初中英文阅读理解练习.doc

PAGE PAGE 1 Comprehension Exercises 1 AEROPLANES Man’s natural home is the land, but many thousands of years ago he learnt how to travel on the sea - in fact boats are older than anything built for land transport. Travel on the sea was not a very difficult problem, * since wood, which can be found in most places near the sea, floats easily on water. But travel through the air was quite a different matter, since men knew of nothing which could at the same time float in the air and carry a man’s weight. For centuries, therefore, flying remained only a dream. * In Ancient Greek times, there is the story of two men who escaped from an island by sticking wings made of feathers on to themselves with wax. (Unfortunately, we are told, one of them flew too near the sun, and the wax melted, so that he fell to his death in the sea.) Then we have the plans of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Italian artist and engineer, as a further example of Man’s interest in flying. But it was not until rather recent times that the great dream became a fact. First, man made use of the fact that hot air rises to make a light balloon carry people up a short distance above the ground. Then gases lighter than air were used in place of hot air, and in the 1870-71 war between France and Prussia a balloon was used by a Frenchman to fly out of Paris when the Prussians were all round it. But balloons had the disadvantage of having to go wherever the wind blew them, so that one never knew where they would come down. It was not until the petrol engine was invented that this difficulty could be overcome. During the 1914-18 war, early aeroplanes, made of wood and canvas and armed with an ordinary machine-gun each, were used by both sides. Great progress was made in knowledge about flying as a result of the needs of the war, so that the years between 1918 and the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 saw an extraordinary development of aeroplanes, which increased greatly in size, strength, speed