Inventions and Inventors
发明和发明者
1. If we wrote down the names of all the things people have invented since the beginning of the world, we would have a very long list. We would find that most of these items are improvements on previous inventions. We would also see that many of them have limited use for a particular field purpose.
1、如果我们写下有史以来人们发明的所有事物的名字，我们会有一个很长的名单。我们会发现其中很多东西都是对以往发明的改进。我们也会看到它们其中很多发明都只是在特定领域或对特定目的的有限用途。
2. Occasionally, however, there are inventions which change the way we live. Controlled fire and the wheel are two such inventions which allowed our ancestors to live a better life in safety. Agricultural tools invented about 10,000 years ago helped people learn to grow enough food to feed large populations. They actually led to the development of cities.
2、然而，偶尔有发明会彻底改变我们的生活方式。受控制的火以及车轮就是这样两种发明，它们使我们的祖先在安全上获得更好的生活。大约发明于一万年前的农业工具帮助人们学会生产足够的食物以养活庞大的人口。它们事实上导致了城市的发展。
3. We don't know about the inventors of fire and the wheel, but we can read about the people who invented other things which are important to our everyday lives. In one way or another, all of our lives are affected by their inventions.
3、我们不知道是谁发明火和轮子，但是，我们可以通过阅读得知是谁发明了其它那些对我们日常生活很重要的东西。这些发明以这样或那样的方式，影响着我们所有人的生活。
4. For more than 3,000 years, ships were powered by sails. Then in 1793, an American named Robert Fulton became interested in an idea which would mean the end of sailing ships. Many People knew how to built steamships, but the only ones they could build were small and impractical. No one truly believed that ships run by steam power would replace the beautiful and colorful sailing ships. They were wrong.
4、在三千多年的时间里，船一直依靠帆获得动力。1793年，一位名叫罗伯特·富尔顿的美国人对一个想法产生了兴趣，这个想法意味着帆船时代的终结。很多人知道如何建造蒸汽船，但是他们只能建造一些小而不实用（的蒸汽船）。没有人真正相信以蒸汽为动力的船会取代漂亮而又种类繁多的帆船。他们错了。
5. Fulton worked in France and England for a number of years, perfecting his ideas. Then in 1806, he returned to the United States and began to build the Clermont. It was an experiment to see if anyone could build a ship and operate it successfully as a business. Making money was the true test, since shipbuilders would not invest their money unless they knew that they could make a profit.
5、富尔顿先生在法国和英国工作了许多年，他的想法逐渐完善。之后，在1806年，他返回美国开始建造克莱蒙特号（蒸汽船）。这是一次试验，确定是否可以建造一艘可成功地进行商业运行的蒸汽船。赚钱是真正的试验标准，因为除非造船商知道可以获利，否则不会把他们的钱投进去。
6. The Clermont was 130 feet long, 16 1/2 feet wide and 4 feet deep. On August 11, 1807, the first commercial steamship traveled up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany. It made the round trip of 300 miles in 62 hours. That seems slow to us today, but 200 years ago it was a remarkable speed.
6、克莱蒙特号蒸汽船有130英尺长，16、5英尺宽，4英尺深。1807年8月11日，第一艘商业蒸汽船从纽约市沿哈德逊河逆流而上，驶往阿尔巴尼。它花了62小时完成了300英里往返航行。今天在我们看来航行是缓慢的，但是200年前，这速度是异乎寻常的。
7. Thousands of people watched the event, and most realized immediately how important it was. Within a few years, there were steamships in most parts of the world. Only four years later, the first steamship crossed the Atlantic Ocean. From that time to the present, sails have been used only for pleasure and sporting boats.
7、成千上万的人观看了航行，大多数人立刻意识到这件事是多么重要。几年内，蒸汽船遍布世界上大多数地方。仅仅四年之后，第一艘蒸汽船横渡了大西洋。从那时起到现在，帆船的用途就仅限于娱乐和体育用船了。
8. Travel and transportation were changed when the steamship was invented, and they were changed even more when the locomotive was invented by George Stephenson in 1814.
8、发明蒸汽船之后，人们的旅行和交通运输都改变了。而在1814年，乔治·史蒂芬逊发明蒸汽机车后，变化更大了。
9. Stephenson had seen something like a locomotive at a mine near his home in Killings worth, England. He like the idea and decided that he could build a better one. He changed the tracks from wood to steel and made the locomotive much larger. He had some help from a mine owner, and by July 25, 1814, he was ready.
9、在英国金斯伍斯，史蒂芬逊先生曾经在家附近的某个矿场看到过类似蒸汽机车的东西。他喜欢这个主意，并且决定制造一个更好的蒸汽机车。他把路轨从木头改为钢轨，并且增大了机车体积。他得到了一位矿主的帮助，到了1814年7月25日，他已经准备就绪。
10. The Blucher went only 4 miles per hour, but it pulled a load of 30 tons of coal up hill. It was only the beginning. Within eleven years, there were railroads all over England pulling large amounts of supplies and cargo in short spaces of time. On September 27, 1825, the first full passenger railroad went into operation. It had thirty cars and 300 passengers, and it traveled 15 miles per hour.
10、布吕歇尔号蒸汽机车的时速只有4英里，但是它拖载了30吨煤上山。而这仅仅是开始。在此后11年内，可在很短的时间里运输大量商品和货物的铁路遍布全英国。1825年9月27日，第一条完全用于载客的铁路投入使用。客车有30个车皮、300名旅客，时速达15英里。
11. Stephenson's railroad was efficient and profitable, and a new method of transporting freight and people was here to stay.
11、史蒂芬逊的铁路有效且赚钱，一种运货和载人的新式交通方式面世了。
12. The basis for our modern system of communication began when Samuel Mores invented the telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and Guglielmo Marconi invented the telegraph without wires. All of these eventually led to the later inventions radio and the television and of electronics after them.
12、现代通信系统的起点是从萨缪尔·摩尔斯发明电报、亚历山大·格雷汉姆·贝尔发明电话、以及古格里莫·马可尼发明无线电报开始的。所有这些发明最终导致了此后的飞机、电视和其后的电子元器件的发明。
13. Morse was born in Massachusetts shortly after the Revolutionary War. He "invented" the telegraph while he was still a college student at Yale, but it was thirty-four more years until the first telegraph system began operating between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington D.C. .
13、摩尔斯在美国革命战争后不久在麻省出生。当他还是个耶鲁大学学生时，就“发明”了电报，但是直到三十四年以后，第一个电报系统才开始在马里兰州的巴尔的摩与华盛顿特区之间运行。
14. As with most inventions, Morse borrowed from the ideas of many others in making his telegraph. In 1827, Harrison Grey Dyer used a form of the telegraph on long Island, New York, but he gave up the idea. The problem facing most inventors was finding a good source of electricity to make the telegraph work.
14、如同大多数发明一样，摩尔斯在制作电报借用了许多其他人的想法。1827年，哈里森·格雷·戴尔曾在纽约长岛使用了一种电报形式，但是他放弃了这个想法。当时大多数发明者面临的问题是寻找一个使电报工作的好电源。
15. Morse found that source of power, and he also invented a system for using the telegraph, the Morse code. He was responsible for our first system of communication based on electricity. Morse's system linked most major cities in the United States and Europe, and it is still used today.
15、摩尔斯找到了那种电源，同时他还发明了“摩尔斯码”系统用于电报。他是我们的第一台电力通信系统的创造者。摩尔斯的电报连接着美国和欧洲的大多数主要城市，甚至直到现在被使用。
16. Thirty years after Morse's invention, a man came along who wanted to improve the telegraph. Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, were working on something they called the multiple telegraph. By accident, they allowed two points of their experiment to become stuck together. When they tried to remove the two pieces, they heard a human voice come out of one end of a wire in the other room. It was Watson's voice!
16、在摩尔斯的发明出现30年后，一个人想改进电报，亚历山大·格雷汉姆·贝尔及他的助手托马斯·华生，致力于研究多路电报。他们很偶然地让实验装置的两个点粘在了一起。当他们试图分开这两片实验装置时，他们听到了在另一个房间的线端传出人的声音。那是华生的声音！
17. They tried it again and realized that they had discovered how to send human sounds over a wire. It took another year to make it work perfectly, but by 1876 Bell was able to show the world his telephone.
17、他们又试了一次，意识到自己发现了“如何通过线路传递人的声音”的方法。此后他们又花了一年的时间完善这种方法，到1876年，贝尔已经能够向世界展示他的电话。
18. The first actual telephone call also had something to do with an accident. Bell and Watson had everything set for their first test of the invention. Bell had his phone in one room and Watson had his in another. Bell had decided that the first words over his phone should be from Shakespeare. He started to read a line from the play Hamlet. "To be or not to be; that is the question." Instead, Bell spilled some acid on his coat. He was afraid it would burn his skin, so he called over the telephone, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you!" it would not be the last time that someone made an emergency phone call!
18、第一次真正的电话通话时也发生了一个意外。贝尔和华生为第一次测试他们的发明做好了一切准备。贝尔拿着话机在一个房间，华生拿着他的话机在另一个房间。贝尔决定，他通过电话说的第一句话应当来自莎士比亚。他开始读戏剧《哈姆雷特》中的话：“做，或者不做，这才是问题的关键。”然而，这时贝尔泼翻了一些酸液，溅到他的外套上。他害怕酸液烧伤他的皮肤，他通过电话喊道，“华生先生，到这里来！我需要你！”这不会是人们最后一次打紧急求救电话！
19. Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, the year the telephone was invented. He came from a poor family, but he had a good mind and he studied all of the great inventions of the day. He was particularly interested in the idea of a wireless telegraph.
19、古格里莫·马可尼出生于意大利的博罗格那，在电话被发明的那一年。他家境贫寒，但很有才智，他研究了当时所有重大发明，他对无线电报的想法特别感兴趣。
20. Marconi studied books by many inventors, including Heinrich Hertz, who discovered what we now call radio waves, and Michael Faraday, the inventor of the dynamo for producing electrical energy. He experimented for years in his own laboratory, and while he was still a young man, he invented wireless telegraphy.
20、马可尼研究了许多发明家的著作，包括海因里希·赫兹的书，他发现了我们现在所称的无线电波，以及迈克尔·法拉第的书，他是产生电能之发电机的发明者。他在他自己的实验室里成年累月的作实验，之后，当他还是个年轻人的时候，他发明了无线电报。
21. First Marconi sent the Morse code letter S a distance of 300 feet. Then he sent the sounds of bells a little farther. In 1897, he sent a signal a distance of nine miles in England. He sent a message across the England Channel to France two years later, and in the same year he sent the first message from a ship to the shore.
21、马可尼首先将摩尔斯码的字母S发送了300英尺远。然后他把铃声发送得稍远些。1897年，他在英国将一个信号发送了9英里远。两年以后，他将一条消息经过英吉利海峡发送到法国。同年，他第一次将消息从船上发送到岸上。
22. Marconi was very successful with his invention. With all the money he made, he improved the system, and in 1901, he was able to send a signal across the Atlantic Ocean. Again, it was the letter S, and it traveled 1,800 miles from England to New-foundland, Canada. Marconi continued to improve his system. In 1905, when he was only thirty-one years old, he sent a signal from England to the United States—a distance of 3,000 miles. Marconi's invention was the beginning of a new age.
22、马可尼的发明获得巨大成功。他将赚来的所有钱用来改进这个系统。1901年，他能够越过大西洋发送信号。再一次，他将字母S从英国发送到加拿大的纽芬兰，长达1800英里。马可尼继续改进他的系统。1905年，当他31岁时，他把一个信号从英国发到了美国，距离远达3000英里。马可尼的发明标志着一个新时代的开始。
