首页
登录
职称英语
This section measures your ability to understand academic passages in English.T
This section measures your ability to understand academic passages in English.T
游客
2025-02-05
33
管理
问题
This section measures your ability to understand academic passages in English.
There are three passages in the section. Give yourself 20 minutes to read each passage and answer the questions about it. The entire section will take 60 minutes to complete.
You may look back at a passage when answering the questions. You can skip questions and go back to them later as long as there is time remaining.
Directions: Read the passage. Then answer the questions. Give yourself 20 minutes to complete this practice set.
POWERING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In Britain one of the most dramatic changes of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of power. Until the reign of George III(1760-1820), available sources of power for work and travel had not increased since the Middle Ages. There were three sources of power: animal or human muscles; the wind, operating on sail or windmill; and running water.
Only the last of these was suited at all to the continuous operating of machines, and although waterpower abounded in Lancashire and Scotland and ran grain mills as well as textile mills, it had one great disadvantage: streams flowed where nature intended them to, and water-driven factories had to be located on their banks, whether or not the location was desirable for other reasons.
Furthermore, even the most reliable waterpower varied with the seasons and disappeared in a drought. The new age of machinery, in short, could not have been born without a new source of both movable and constant power.
The source had long been known but not
exploited
. Early in the century, a pump had come into use in which expanding steam raised a piston in a cylinder, and atmospheric pressure brought it down again when the steam condensed inside the cylinder to form a vacuum. This "
atmospheric engine
," invented by Thomas Savery and
vastly
improved by his partner, Thomas Newcomen, embodied revolutionary principles, but it was so slow and wasteful of fuel that it could not be employed outside the coal mines for which it had been designed. In the 1760s, James Watt perfected a separate condenser for the steam, so that the cylinder did not have to be cooled at every stroke; then he devised a way to make the piston turn a wheel and thus convert reciprocating(back and forth)motion into rotary motion. He thereby transformed an inefficient pump of limited use into a steam engine of a thousand uses. The final step came when steam was introduced into the cylinder to drive the piston backward as well as forward, thereby increasing the speed of the engine and cutting its fuel consumption.
Watt’s steam engine soon showed what it could do. It liberated industry from dependence on running water. The engine eliminated water in the mines by driving efficient pumps, which made possible deeper and deeper mining. The ready availability of coal inspired William Murdoch during the 1790s to develop the first new form of nighttime illumination to be discovered in a millennium and a half. Coal gas rivaled smoky oil lamps and flickering candles, and early in the new century, well-to-do Londoners grew accustomed to gaslit houses and even streets. Iron manufacturers, which had starved for fuel while depending on charcoal, also benefited from ever-increasing supplies of coal; blast furnaces with steam-powered bellows turned out more iron and steel for the new machinery. Steam became the motive force of the Industrial Revolution, as coal and iron ore were the raw materials.
By 1800 more than a thousand steam engines were in use in the British Isles, and Britain retained a virtual monopoly on steam engine production until the 1830s. Steam power did not merely spin cotton and roll iron; early in the new century, it also multiplied ten times over the amount of paper that a single worker could produce in a day. At the same time, operators of the first printing presses run by steam rather than by hand found it possible to produce a thousand pages in an hour rather than thirty. Steam also promised to eliminate a transportation problem not fully solved by either canal boats or turnpikes. Boats could carry heavy weights, but canals could not cross hilly terrain; turnpikes could cross the hills, but the roadbeds could not stand up under great weights. These problems needed still another solution, and the ingredients for it lay close at hand. In some industrial regions, heavily laden wagons, with flanged wheels, were being hauled by horses along metal rails; and the stationary steam engine was puffing in the factory and mine. Another generation passed before inventors succeeded in combining these ingredients, by putting the engine on wheels and the wheels on the rails, so as to provide a machine to take the place of the horse. Thus the railroad age sprang from what had already happened in the eighteenth century.
Directions: Now answer the questions.
In Britain one of the most dramatic changes of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of power. Until the reign of George III(1760-1820), available sources of power for work and travel had not increased since the Middle Ages. There were three sources of power: animal or human muscles; the wind, operating on sail or windmill; and running water. Only the last of these was suited at all to the continuous operating of machines, and although waterpower abounded in Lancashire and Scotland and ran grain mills as well as textile mills, it had one great disadvantage: streams flowed where nature intended them to, and water-driven factories had to be located on their banks, whether or not the location was desirable for other reasons. Furthermore, even the most reliable waterpower varied with the seasons and disappeared in a drought. The new age of machinery, in short, could not have been born without a new source of both movable and constant power.
The source had long been known but not exploited. Early in the century, a pump had come into use in which expanding steam raised a piston in a cylinder, and atmospheric pressure brought it down again when the steam condensed inside the cylinder to form a vacuum. This "atmospheric engine," invented by Thomas Savery and vastly improved by his partner, Thomas Newcomen, embodied revolutionary principles, but it was so slow and wasteful of fuel that it could not be employed outside the coal mines for which it had been designed. In the 1760s, James Watt perfected a separate condenser for the steam, so that the cylinder did not have to be cooled at every stroke; then he devised a way to make the piston turn a wheel and thus convert reciprocating(back and forth)motion into rotary motion. He thereby transformed an inefficient pump of limited use into a steam engine of a thousand uses. The final step came when steam was introduced into the cylinder to drive the piston backward as well as forward, thereby increasing the speed of the engine and cutting its fuel consumption. [br] It can be inferred from paragraph 1 that before the reign of George III there were no sources of power that
选项
A、were movable
B、were widely available
C、did not disappear during certain seasons of the year
D、could provide continuous power
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3944536.html
相关试题推荐
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytounderstandacademicpassagesinEnglish.T
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytounderstandacademicpassagesinEnglish.T
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytounderstandconversationsandlecturesinE
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytounderstandconversationsandlecturesinE
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytounderstandconversationsandlecturesinE
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytowriteinEnglishtocommunicateinanacad
ThissectionmeasuresyourabilitytospeakinEnglishaboutavarietyoftopics
InQuestion6,youwillbeaskedtolistentopartofanacademiclectureandto
[img]2018m9s/ct_etoefz_etoeflistz_201808_0028[/img][br]Whatistheacademicad
Youwillnowreadashortpassageandthenlistentoatalkonthesameacademic
随机试题
Naturallanguageinterfacesenabletheusertocommunicatewiththecomputer
OntheImportanceofBeingGratefulForthispart,youareallowed30minut
Despiteacoolingoftheeconomy,hightechnologycompaniesarestillcrying
偏瘫患者侧向移动训练不包括A.先将健侧足伸到患侧足下 B.用健侧腿抬起患侧腿向
达到阿托品化后患者仍出现面部、四肢抽搐,进一步治疗应为A.加大阿托品用量 B.
运输通道形成后的作用主要表现在( )。A.促进运输网络结构的合理化 B.促进
封闭经济是一种“自给自足”的体制。军事上的“封闭经济”指()。A.一个国家在没有
共用题干 一般资料:求助者,男性,46岁,会计。案例介绍:求助者半年前调入某单
下列设计变更中,属于水利工程施工组织设计重大设计变更的有()。A.主要料场场地
财务会计报告是由企业根据经过审核的会计凭证编制的。()
最新回复
(
0
)