美国英语听力80篇3 Lesson46

[00:08.05]Igor Sikorsky left Russia at the start of the revolution in 1917.

[00:15.54]He stayed for a while in Britain and France.

[00:19.54]Then he went to the United States.

[00:22.62]He arrived with little money and no real chances for work.

[00:28.63]America's aviation 1 industry was new and very small.

[00:34.30]There were no jobs.

[00:36.15]In 1923, however, he got help from a group of Russian exiles 2 in the United States.

[00:43.99]They gave him enough money to start his own aviation company, Sikorsky Aero Engineering 4.

[00:52.04]It was on Long Island east of New York City.

[00:56.03]Sikorsky's greatest success during this period was designing seaplanes.

[01:02.48]These planes could land on ground or on water.

[01:06.90]They could fly long distances.

[01:09.83]The Pan 3 American airline company used them to fly from North America to Central and South America.

[01:18.21]In 1929, the Sikorsky company became part of the United Aircraft Corporation 5.

[01:26.83]The re-organized company produced a series of large planes known as flying boats.

[01:34.51]These planes were big enough and powerful enough to fly across oceans.

[01:41.64]They made it possible to move people and goods quickly from the' United States to Europe and Asia.

[01:49.92]Passengers on flying boats rested in soft seats.

[01:54.83]They ate hot meals.

[01:57.68]Air travel had become fun, as well as safe.

[02:01.73]By 1938, Igor Sikorsky decided 6 to experiment with hellcopters again.

[02:10.38]It had been thirty years since his first unsuccessful attempts.

[02:15.03]Through those years, he had written down ideas for possible new designs.

[02:21.56]The first helicopter Sikorsky built in America was the VS300.

[02:28.61]It was a skeleton 7 of steel tubes.

[02:31.61]In its first test flight, it rose about a meter off the ground. Sikorsky then tested nineteen more designs.

[02:42.06]The final design had one main rotator,or rotor.

[02:47.37]The rotor was connected to three long blades 8 on top.

[02:52.15]These blades turned around like an album on a record player.

[02:57.82]They lifted the helicopter into the air.

[03:01.47]A smaller rotor, with shorter blades, was at the back end.

[03:06.62]Those blades turned around like the wheel of a car.

[03:10.77]They kept the body of the helicopter pointed 9 forward.

[03:15.34]This remained the basic design of all Sikorsky helicopters.

[03:20.31]By 1941, the VS300 had set all world records for helicopter flight.

[03:28.93]Military versions 10 were made and some were used in the last years of World War Two.

[03:35.56]Most people, however, still did not accept the new flying machine.

[03:41.34]They said the helicopter had to prove its worth.

[03:45.78]It did that during the war in Korea in the early 1950s.

[03:51.37]Helicopters take off straight into the air.

[03:55.34]They can land just about anywhere.

[03:58.39]They do not need long airport runways like planes.

[04:03.15]During the Korean War, helicopters flew into battle areas to rescue wounded soldiers.

[04:10.83]They flew the men quickly to medical centers set up away from the fighting.

[04:17.15]This greatly improved the men's chances of survival 11.

[04:22.01]Igor Sikorsky, the man most responsible for successfully designing and building helicopters,

[04:30.16]thought helicopters would be a common form of transportation.

[04:34.99]People, he said, would use them instead of automobiles 12.

[04:40.29]They would fly into a city, land on top of a building, go to work, then fly home again.

[04:48.05]This has not happened.

[04:50.80]Privately-owned helicopters are not common.

[04:54.61]Yet helicopters have proved their value in other ways.

[04:59.00]Companies use them to transport heavy equipment to hard-to-reach places.

[05:05.16]Farmers use them to put insect poisons on their crops.

[05:10.20]And emergency teams use them to rescue people from fires and floods.

[05:16.32]Igor Sikorsky continued as an engineering adviser 13 to his aircraft company until he died in 1972.

[05:26.19]He was one of the best known and most respected leaders in international aviation.

[05:33.71]He received more than ninety major awards and honors 14 from many countries and organizations.

[05:41.71]He always said, however, that his greatest satisfaction did not come from receiving honors.

[05:49.91]It did not come from being the first person to design new kinds of aircraft.

[05:55.94]Igor Sikorsky said his greatest satisfaction came from knowing