Question

Do you know some great inventors and their inventions?

What factors (因素) are needed for their success?

Well, good timing for a start. You can have a great idea which the public simply doesn’t want … yet. The Italian Giovanni Caselli invented the first fax（傳真）machine in the 1860s. Although the quality is excellent, his invention quickly died a commercial(商業(yè)的) death. It was not until the 1980s that the fax became very common in every office… too late for Giovanni Caselli.

Money also helps. The Frenchman Denis Papin (1647-1712) had the idea for a steam engine （蒸汽機）almost a hundred years before the better-remembered Scotsman James Watt was even born… but he never had enough money to build one.

You also need to be patient (it took scientists nearly eighty years to develop a light bulb which actually worked)… but not too patient. In the 1870s, Elisha Gray, a professional inventor from Chicago, developed plans for a telephone. Gray saw it as no more than “a beautiful toy”. However, when he finally sent details of his invention to the Patent Office(專利局) in February，1876, it was too late. Almost the same invention had arrived two hours earlier and the young man who sent it , Alexander Graham Bell, will always be remembered as the inventor of the telephone.

Of course what you really need is a great idea—but if you haven’t got one, a walk in the country and a careful look at nature can help. The Swiss scientist, George de Mestral, had the idea for Velcro(魔術(shù)貼) when he found his clothes covered in sticky seed pods after a walk in the country. During a similar walk in the French countryside some 250 years earlier, Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur had the idea that paper could be made from wood when he found an abandoned wasps’ nest(蜂巢).

You also need good commercial sense. Willy Higinbotham was a scientist doing nuclear (核能的)research in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, USA. In 1958 the public were invited to an exhibition in the Laboratory to see their work, but both parents and children were more interested in a tiny 120cm screen with a white dot which could be hit back and forth over a “net” using a button and a knob. Soon hundreds of people were ignoring the other exhibits to play the first ever computer game—made from a simple laboratory instrument called an “oscilloscope”. Higinbotham, however, never made money from his invention: he thought people were only interested in the game because the other exhibits were so boring!

1.How many factors do inventors need?

A. 3. B. 4. C. 5. D. 6.

2.The word “ignoring” in last paragraph probably mean?

A. having no idea of B. making no sense to

C. getting no chance of D. paying no attention to

3.What can you learn from the passage?

A. Giovanni Caselli invented the first fax machine in the 1980s.

B. Denis Papin afforded to build a steam engine a hundred years ago.

C. Elisha Gray missed the chance to be the inventor of the telephone.

D. George de Mestral got the idea from a walk in a French countryside.

4.What is the best title for the passage?

A. How to be a successful inventor.

B. How to get a great idea from nature.

C. How to have good commercial sense.

D. How to make money from inventions.

Answer 1