通過閱讀學(xué)詞匯CET-6（1）

Unit one

Elementary Schools in early America

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.

Given this optimistic approach to technological innovation, the American worker took readily to that special kind of nonverbal thinking requi

【通過閱讀學(xué)詞匯CET-61】相關(guān)文章：

通過面試技巧11-06

通過后就是光明作文07-21

通過軍訓(xùn)認識自己作文08-30

�？荚囃ㄟ^的祝福語10-01

精選團隊活動方案（通過15篇）11-28

預(yù)�？荚図樌�通過的祝福語01-13

科目四通過說說03-01

關(guān)于考試順利通過的祝福語04-16

如何通過眼神看人_誰人眼神08-19

通過努力獲得成功的句子04-21