No one thought of anything even a little bit like the zipper until Whitecomb L. Judson came along. There were buttons and button-holes, hooks and eyes, laces and buckles. They all took an irritatingly long time to do up, especially when men wore high-laced boots and fashionable ladies squeezed themselves into long corsets.

    Whitecomb L. Judson's slide-fastener was an out-of-the-blue invention, and no one knows what gave him the idea. No one even knows much about him, except that he was a mechanical engineer living in Chicago and that he patented other inventions, to do with a street railway system and motor-cars.

    Judson invented the first zipper (called, at the time, a Clasp Locker or Unlocker) in 1891. This ingenious little device looks so simple, and the principle behind it is simple: one row of hooks and eyes slotting neatly into another row by means of a tab. Yet it took twenty-two years, many improvements and another inventor to make the zipper really practical.

    (164 words)

   1. Before Judson invented the zipper, people found buttoning clothes to be ________.( B )

   (a) interesting

   (b) burdensome

   (c) easy

   (d) comfortable

2. When Judson's invention first appeared, people ________.( B )

(a) had expected it for a long time

(b) were very much surprised

(c) didn't understand it

(d) were indifferent to it

3. The first zipper was invented in ________.( C )

(a) the end of the 18th century

(b) the beginning of the 19th century

(c) the end of the 19th century

(d) the beginning of the 20th century

4.The word "ingenious" means ________.( A )

(a) clever

(b) admirable

(c) important

(d) useful

5. A good title for the above passage is ________. ( D )

(a) Judson the Inventor

(b) How the Zipper Works

(c) The Principle of the Zipper

(d) The Invention of the Zipper                                      TOP 

Passage Two

    The inventor of spectacles probably lived in the town of Pisa, Italy, around 1286, and was almost certainly a craftsman working in glass. But nobody knows his name. We only know this much about him because Friar Giordane preached a sermon one Wednesday morning in February 1306 at a church in Florence. "It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eye-glasses which make for good vision," said the Friar. "One of the best arts and most necessary that the world has. So short a time is it since there was invented a new art that never existed. I have seen the man who first invented and created it, and I have talked to him." We know what Friar Giordane said because admirers copied his sermons down as he gave them.

    The inventor of spectacles apparently kept the method of making them to himself. Perhaps he thought this was the best way of getting money from his invention. But the idea soon got around. As early as 1300, craftsmen in Venice, the center of Europe’s glass industry, were making the new "disks for the eyes". Spectacles at first were only shaped for far-sighted people. Concave lenses, for short-sighted people, were not developed until the late fifteenth century.

    Spectacles allowed people to go on reading and studying long after bad eyesight would normally have forced them to give up. They were like a new pair of eyes. The inventor of such a valuable thing should be honored, everyone thought. But for centuries no one had any idea who the inventor really was. So all kinds of candidates were put forward: Dutch, English, German, Italians from rival cities. A fake memorial was erected last century in a church in Florence to honor a man as the true inventor of spectacles － but he never even existed!

    (308 words)

   6. The invention of spectacles appeared in the ________ century in Europe. ( B )

(a) 12th

(b) 13th

(c) 14th

(d) 15th

7. The first record of the spectacles is to be found in ________. ( B )

(a) newspapers

(b) church sermons

(c) trade reports

(d) praises of Jordan

8. The first spectacles were made for ________. ( B )

(a) any one who had an eye trouble

(b) the far-sighted

(c) the short-sighted

(d) both the far-sighted and the short-sighted

9. Which of the following is true? ( D )

(a) The inventor made known his method of making spectacles.

(b) Florence was the center of Europe’s glass industry in the 14th century.

(c) In the 14th century short-sighted people could read books with the help of spectacles.

(d) Early craftsmen used lenses for far-sighted people.

10. The final paragraph discusses ________. ( D )

(a) the function of spectacles

(b) the fake memorial

(c) the invention of spectacles

(d) the identity of the inventor                                     TOP

Passage Three

    Europeans have been using the wheelbarrow for about eight hundred years. But the Chinese invented it at least ten centuries before that. Ancient Chinese gave the wheelbarrow nice names －Wooden Ox and Gliding Horse. "In the time taken by a man (with a similar burden) to go six feet, the Wooden Ox could get twenty feet," wrote an admiring historian in AD 430. "It could carry the food supply (of one man) for a whole year, and yet after twenty miles the porter would not feel tired."

    A famous general called Chuke Liang developed wheelbarrows two hundred years before this historian was writing, to help carry supplies for his army. But, very recently, pictures have been discovered on ancient tombs, and bricks, of even earlier wheelbarrows. So perhaps they were invented in the first century AD.

    No one knows how people in Europe found out about the wheelbarrow － or, for that matter, about many other Chinese inventions. Perhaps the idea came overland across the steppes, with nomadic (游牧的) tribes. Or perhaps traders using the famous silk-route to the great city of Constantinople, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, talked about things seen in far-off China. Probably someone who heard the talk worked out his own version, because the wheelbarrow used in Europe is a different design from the Chinese. It has the wheel out in front, so that the load is supported both by the wheel and the man pushing it. The wheelbarrow in China has the wheel in the middle, right under the load, and the pusher only has to steer and balance it. At all events, some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century, workmen building the great castles and cathedrals of Europe had, to their great relief, a new simple device to help them. One man with a wheelbarrow could carry the same load as two men and much more easily and quickly. The wheel took the place of a man.

    (330 words)

   11. The Chinese began to use the wheelbarrow at least ________.( C )

(a) eight centuries ago

(b) ten centuries ago

(c) eighteen centuries ago

(d) two centuries earlier than the Europeans

12. The historian admired the wheelbarrow because it could move faster and ________.( D )

(a) carry the food supply of one man

(b) carry the food supply for a whole year

(c) carry a heavy load for twenty miles

(d) carry a much heavier load and save energy

13. The Chinese invention of the wheelbarrow might have reached Europe with the help of any of the following except ________.( D )

(a) nomadic tribes

(b) traders using the silk-route

(c) Mediterranean

(d) ancient Greeks

14. The European design of the wheelbarrow ________.( D )

(a) has the wheel in the middle under the load

(b) is similar to that of the Chinese

(c) needs less pushing force

(d) is less scientific than the Chinese one

15. The final paragraph discusses ________. ( A )

(a) the European wheelbarrow

(b) the difference between the European wheelbarrow and the Chinese wheelbarrow

(c) how the idea of the wheelbarrow came to Europe

(d) the invention of the wheelbarrow                                TOP