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  3. What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America—breakthrough such as the telegraph, the steamboat and

What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America—breakthrough such as the telegraph, the steamboat and

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问题     What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America—breakthrough 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 required in mechanical technology. As Eugene Ferguson has pointed out, "A technologist thinks about objects that cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in his mind by a visual, nonverbal process.... The designer and the inventor... are able to assemble and manipulate in their minds devices that as yet do not exist. "
    This nonverbal "spatial" thinking can be just as creative as painting and writing. Robert Fulton once wrote, "The mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc. , like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as an exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea. "
    When all these shaping forces—schools, open attitudes, the premium system, a genius for spatial thinking—interacted with one another on the rich U. S. mainland, they produced that American characteristic emulation. Today that word implies mere imitation. But in earlier times it meant a friendly but competitive striving for fame and excellence.
Questions:
According to the author, the great outburst of major inventions in early America was in a large part due to______.
选项 A、elementary schools
B、enthusiastic workers
C、the attractive premium system
D、a special way of thinking
答案D
解析 第1题问按作者所说美国早期重大发明的大量涌现在很大程度上是由于什么原因造成的。文章第一段就以问题的方式提出了这一主题句，而作者在第二段中马上就做了回答。根据文章第二段，“在诸多形成因素中，我想特别提出的是这个国家良好的初等教育，欢迎新技术的劳动大军，给发明者以奖励的做法，最主要的，美国人处理技术问题时所具有的空间思维天赋。”由此，我们可以推断，作者认为美国早期重大发明的大量涌现，在很大程度上是由于美国人所具有的空间思维的天赋。所以，本题的正确答案是D。而选项A：初等教育；选项B：积极热情的劳动者；和选项C：吸引人的奖赏制度，虽然在文章第二段中都提到了，但它们只是原因之一，不如答案D“特殊的思维方式”主要，这一点可以从该段最后一句话的提示词语“above all”中得到提示。所以，答案A、B、C均为错误选项。
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