歷年考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解1996年04

[00:03.79]1996 Passage4 [00:07.41]What accounts for the great outburst [00:09.50]of major inventions in early America [00:12.62]--breakthroughs such as the telegraph, [00:14.94]the steamboat and the weaving machine? [00:18.62]Among the many shaping factors, [00:20.94]I would single out the country's excellent elementary schools; [00:24.57]a labor force that welcomed the new technology; [00:27.70]the practice of giving premiums to inventors; [00:31.02]and above all the American genius for nonverbal, [00:34.95]"spatial" thinking about things technological. [00:39.24]Why mention the elementary schools? [00:42.15]Because thanks to these schools our early mechanics, [00:45.88]especially in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, [00:49.52]were generally literate and at home in arithmetic [00:52.95]and in some aspects of geometry and trigonometry. [00:57.29]Acute foreign observers related American adaptiveness [01:01.22]and inventiveness to this educational advantage. [01:05.34]As a member of a British commission visiting here [01:08.07]in 1853 reported, [01:10.49]"With a mind prepared by thorough school discipline, [01:14.11]the American boy develops rapidly into the skilled workman." [01:19.16]A further stimulus to invention [01:21.38]came from the "premium" system, [01:23.49]which preceded our patent system [01:25.81]and for years ran parallel with it. [01:28.95]This approach, originated abroad, offered inventors medals, [01:33.08]cash prizes and other incentives. [01:36.51]In the United States, [01:38.42]multitudes of premiums for new devices [01:41.35]were awarded at country fairs [01:43.77]and at the industrial fairs in major cities. [01:47.20]Americans flocked to these fairs to admire the new machines [01:51.63]and thus to renew their faith in the beneficence [01:54.55]of technological advance. [01:57.48]Given this optimistic approach to technological innovation, [02:01.44]the American worker took readily to [02:03.85]that special kind of nonverbal thinking required [02:06.57]in mechanical technology. [02:09.19]As Eugene Ferguson has pointed out, [02:11.71]"A technologist thinks about objects that cannot be reduced [02:15.64]to unambiguous verbal descriptions; [02:18.57]they are dealt with in his mind by a visual, nonverbal process... [02:23.71]The designer and the inventor... [02:25.74]are able to assemble and manipulate in their minds devices [02:29.96]that as yet do not exist." [02:33.06]This nonverbal "spatial" thinking can be just as creative [02:37.26]as painting and writing. [02:39.62]Robert Fulton once wrote, [02:41.64]"The mechanic should sit down among levers, [02:44.47]screws, wedges, wheels, etc., [02:48.09]like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, [02:51.12]considering them as exhibition of his thoughts, [02:54.45]in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea." [02:59.06]When all these shaping forces--schools, [03:02.08]open attitudes, the premium system, [03:05.01]a genius for spatial thinking [03:07.48]--interacted with one another on the rich U.S. mainland, [03:11.52]they produced that American characteristic, emulation. [03:16.05]Today that word implies mere imitation. [03:19.78]But in earlier times it meant a friendly [03:22.38]but competitive striving for fame and excellence.

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