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

What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America—breakthroughs 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—breakthroughs 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.
A technologist can be compared to an artist because________.
选项 A、they are both winners of awards
B、they are both experts in spatial thinking
C、they both abandon verbal description
D、they both use various instruments
答案B
解析 本题关键词是A technologist和an artist，问题是：可以把技术人员比作艺术家的原因是什么?定位到第四段。根据第四段第三、四句，这种非语言的“空间”思维方式(nonverbal “spatial” thinking)与绘画(painting)和写作一样具有创造性。正如富尔顿所指出的：“技术人员坐在杠杆、螺钉、楔子、轮子等东西中间，就如同一位诗人处在(sit down among)字母表的字母之中，应该把它们看作自己思想的一种表达，其中每一个新的组合都能传达一种新的想法。”可见，进行形象的空间思维是这两种人的共同特征，因此选项B与原文属于相同含义，为正确选项。选项A无中生有，文章没有两者都是获奖者的相关信息。选项C属于主观推导，因为“善于进行非语言的空间思维”不等于“不用语言描述”。选项D属于曲解文意，文章说技术人员善于运用空间思维，善于组合杠杆、螺钉、楔子、轮子等工具，但没有说诗人使用各种各样的工具。
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