Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-produ

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问题     Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense
is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-product of industrialism—a
sort of psychological analogy of synthetic perfumes and aniline dyes. (1)______
    Time is our tyrant. We are chronologically aware of the moving minute (2)______
hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be.
    There are trains to be caught, tasks to be done in specified periods, re
cords to be broken by factions of a second, machines that set the pace and (3)______
have to be kept up with. Our consciousness of the smallest units of time is
now big. To us, for example, the moment 8.17 A.M. means something— (4)______
something very important, if happens to be the starting time of our daily (5)______
train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was with signifi- (6)______
cance—did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson
were part inventors of time.
    Another time-emphasized entity is the factory and its dependent, the (7)______
office. Factories exist for the purpose of getting certain quantity of goods (8)______
made in a certain time. The artisan worked as it suited him with the result
that consumers generally had to wait for the goods they had ordered from
him. The factory is a device for making workman hurry. The machine re
volves so often each minute; so many movements have to be made, so many
pieces produce each hour. Result: the factory worker is compelled to know (9)______
time in its smallest fractions. In the hand-work age there was no such a com- (10)______
pulsion to be aware of minutes and seconds.
(8)

选项

答案quantity — quantities

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