托福阅读素材：驱动工业革命(社会科学篇)

　　托福阅读素材社会科学篇：工业革命之后，蒸汽机在各方面使用，大大提高了工作效率。新东方在线托福网为大家带来托福阅读素材：驱动工业革命(社会科学篇)，希望对大家托福备考有所帮助，更多精彩尽请关注新东方在线托福网!

Powering the Industrial Revolution

驱动工业革命

　　1.In Britain one of the most dramatic changes of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of power. Until the reign of George Ⅲ(1760-1820), available sources of power for work and travel had not increased since the Middle Ages. There were three sources of power: animal or human muscles;the wind, operating on sail or windmill;and running water. Only the last of these was suited at all to the continuous operating of machines, and although waterpower abounded in Lancashire and Scotland and ran grain mills as well as textile mills, it had one great disadvantage: streams flowed where nature intended them to, and water-driven factories had to be located on their banks whether or not the location was desirable for other reasons. Furthermore, even the most reliable waterpower varied with the seasons and disappeared in a drought. The new age of machinery, in short, could not have been born without a new source of both movable and constant power.

　　段落梗概：在英国，工业革命带来的最大的变化之一就是动力的运用。从中世纪到乔治三世统治时期，用于劳作及行驶的动力一直没有得到发展。当时的驱动力仅限于三种：动物或人力;风力，用于航行或者风车;流水产生的动力。其中只有水力可以用于支持持续运转的机器，但这种动力存在一个极大的缺陷：水的流向是由自然因素决定的;再者，会受到季节变化和因干旱而枯竭的影响。总之，没有可持续提供动力并且可移动的能源就没有新机械化时代的产生。

　　2.The source had long been known but not exploited. Early in the eighteenth century, a pump had come into use in which expanding steam raised a piston in a cylinder, and atmospheric pressure brought it down again when the steam condensed inside the cylinder to form a vacuum. This “atmospheric engine,” invented by Thomas Savery and vastly improved by his partner, Thomas Newcomen, embodied revolutionary principles, but it was so slow and wasteful of fuel that it could not be employed outside the coal mines for which it had been designed. In the 1760s, James Watt perfected a separate condenser for the steam, so that the cylinder did not have to be cooled at every stroke;then he devised a way to make the piston turn a wheel and thus convert reciprocating (back and forth) motion into rotary motion. He thereby transformed an inefficient pump of limited use into a steam engine of a thousand uses. The final step came when steam was introduced into the cylinder to drive the piston backward as well as forward, thereby increasing the speed of the engine and cutting its fuel consumption.

　　段落梗概：一直以来，人们很早就了解这种能源，不过没能成功开发。在18世纪早期，泵曾被用使用，并被改良，被赋予了革命性的工作原理。但其效率低下且浪费燃料。18世纪60年代，瓦特完善了技术。

　　3.Watt's steam engine soon showed what it could do. It liberated industry from dependence on running water. The engine eliminated water in the mines by driving efficient pumps, which made possible deeper and deeper mining. The ready availability of coal inspired William Murdoch during the 1790s to develop the first new form of nighttime illumination to be discovered in a millennium and a half. Coal gas rivaled smoky oil lamps and flickering candles, and early in the new century, well-to-do Londoners grew accustomed to gaslit houses and even streets. Iron manufacturers, which had starved for fuel while depending on charcoal, also benefited from ever-increasing supplies of coal: blast furnaces with steam-powered bellows turned out more iron and steel for the new machinery. Steam became the motive force of the Industrial Revolution as coal and iron ore were the raw materials.

　　段落梗概：瓦特发明的蒸汽机很快地施展了拳脚，把依赖水源的工业解放了出来。比如：通过驱动高效率的泵，矿井能挖掘得更深。煤的便利使用激发了开发夜间照明设备。配备有蒸汽动力的鼓风炉使得越来越多的钢铁供应成为可能。蒸汽成为了工业革命中的主要动力，当时的煤矿和铁矿成为了是工业的主要原材料。

　　4.By 1800 more than a thousand steam engines were in use in the British Isles, and Britain retained a virtual monopoly on steam engine production until the 1830s. Steam power did not merely spin cotton and roll iron;early in the new century, it also multiplied ten times over the amount of paper that a single worker could produce in a day. At the same time, operators of the first printing presses run by steam rather than by hand found it possible to produce a thousand pages in an hour rather than thirty. Steam also promised to eliminate a transportation problem not fully solved by either canal boats or turnpikes. Boats could carry heavy weights, but canals could not cross hilly terrain;turnpikes could cross the hills, but the roadbeds could not stand up under great weights. These problems needed still another solution, and the ingredients for it lay close at hand. In some industrial regions, heavily laden wagons, with flanged wheels, were being hauled by horses along metal rails;and the stationary steam engine was puffing in the factory and mine. Another generation passed before inventors succeeded in combining these ingredients, by putting the engine on wheels and the wheels on the rails, so as to provide a machine to take the place of the horse. Thus the railroad age sprang from what had already happened in the eighteenth century.

　　段落梗概：19世纪时，英国已经拥有上千台蒸汽发动机，直到19世纪30年代以前，英国在蒸汽机的生产方面一直处于实质性垄断地位。蒸汽机在各方面使用，大大提高了工作效率。