跳转到路径导航栏
不支持Flash
跳转到正文内容

1996年Passage 4

http://www.sina.com.cn   2008年09月19日 23:04   新浪考试

  What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America-breakthroughs such as the telegraph , the steamboat and the weaving machine?

  Among the many shaping factors, I would single out the country’s excellent elementary schools; a labor force that welcomed the new technology; the practice of giving premiums to inventors; and above all the American genius for nonverbal , “spatial” thinking about things technological .

  Why mention the elementary schools? Because thanks to these schools our early mechanics ,especially in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, were generally literate and at home in arithmetic and in some aspects of geometry and trigonometry.

  Acute foreign observers related American adaptiveness and inventiveness to this educational advantage. As a member of a British commission visiting here in 1853 reported, “With a mind prepared by thorough school discipline, the American boy develops rapidly into the skilled workman.”

  A further stimulus to invention came from the “premium” system, which preceded our patent system and for years ran parallel with it. This approach, originated abroad, offered inventors medals, cash prizes and other incentives.

  In the United States, multitudes of premiums for new devices were awarded at country fairs and at the industrial fairs in major cities. Americans flocked to these fairs to admire the new machines and thus to renew their faith in the beneficence of technological advance.

上一页 1 2 3 下一页

    更多信息请访问:新浪考研频道 考研论坛 考研博客圈

  特别说明:由于各方面情况的不断调整与变化,新浪网所提供的所有考试信息仅供参考,敬请考生以权威部门公布的正式信息为准。

Powered By Google

相关链接

·改革30年30城市变与迁 ·新浪《对话城市》 ·诚招合作伙伴 ·新企邮上线更优惠

新浪简介About Sina广告服务联系我们招聘信息网站律师SINA English会员注册产品答疑┊Copyright © 1996-2009 SINA Corporation, All Rights Reserved

新浪公司 版权所有