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雙語+MP3|美國學生世界歷史82 產生奇跡的時代

所屬教程:希利爾:美國學生文史經典套裝

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2018年11月23日

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https://online2.tingclass.net/lesson/shi0529/10000/10122/美國學生世界歷史-82.mp3
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82
The Age of Miracles
產生奇跡的時代

     You may think the Age of Miracles was in Biblical days.
     But if a man who lived at that time should come back to earth now he would think this the Age of Miracles.
     If he heard you talk on a telephone to a person thousands of miles away, or even a hundred feet away, he would think you a magician.
     If you showed him people moving and talking on a movie screen or a television screen, he would think you a witch.
     If he heard you start a band playing by turning on a tape player or a radio, he would think you a devil.
     If he saw you fly through the air in an airplane, he would think you a god.
     We are so used to the telephone, television, and tape recorders, to automobiles and huge trucks and jet planes, to electric lights and moving pictures and radios and marvelous cameras that it is hard to imagine a world in which none of these things existed-absolutely none of these things. Yet in the year 1800, not a single one of these inventions was known.
     Neither George Washington nor Napoleon ever saw an airplane or an automobile. They never used a telephone or a radio or even a bicycle. They never heard of a gasoline engine or a diesel engine or an electric light. They never even imagined men walking on the moon, or close-up photographs of Mars, or television sets, or even typewriters. And as for computers and radar and X-rays-well!
     More wonders have been made in the last hundred years than in all the previous centuries of the world put together.
     A Scotsman named James Watt was one of the first of these magicians whom we call inventors. Watt had watched a boiling kettle on the stove and noticed that the steam lifted the lid. This gave him an idea that steam might lift other things as well as the lid of a teakettle. So he made a machine in which steam lifted a lid called a piston in such a way as to turn a wheel. This was the first steam engine.
     Watt's steam engine moved wheels and other things, but it didn't move itself. An Englishman named Stephenson put Watt's engine on wheels and made the engine move its own wheels. This was the first locomotive. Soon funny-looking carriages drawn by funny-looking engines were made to run on tracks in America. At first these trains ran only a few miles out, from such cities as Baltimore and Philadelphia.
     Then a young fellow named Robert Fulton thought he could make a boat go by putting Watt's engine on board and making it turn paddle wheels. People laughed at him and called the boat he was building Fulton's Folly, which means Fulton's foolishness. But the boat worked, and Fulton had the laugh on those who had laughed at him. He called his boat the Clermont, and it made regular trips up and down the Hudson River.
     No one had ever before been able to talk to another far off until the telegraph was invented. The telegraph makes a clicking sound. Electricity flows through a wire from one place to another place which may be a long distance off. If you press a button at one end of the wire, you stop the electricity flowing through the wire, and the instrument at the other end makes a click. A short click is called a dot, and a long click is called a dash. These dots and dashes stand for letters of the alphabet so you can spell out a message by dots and dashes.

Riverboat with steam-driven paddle wheel (由蒸汽驅動槳輪的內河船)
     A is  ?  - dot-dash
     B is  - ??? dash-dot-dot-dot
     E is  ?   dot
     H is  ????  dot-dot-dot-dot
     T is  -  dash

     An American painter named Morse invented this wonderful little instrument. He built the first telegraph line in America between Baltimore and Washington, and this was the first message he clicked across it: "What hath God wrought!"
     A schoolteacher named Bell was trying to find some way of making deaf children hear, and in doing so he invented the telephone. The telephone carries words as the telegraph carries clicks. You do not have to know a special alphabet or spell out words by dots and dashes as you do on the telegraph. With the telephone, anyone can talk from one side of the world to the other, and with ships at sea and planes in the air.
     Many inventions now in everyday use have been partly invented by several people, so that it is hard to say just which one thought of the invention first. Several people thought of a way to run a machine by feeding it electricity. This was the electric motor. Then others thought of a way to run a machine by exploding gas. This was the motor used in automobiles.
     Automobiles, as you know, became very popular. At first, people didn't need a license to drive and there were no traffic controls--like stop signs or traffic signals-on the streets. You can imagine some of the problems this caused. An African American named Garrett Morgan invented the three-color traffic signal and patented it in 1923. This helped make the streets safer for cars and for people walking too.
     Electric lights were invented by Thomas Alva Edison. Edison was called a wizard, because in the Middle Ages, wizards were supposed to be able to do and to make all sorts of wonderful and impossible things, to turn lead into gold, to make people invisible, and that sort of thing. But Edison has done things that no wizard of a fairy tale had ever even thought of. Edison was a poor boy who sold newspapers and magazines on a train. He was interested in all sorts of experiments and fitted up a place in the baggage car where he could make experiments. But he made so much of a mess in the car that at last the baggageman kicked Edison's whole outfit off the train. Edison invented many things connected with the phonograph and the movies, and he has probably made more useful and important inventions than any other man who has ever lived, so that he is much greater than those mere kings who have done nothing but quarrel and destroy-without whom the world would have been much better off if they had never lived!
     Thousands of people who lived in the past ages tried to fly and failed. Millions of people have said it was impossible to fly and foolish to try. Some have even said it was wicked to try, that God meant that only birds and angels should fly. At last, after long years of work and thousands of trials, two American brothers named Wright did the impossible. They invented the airplane and, in 1905, the plane flew 24.2 miles in 38 minutes 3 seconds!
     An Italian named Marconi invented the radio, and others every day are still making wonderful inventions, but you will have to read about these yourself, for this book isn't big enough for me to tell you all about them.
     Here is a good subject for an argument or debate: Are we any happier with all these inventions than people were a thousand years ago without them?
     Life is faster and more exciting; but it is more difficult and more dangerous. Instead of singing or playing the violin, or piano, we turn on the stereo or the radio and miss the chief joy in music, the joy of making it ourselves. Instead of the jogging drive in an old buggy behind a horse that goes along through the countryside almost by himself, we speed on in dangerous autos, to which we must pay constant, undivided attention or be wrecked. Instead of pure air, we often have pollution.







     你也許認為產生奇跡的時代是圣經里所寫的時代。
     但是如果生活在那個時期的人重返"現(xiàn)在的"地球,他一定會認為現(xiàn)在這個時代才是產生奇跡的時代。
     如果他聽到你用電話和幾千英里以外或者哪怕是幾百英尺以外的人說話,他會認為你是個魔法師。
     如果你讓他看到人們在電影里或電視屏幕上活動和說話,他會認為你是個巫師。
     如果你打開磁帶放送機或收音機,讓他聽到樂隊開始演奏,他會認為你是個魔鬼。
     如果他看到你坐飛機在空中飛過,他會認為你是個神。
     我們習慣了電話、電視和錄音機,習慣了汽車、大卡車和噴氣式飛機,習慣了電燈、電影、收音機和奇妙的照相機,因此很難想象如果這些東西都不存在--沒有任何一件這樣的東西,世界是個什么樣的。然而在公元1800年,所有這些發(fā)明還沒有一樣為世人所知。
     無論是喬治?華盛頓還是拿破侖都從未見過飛機或汽車。他們從未用過電話、收音機甚至自行車。他們從未聽說過汽油發(fā)動機或柴油機或電燈。他們甚至從未想象過人會在月球上行走,或者拍到火星的特寫照片,還有電視機,甚至打字機這類東西。至于電腦、雷達和X射線--好啦!
     過去一百年所創(chuàng)造的奇跡比以前所有世紀創(chuàng)造的總和還要多。
     一個名叫詹姆斯?瓦特的蘇格蘭人是最早創(chuàng)造奇跡的魔法師中的一個,這些魔法師我們稱為發(fā)明家。瓦特觀察爐子上一只燒開的水壺,注意到壺里的蒸汽頂起了壺蓋。這使他產生一個靈感,蒸汽也許可以像頂起茶壺蓋那樣頂起其他東西。于是他制造了臺機器,機器里蒸汽頂起一個稱為活塞的蓋子,活塞往復運動推動輪子轉動。這是第一臺蒸汽發(fā)動機。
     瓦特的蒸汽機推動了輪子和其他東西,但是它無法推動自身。一個名叫斯蒂芬森的英國人把瓦特的蒸汽機裝上輪子,讓蒸汽機推動自身的輪子。這就是第一臺火 車頭。不久怪模怪樣的車廂由怪模怪樣的發(fā)動機拉著就在美國的鐵軌上跑起來了。最初這些火車只能從諸如巴爾的摩和費城這些城市跑出幾英里遠。
     接著一個名叫羅伯特?富爾頓的年輕人認為把瓦特的發(fā)動機裝在船上,讓它推動槳輪,這樣船就可以航行了。人們嘲笑他,把他正在造的船叫做"富爾頓的蠢物",意指"富爾頓愚笨"。但是這條船開動了,富爾頓讓那些嘲笑過他的人成了被嘲笑對象。他給他的船起名為"克萊蒙特",克萊蒙特號船定期沿哈得孫河來回航行。
     以前沒有人能和遠方的人對話,直到發(fā)明了電報機。電報機發(fā)出咔噠聲。電流通過電線從一個地方傳到另一個也許很遠的地方。如果你在電線的一端按下按鈕,你就阻止了電流通過電線傳輸,那么電線另一端的儀器就發(fā)出咔噠聲。短的咔噠聲叫做"點",長的咔噠聲叫做"劃"。這些點和劃代表了字母表中的字母,這樣你可以通過點和劃將一條信息全部拼寫出來。

     A是  ?-  點-劃
     B是  - ???  劃-點-點-點
     E是  ?   點
     H是  ????  點-點-點-點
     T是  -  劃

     一個名叫莫爾斯的美國畫家發(fā)明了這個奇妙的小儀器。他在巴爾的摩和華盛頓之間建了第一條電報線,這是他咔噠咔噠通過這條電報線發(fā)送的第一條消息:"上帝的杰作!"
     一個名叫貝爾的教師正試圖找到某種方法讓耳聾兒童聽見聲音,在解決這個問題的過程中,他發(fā)明了電話。電話傳輸語音如同電報機傳輸咔噠聲一樣。有了電話,你不必像使用電報那樣知道特別的字母表或者通過點和劃來拼出單詞。任何人都可以用電話從世界的一邊和世界的另一邊通話,也可以和正在海上航行的船只,和在空中飛翔的飛機通話。
     現(xiàn)在日常用到的許多發(fā)明,有一些是由幾個人共同發(fā)明的,所以很難說是哪一個人最先想到這項發(fā)明的。有些人想出通過輸入電能來開動機器的方法。這就是電動機。然后另一些人想出通過燃燒氣體燃料,使其膨脹來開動機器。這就是用于汽車上的內燃機。
     你知道的,汽車變得非常普及。最初,人們駕車不需要執(zhí)照,道路上也沒有任何交通管制--比如停車標志或紅綠燈。你可以想象由此引起的一些問題。一個名叫加勒特?摩根的非洲裔美國人發(fā)明了三色交通管理燈,并于1923年取得這項發(fā)明的專利權。有了交通管理燈,街道上的車輛就可以安全行駛,行人也可以安全走路了。
     電燈是托馬斯?阿爾瓦?愛迪生發(fā)明的。愛迪生被稱為巫師,因為在中世紀,巫師被認為無所不能,能制造出各種奇妙的和難以置信的東西,讓鉛變成金子,讓人 隱身,以及類似的事情。但是愛迪生做的東西連童話故事里的巫師都想不到。愛迪生小時候很窮,在火車上賣報紙和雜志。他對各種實驗都感興趣,還在行李車廂里布置了一塊他可以做實驗的地方。但是他把車廂弄得一團糟,最后行李管理員把愛迪生的全套裝備都踢出了火車。愛迪生發(fā)明了許多與留聲機和電影有關的東西,他的發(fā)明既有用又重要,其數(shù)量大概超過有史以來任何一個人的發(fā)明。因此他比那些做了國王只會爭斗和破壞的人要偉大多了。如果那些人從未存在過,這個世界少了他們只會更加美好。
     在過去那些年代里許許多多人嘗試要飛起來,都失敗了。更多的人說飛起來是不可能的,只有傻子才去嘗試。有些人甚至說嘗試飛行是邪惡的,因為上帝只打算讓鳥兒和天使飛行。最后,經過多年的努力和成百上千次的試驗,兩個名叫萊特的美國兄弟創(chuàng)造了不可思議的奇跡。他們發(fā)明了飛機,在1905年這架飛機在38分3秒內飛行了24.2英里!
     一個名叫馬可尼的意大利人發(fā)明了收音機,現(xiàn)在每天仍有一些人在構思奇特的發(fā)明創(chuàng)造,但是你要自己去讀這方面的書了,因為我要是把所有這些發(fā)明都給你講一講,這本書就寫不下了。
     這里有個值得爭論或辯論的題目:我們"有了"所有這些發(fā)明,真的比一千年前"沒有"這些發(fā)明的人更幸福嗎?
     現(xiàn)在的生活節(jié)奏更快也更刺激,但是也有了更多的困難和風險。我們不再去唱歌或拉小提琴、彈鋼琴,只是打開唱機或收音機,從而失去了音樂中的主要樂趣--自己演奏音樂的樂趣。我們不再坐在一輛舊馬車后面,顛簸前行,任馬兒自己拉著走過鄉(xiāng)間小路,而是開著危險的汽車高速行駛,一路必須全神貫注,不能有片刻分神,否則就要出車禍。我們不再有純凈的空氣,而經常面臨污染。


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