared. In 1620, the English mathematician who coined the terms cosine and cotangent, built a device for performing navigational calculations: the Gunter scale, or, as navigators simply called it, the gunter. About 1632 an English clergyman and mathematician named built the first, drawing on Napier’s ideas.
That first slide rule was circular, but Oughtred also built the first rectangular one in 1633. The analog devices of Gunter and Oughtred had various advantages and disadvantages compared with digital devices such as the abacus.
What is important is that the consequences of these design decisions were being tested in the real world. Digital calculators: from the Calculating Clock to the ArithmometerIn 1623 the German astronomer and mathematician built the first. He described it in a letter to his friend the astronomer, and in 1624 he wrote again to explain that a machine he had commissioned to be built for Kepler was, apparently along with the, destroyed in a fire. He called it a, which modern engineers have been able to reproduce from details in his letters. Even general knowledge of the clock had been temporarily lost when Schickard and his entire family perished during the. The Calculating ClockA reproduction of Wilhelm Schickard's Calculating Clock.
The device could add and subtract six-digit numbers (with a bell for seven-digit overflows) through six interlocking gears, each of which turned one-tenth of a rotation for each full rotation of the gear to its right. Thus, 10 rotations of any gear would produce a “carry” of one digit on the following gear and change the corresponding display.
The Computer Museum of AmericaBut Schickard may not have been the true inventor of the calculator. A century earlier, sketched plans for a calculator that were sufficiently complete and correct for modern engineers to build a calculator on their basis.The first calculator or to be produced in any quantity and actually used was the Pascaline, or, designed and built by the French mathematician-philosopher between 1642 and 1644. It could only do addition and subtraction, with numbers being entered by manipulating its dials. Pascal invented the machine for his father, a tax collector, so it was the first business machine too (if one does not count the abacus). He built 50 of them over the next 10 years.
The Arithmetic MachineThe Arithmetic Machine, or Pascaline, a French monetary (nondecimal) calculator designed by Blaise Pascal c. Numbers could be added by turning the wheels (located along the bottom of the machine) clockwise and subtracted by turning the wheels counterclockwise. Each digit in the answer was displayed in a separate window, visible at the top of the photograph.
Courtesy of the Computer Museum History CenterIn 1671 the German mathematician-philosopher designed a calculating machine called the. (It was first built in 1673.) The Step Reckoner expanded on Pascal’s ideas and did multiplication by repeated addition and shifting. The Step ReckonerA reproduction of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's Step Reckoner, from the original located in the Trinks Brunsviga Museum at Hannover, Germany. Turning the crank (left) rotated several drums, each of which turned a gear connected to a digital counter. IBM ArchivesLeibniz was a strong advocate of the.
Binary numbers are ideal for machines because they require only two digits, which can easily be represented by the on and off states of a switch. When computers became electronic, the binary system was particularly appropriate because an electrical is either on or off. This meant that on could represent true, off could represent false, and the flow of current would directly represent the flow of logic.Leibniz was prescient in seeing the appropriateness of the binary system in calculating machines, but his machine did not use it. Instead, the Step Reckoner represented numbers in decimal form, as positions on 10-position dials. Even decimal representation was not a given: in 1668 Samuel Morland invented an adding machine specialized for British money—a decidedly nondecimal system.Pascal’s, Leibniz’s, and Morland’s devices were curiosities, but with the of the 18th century came a widespread need to perform repetitive operations efficiently. With other activities being mechanized, why not calculation?
In 1820 of France effectively met this challenge when he built his, the first commercial mass-produced calculating device. It could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and, with some more elaborate user involvement, division. Based on Leibniz’s, it was extremely popular and sold for 90 years. In contrast to the modern calculator’s credit-card size, the Arithmometer was large enough to cover a desktop. TheCalculators such as the Arithmometer remained a fascination after 1820, and their potential for commercial use was well understood. Many other mechanical devices built during the 19th century also performed repetitive functions more or less automatically, but few had any application to computing.
There was one major exception: the, invented in 1804–05 by a French weaver,.The Jacquard loom was a marvel of the Industrial Revolution. A textile-weaving loom, it could also be called the first practical information-processing device. The loom worked by tugging various-coloured threads into patterns by means of an array of rods. By inserting a with holes, an operator could the motion of the rods and thereby alter the pattern of the weave.
Moreover, the loom was equipped with a card-reading device that slipped a new card from a prepunched deck into place every time the shuttle was thrown, so that complex weaving patterns could be automated. Jacquard loom, engraving, 1874At the top of the machine is a stack of punched cards that would be fed into the loom to control the weaving pattern. This method of automatically issuing machine instructions was employed by computers well into the 20th century.
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The Bettmann ArchiveWhat was extraordinary about the device was that it transferred the design process from a labour-intensive weaving stage to a card-punching stage. Once the cards had been punched and assembled, the design was complete, and the loom the design automatically.