9 A2 the greatest invention of all time

CHAPTER 1 What Is the Greatest Invention SCIENTISTS INVENT NEW THINGS EVERY DAY. SOME OF THESE THINGS BECOME AN IMPORTANT PART OF OUR LIVES. How many of your friends have a cell phone or a laptop? How many of them use the Internet? The answer is probably all of them. We use the Internet to talk to our friends, to buy things, to get information, and to do business. But it's a very modern invention. Many other inventions that are part of our lives were not around 100 or 150 years ago. But it's difficult to imagine life without them.

什么是最伟大的发明科学家每天都发明新东西。 其中一些东西成为我们生活中重要的一部分。 你的朋友中有多少人有手机或笔记本电脑？ 他们中有多少人使用互联网？ 答案可能是全部。 我们用互联网和朋友聊天，买东西，获取信息，做生意。 但这是一项非常现代的发明。 我们生活中的许多其他发明都不是在100年或150年前发明的。 但很难想象没有它们的生活。

In this book, you're going to read about some important inventions. Maybe you don't think they're inventions because you use them every day. For example, pipes bring water into our homes. We read books, magazines, and comic books because someone invented a special machine to print them. Imagine life without cars or airplanes, without refrigerators and medicines. They're all inventions. As you read this book, think about this question: "What single invention is the most important to everybody in the world?"

在这本书中，你将读到一些重要的发明。 也许你不认为它们是发明，因为你每天都在使用它们。 例如，水管把水带到我们家里。 我们之所以阅读书籍、杂志和漫画书，是因为有人发明了一种特殊的机器来印刷它们。 想象一下没有汽车、飞机、冰箱和药品的生活。 它们都是发明。当你读这本书的时候，想想这个问题：“哪一项发明对世界上每个人来说都是最重要的？”

CHAPTER 2 Plumbing WHEN YOU TAKE A BATH OR WASH THE DISHES, DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHERE THE WATER COMES FROM? We have plastic or metal pipes in our houses. These pipes bring clean water from rivers and lakes and take dirty water away. This is plumbing. A long time ago, people didn't have baths or toilets in their houses. They carried water from rivers into their homes. About 4,000 years ago people started building special pipes called aqueducts to bring water to their homes. The ancient Romans were especially good at this. The Ancient Romans knew that dirty water made people sick. They built sewers. Sewer pipes took the dirty water out of the towns.

当你洗澡或洗碗时，你会想到水是从哪里来的吗？ 我们的房子里有塑料或金属管道。 这些管道从河流和湖泊中输送干净的水，并带走脏水。 这是管道。很久以前，人们的房子里没有浴室或厕所。 他们从河里取水回家。 大约4000年前，人们开始建造一种叫做“渡槽”的特殊管道，把水送到家里。 古罗马人尤其擅长于此。 古罗马人知道脏水会让人生病。 他们修建了下水道。污水管道将污水排出城镇。

Thanks to aqueducts, there was plenty of water. The Romans knew that it was important for people to be clean, so they built big baths. In Europe, in the 18th and 19th centuries, thousands of families moved from the countryside into the towns to find work. The towns quickly became big cities. These cities didn't have enough plumbing for so many people. The water in the cities was very dirty. The dirty water ran through the streets and sometimes went into the drinking water. People became sick and died. In the 1800s, cities started to build bigger and better sewers. These sewers carried the dirty water far away. Because of good plumbing and clean water, people became healthier and lived longer.

多亏了沟渠，这里有充足的水。 罗马人知道保持清洁对人们来说很重要，所以他们建造了大浴场。 在欧洲，在18和19世纪，成千上万的家庭从农村搬到城镇找工作。 这些城镇很快变成了大城市。 这些城市没有足够的管道供这么多人使用。 城市里的水很脏。 脏水流过街道，有时进入饮用水。 人们生病和死亡。 19世纪，城市开始修建更大更好的下水道。 这些下水道把脏水排到很远的地方。 由于良好的管道和清洁的水，人们变得更健康，寿命更长。

CHAPTER 3 The Printing Press IN THE 21ST CENTURY, MOST OF US READ BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS, AND MAGAZINES BUT IN THE PAST, ONLY RICH PEOPLE READ BOOKS. In the 15th century, books were very expensive to make and difficult to find. The books were expensive because they took a long time to make. Special workers used pens and pencils to write them on paper made from animal skin. In about 1450, a German man named Johannes Gutenberg had an excellent idea for a machine. This machine could make thousands of books very quickly and very cheaply. He called his machine a printing press. The printing press used metal letters, ink, and paper. This paper was not made from animal skin. It was made from a plant called flax.

在21世纪，我们大多数人都阅读书籍、报纸和杂志，但在过去，只有富人才读书。 在15世纪，书籍制作非常昂贵，而且很难找到。 这些书很贵，因为它们花了很长时间来制作。 专门的工人用钢笔和铅笔在动物皮制成的纸上写字。 大约在1450年，一个名叫约翰内斯·古腾堡的德国人有了一个关于机器的绝妙想法。 这台机器可以快速而廉价地制造成千上万本书。 他把他的机器称为印刷机。 印刷机使用金属字母、墨水和纸张。 这张纸不是动物皮做的。 它是由一种叫做亚麻的植物制成的。

Workers put the metal letters together to make words, but they spelled the words backwards— for example, for the word "House" they put "HOUSE". They put all the words next to each other in a short box to make sentences— also backwards. Then they put ink on top of the letters. They pushed, or pressed, paper onto the inked letters, and pulled the paper off very carefully. The words printed on the paper going the right way! Many people in 15th-century Europe couldn't read or write. Most people didn't go to school, and most never saw a book. They didn't need to read because they worked on farms and learned how to do their jobs from other people. But Gutenberg's new machine changed people's lives.

工人们把金属字母拼在一起组成单词，但是他们把单词反过来拼写——例如，对于“House”这个单词，他们把“House”拼成“House”。 他们把所有的单词一个接一个地放在一个短框里造句——也是反过来的。 然后他们把墨水涂在字母上面。 他们把纸推到有墨水的字母上，然后非常小心地把纸扯下来。 印在纸上的字走对了路！在15世纪的欧洲，许多人不会读书或写字。 大多数人没上过学，也没见过书。 他们不需要阅读，因为他们在农场工作，从别人那里学习如何做他们的工作。 但古腾堡的新机器改变了人们的生活。