最新托福考试经典阅读练习及详细解析：Early Cinema精选.pdf

智 课 网 托 福 备 考 资 料 最新托福考试经典阅读练习及详细解析：Early Cinema 从今天起，小编给大家整理了一些新托福考试经典阅读练习题。要 知道阅读一直就是英语考试中的重中之重，所以一定要勤加练习。今天 给大家分享一篇名为“EARLY CINEMA”的文章。        题目：EARLY CINEMA The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial peepshow format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edisons peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights,successive rounds of a single fight). These Kinetoscope arcades were modeled on phonograph parlors, which had proven successful for Edison several years earlier. In the phonograph parlors, customers listened to recordings through individual ear tubes, moving from one machine to the next to hear different recorded speeches or pieces of music. The Kinetoscope parlors functioned in a similar way. Edison was more interested in the sale of Kinetoscopes (for roughly $1,000 apiece) to these parlors than in the films that would be run in them (which cost approximately $10 to $15 each). He refused to develop projection technology, reasoning that if he made and sold projectors, then exhibitors would purchase only one machine-a projector-from him instead of several. Exhibitors, however, wanted to maximize their profits, which they could do more readily by projecting a handful of films to hundreds of customers at a time (rather than one at a time) and by charging 25 to 50 cent