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OFFICIAL34 Prose Summary By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy.

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The Development of Steam Power
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By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy. Because of the growth of population, most of the great forests of medieval Britain had long ago been replaced by fields of grain and hay. Wood was in ever-shorter supply, yet it remained tremendously important. It served as the primary source of heat for all homes and industries and as a basic raw material. Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel that was mixed with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron (raw iron). The iron industry’s appetite for wood was enormous, and by 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. Vast forests enabled Russia to become the world’s leading producer of iron, much of which was exported to Britain. But Russia’s potential for growth was limited too, and in a few decades Russia would reach the barrier of inadequate energy that was already holding England back.

As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain looked toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal as an alternative to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat. By 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it also provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other products. Coal was not used, however, to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. It was there that coal’s potential was enormous.

As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and deeper and were constantly filling with water. Mechanical pumps, usually powered by hundreds of horses waling in circles at the surface, had to be installed. Such power was expensive and bothersome. In an attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines were extremely inefficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump. However, by the early 1770s, many of the Savery engines and hundreds of the Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though inefficiently, in English and Scottish mines.

In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James Watt was drawn to a critical study of the steam engine. Watt was employed at the time by the University of Glasgow as a skilled crafts worker making scientific instruments. In 1763, Watt was called on to repair a Newcomen engine being used in a physics course. After a series of observations, Watt saw that the Newcomen’s waste of energy could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine. The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the technological advance that gave people, at least for a while, unlimited power and allowed the invention and use of all kinds of power equipment.

The steam engine was quickly put to use in several industries in Britain. It drained mines and made possible the production of ever more coal to feed steam engines elsewhere. The steam power plant began to replace waterpower in the cotton-spinning mills as well as other industries during the 1780s, contributing to a phenomenal rise in industrialization. The British iron industry was radically transformed. The use of powerful, steam-driven bellows in blast furnaces helped iron makers switch over rapidly from limited charcoal to unlimited coke (which is made from coal) in the smelting of pig iron (the process of refining impure iron) after 1770. In the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke. Cort also developed heavy-duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of producing finished iron in every shape and form.

The economic consequence of these technical innovations in steam power was a great boom in the British iron industry. In 1740 annual British iron production was only 17,000 tons, but by 1844, with the spread of coke smelting and the impact of Cort’s inventions, it had increased to 3,000,000 tons. This was a truly amazing expansion. Once scarce and expensive, iron became cheap, basic, and indispensable to the economy.

14.Prose Summary By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy.

A.The development of blast furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron made the Britain less dependent on wood.

B.After the medieval period, both Russia and Britain began to look for alternative sources of energy, such as steam power, in order to maintain the growth of their iron industries.

C.Two inventors designed the first steam engines in order to overcome the disadvantages of relying on horses to power the pumps used in mining coal.

D.James Watt was able to improve upon the efficiency of the steam engine and make it useful to several industries.

E.The puddling furnace increased the availability of charcoal to a variety of industries from cotton to iron production.

F.Steam power increased coal production, which in turn allowed extraordinary growth of the iron industry and the British economy.

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正确答案:CDF
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【题目翻译】到18世纪,英国正经历着严重的能源短缺。 A:为生产生铁而开发的高炉使英国对木材的依赖减少了。 B:中世纪以后,俄罗斯和英国都开始寻找替代能源,如蒸汽动力,以维持他们的钢铁工业的增长。 C:两位发明家设计了第一台蒸汽机,以克服依靠马匹驱动采煤用泵的缺点。 D:詹姆斯·瓦特能够提高蒸汽机的效率,并使其对多个行业有用。 E:布丁炉增加了从棉花到钢铁生产的各种行业的木炭供应量。 F:蒸汽动力增加了煤炭产量,从而使钢铁工业和英国经济实现了非凡的增长。 【判定题型】:根据问题的提问方式和6选3的作答方式可以确定该题目为概要小结题。 【选项定位及分析】 A错误。定位文章第一段第五句话中有讲到blast furnace,但是所讲内容与选项不符。 B错误。文章只说了Britain如何克服资源匮乏,从而发展蒸汽能源,而并没有说过Russia的情况。 C正确。对应文章第三段的内容,最早蒸汽机的发明。 D正确。对应文章第四、五段的内容,瓦特改良了蒸汽机,提高了效率并且在各个领域都得到了使用。 E错误。对应第五段倒数第二句话,与文章内容不符,即便正确也是细节。 F正确。对应文章第六段内容,蒸汽机的广泛应用所带来的炼铁业的发展和巨大的经济效益。

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