By the 1820’s in the United States, when steamboats were common on western waters, these boats were mostly powered by engines bu

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问题      By the 1820’s in the United States, when steamboats were common on western waters, these boats were mostly powered by engines built in the West (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, or Louisville), and of a distinctive western design specially suited to western needs. The first steam engines  【21】______   practical use in England and the United States were  【22】______   low-pressure design. This was the type first  【23】______   by James Watt, then manufactured by the firm of Boulton and Watt. Steam was  【24】______   in a large, double-acting vertical cylinder, but the steam reached only a few pounds of pressure per square inch. It was low-pressure engines of this type that 【25】______   first introduced into the United States by Robert Fulton. He 【26】______   such a Boulton and Watt engine from England to run the Clermont. But this type of engine was ,expensive and complicated,  【27】______   many precision-fitted moving parts.
      The engine that became standard on western steamboats was of a different and  【28】______   design. It was the work primarily of an unsung hero of American industrial progress, Oliver Evans (1755-1819), the  【29】______   son of a Delaware farmer. Evans early became  【30】______   by the possibilities of mechanized production and steam power. As early as 1802 he  【31】______   a stationary steam engine of high-pressure design in his mill. Engines of this type were not  【32】______  , but before Evans they were generally considered 【33】______   and dangerous. Within a decade the high-pressure engine, the new type, had become standard on western waters. Critics  【34】______   of western conditions often attacked it as wasteful and dangerous.
     But people who really knew the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi  【35】______  , with good reasons, that it was the only engine for them. In  【36】______   western rivers the weight of vessel and engine  【37】______   important; a heavy engine added to the problem of navigation. The high-pressure engine was 【38】______  lighter in proportion to horsepower, and, with less than half as many moving parts, was much easier and cheaper to repair. The main advantages of low-pressure engines were safe operation and  【39】______   of fuel consumption,  【40】______   of which meant much in the West..  
【37】

选项 A、is
B、are
C、was
D、were

答案C

解析
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