时间:2019-01-13 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2012年(六月)


英语课

 



Light Bulb Inventor Tried to Create Fake Rubber


At the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, the prolific 1 American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison developed devices that changed industry, communication, and everyday life - from a practical electric light bulb to the motion-picture camera. 


Edison perfected much of this work in his famous laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey 2. But he was almost as busy at his winter home in Fort Myers, Florida, where his work took some interesting twists.


Fort Myers is now a stylish 3 and expensive place to live. But in 1885 when Edison fell in love with it, it was little more than a cow town on the Gulf 4 of Mexico. It had about 200 people and several thousand head of cattle.


Over the years, Edison became good friends with automobile 5 titan Henry Ford 6, who was a guest at the Edisons’ winter home and eventually bought his own place across the street.


Today both houses are part of the same museum complex. Edison, Ford and tire executive Harvey Firestone set up a laboratory there at Edison’s place in Fort Myers.


Unlike the Menlo Park lab, it had few motors, gears and belts, but lots of test tubes and, of all things, trays of flowers. Thomas Edison, the pioneer of electricity, was experimenting with goldenrods.


At the time, automobile tires were made from real rubber, imported from Africa. One company had a monopoly on the shipments, so Firestone and Ford asked Edison to come up with something they could make in the United States.


Edison was trying to perfect a rubber-like substance made of goldenrods when he died in 1931. As it turned out, others went on to develop artificial rubber, made of purely 7 chemical compounds.


So you won’t see big electrical sparks at Edison’s laboratory in Florida. 


But you will see evidence of that goldenrod research and, just outside the door, a huge banyan 8 tree, as big as a house. Harvey Firestone brought what is now a massive tangle 9 of trunk and branches and roots to Edison from Calcutta, India, in 1925.


Thomas Edison came to love plants - the goldenrods, the banyan, and palm trees. He gave tiny Fort Myers hundreds of palm saplings to plant along the main road. Today they form a beautiful canopy 10 for which Fort Myers is famous.




adj.丰富的,大量的;多产的,富有创造力的
  • She is a prolific writer of novels and short stories.她是一位多产的作家,写了很多小说和短篇故事。
  • The last few pages of the document are prolific of mistakes.这个文件的最后几页错误很多。
n.运动衫
  • He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
  • They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致,都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。
adj.流行的,时髦的;漂亮的,气派的
  • He's a stylish dresser.他是个穿着很有格调的人。
  • What stylish women are wearing in Paris will be worn by women all over the world.巴黎女性时装往往会引导世界时装潮流。
n.海湾;深渊,鸿沟;分歧,隔阂
  • The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
  • There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。
n.汽车,机动车
  • He is repairing the brake lever of an automobile.他正在修理汽车的刹车杆。
  • The automobile slowed down to go around the curves in the road.汽车在路上转弯时放慢了速度。
n.浅滩,水浅可涉处;v.涉水,涉过
  • They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上,所以我们只能涉水过河。
  • If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪,必须极度小心。
adv.纯粹地,完全地
  • I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
  • This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。
n.菩提树,榕树
  • This huge banyan tree has a history of more than 400 years.这棵大榕树已经有四百多年的历史了。
  • A large banyan tree may look like a forest.大型的榕树看起来象一片树林。
n.纠缠;缠结;混乱;v.(使)缠绕;变乱
  • I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
  • If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你,我就不跟他们争吵。
n.天篷,遮篷
  • The trees formed a leafy canopy above their heads.树木在他们头顶上空形成了一个枝叶茂盛的遮篷。
  • They lay down under a canopy of stars.他们躺在繁星点点的天幕下。
学英语单词
admission policy
al kuflah
Anisozygoptera
anything like
arch cantilever bridge
articular cancer
automatic gear
autotransion
ball catch
ballwinners
be computed and taxed separately
board of secondary school studies
brake master cylinder (main cylinder)
brassinosteroid
bulbille
burgerking
captive test
centiuit
Colepax
conidia occur on the lesion
corner-man
earth resources observation satellite
elaeagnaceae oleaster family
emergency tracheotomy
epinicions
eschenbach
euchelus bourcieri
expected effect
fifteen and two
Financial Performance
flexibles
forest plantation
four-velocity
frame check sequence error
free meander
fugitive colour
future consideration
gate pressure
Gornovodnoye
granola bars
h rider haggard
Harlech dome
high-definitions
house of teaching
humeral and tibia nail
humoralist
hyodesoxycholaneresis
imperfectas
Italianate
IVDS
kaliningrad (k?nigsberg)
Kangeeak Pt.
kok-sagyzs
l? chu
lacrimal gland
lanius sphenocercus sphenocercus
Lilleφ
long range alpha ray
Low Archipelago
metacarpi
microprocessing unit interface
motor support stand
moves in
newly-builts
nn. digitales volares communes
otoplasty
overriding a veto
peppermint shrimp
PGR (precision graph recorder)
pilot-scale
pinch graft
pintle score
pool of labor
porton down
purchase fund
Pyrzyce
raffell
regiones epigastrica
reliability prediction
resource information
restaurant attendant
rollaways
sabertooth fishes
shaft end
steering circuit
stoors
sweet love
tatro
tellinella verrucosa
tetrahydrodipicolinic acid
three-mile limit
trans-atlantic telephone circuits
transfusion cannula
two dimensional compression
veld sores
warder (wardair)
web divers
wet- flashover
Z-therapy
zincous