托福美联英语托福阅读水电的发展.doc

小编给你一个美联英语官方免费试听课申请链接：/test/waijiao.aspx?tid=16-73675-0美联英语提供：托福英语 托福阅读 水电的发展【1】By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy. Because of the growth of population, most of the great forests of medieval Britain had long ago been replaced by fields of grain and hay. Wood was in ever-shorter supply, yet it remained tremendously important. It served as the primary source of heat for all homes and industries and as a basic raw material. Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel that was mixed with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron (raw iron). The iron industrys appetite for wood was enormous, and by 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. Vast forests enabled Russia to become the worlds leading producer of iron, much of which was exported to Britain. But Russias potential for growth was limited too, and in a few decades Russia would reach the barrier of inadequate energy that was already holding England back.【2】As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain looked toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal as an alternative to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat. By 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it also provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other products. Coal was not used, however, to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. It was there that coals potential wad enormous.【3】As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and deeper and were constantly filling with water. Mechanical pumps, usually powered by hundreds of horses waling in circles at the surface, had to be installed Such power was expensive and bothersome. In an attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines were extremely inefficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump. However, by the early 1770s, many of the Savery engines and hundreds of the Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though inefficiently, in English and Scottish mines.【4】In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James Watt was drawn to a critical study of the steam engine. Watt was employed at the time by the University of Glasgow as a skilled crafts worker making scientific instruments. In 1763: Watt was called on to repair a Newcomen engine being used in a physics course. After a series of observations, Watt saw that the Newcomens waste of energy could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine. The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the technological advance that gave people, at least for a while, unlimited power and allowed the invention and use of all kinds of power equipment.【5】The steam engine was quickly put to use in several industries in Britain. It drained mines and made possible the production of ever more coal to feed steam engines elsewhere. The steam power plant began to replace waterpower in the cotton-spinning mills as well as other industries during the 1780s, contributing to a phenomenal rise in industrialization. The British iron industry was radically transformed. The use of powerful, steam-driven bellows in blast furnaces helped iron makers switch over rapidly from limited charcoal to unlimited coke (which is made from coal) in the smelting of pig iron (the process of refining impure iron) after 1770 in the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke. Cort also developed heavy-duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of producing finished iron in every shape and form.【6】The economic consequence of these technical innovations in steam power was a great boom in the British iron industry. In 1740 annual British iron production was only 17:000 tons, but by 1844: with the spread of coke smelting and the impact of Corts inventions, it had increased to 3,000:000 tons. This was a truly amazing expansion. Once scarce and expensive, iron became cheap, basic, and indispensable to the economy.【1】到十八世纪，英国经济严重短缺。由于人口的增长，中世纪英国的大部分森林早已被粮食和干草领域所取代。木材供应短缺，但仍然非常重要。它作为所有家庭和行业的主要热源，并作为基本原料。加工木材（木炭）是在高炉中与铁矿石混合生产生铁（生铁）的燃料。铁工业对木材的需求是巨大的，到1740年，英国的铁矿石市场停滞不前。大森林使俄罗斯成为世界领先的铁生产国，其中大部分出口到英国。但是俄罗斯的增长潜力也是有限的，而在几十年的时间里，俄罗斯将会面临着已经把英格兰回归的能源不足的障碍。【2】随着这个早期的能源危机越来越严重，英国看好了其丰富而广泛的煤炭储备，作为其消失木材的替代品。煤炭在中世纪末期在英国首次被用作热源。到1640年，伦敦的大多数家庭都加热了，并且还为制造啤酒，玻璃，肥皂和其他产品提供了热量。然而，没有使用煤来生产机械能或动力机械。那里的煤炭潜力巨大。【3】随着煤炭产量的增加，矿井越来越深，水分不断涌入。机械泵通常由数百匹马在表面上圈起来的动力驱动，不得不安装。这种力量是昂贵和麻烦的。为了克服这些缺点，托马斯桑弗在1698年和托马斯纽康肯在1705年发明了第一个原始的蒸汽机。两种发动机效率都很低。两者都燃烧煤以产生蒸汽，然后将其用于操作泵。然而，到17世纪70年代初期，许多Savery发动机和数百台Newcomen发动机在英格兰和苏格兰矿山中成功运行，尽管效率低下。【4】在17世纪60年代初，一位名叫詹姆斯瓦特的资优青年苏格兰人被吸引到蒸汽机的批判性研究。当时格拉斯哥大学工作的瓦特是一名熟练的工匠制作科学仪器。 1763年：瓦特被要求修理在物理课程中使用的Newcomen引擎。经过一系列的观察，瓦特看到，通过添加一个单独的冷凝器，Newcomen的能源浪费可以减少。这一精采的发明，1769年获得专利，大大提高了蒸汽机的效率。瓦特及其追随者的蒸汽机是技术进步，至少在一段时间内给人无限的权力，允许发明和使用各种电力设备。【5】蒸汽机在英国的几个行业迅速投入使用。它排放了矿井，并且使得可能生产更多的煤以在其他地方供应蒸汽发动机。 17世纪80年代，蒸汽发电厂开始取代棉纺厂和其他行业的水力发电，造成工业化进程的惊人增长。英国铁业发生根本转变。在高