EPT 18 Reading shahrivar

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was just 14 when he had the idea that would shape the rest of his life.Farnsworth, had aspired to be an inventor since the age of six. By the end of his life, he would hold more than 300 patents related to television and other matters. On August 26, 1930, he received a patent for the first totally electronic television system, about a decade after first having the idea that under laid his invention.

Farnsworth wasn’t the first person to dream up television-but, importantly, he was the first person to find a way to make it work without a mechanical aspect. The biggest problem that inventors faced was how to transmit image data. Farnsworth’s central innovation was to imagine a way of doing it that relied on electronic technology alone, and so wasn’t slowed down by the abilities of a mechanical image-transmitting system like the ones used by earlier television developers.

Farnsworth dreamed up his own idea for electronic-rather than mechanical-television while he was plowing the family’s new farm in Idaho. As he plowed the potato field, he glanced back at the long, straight furrows he had just dug and was struck with an inspiration. He envisioned a system that would break an image into horizontal lines and reassemble those lines into a picture at the other end Only electrons could capture, transmit, and reproduce a clear moving figure. Electrons moved so fast that answer image could manifest itself this way in a wink. This eureka experience happened at the age of 14.

Brilliant, young, and backed by wildcat investors, Farnsworth predated the te innovators of Silicon Valley. On September 3, 1928, a photograph of him appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle alongside bold type hailing the young genius who was quietly working away in his San Francisco laboratory on his revolutionary light machine. Just 22 years old, he had recently grown a mustache to mask his youth.

Later, the parallel to modern-day Silicon Valley extended to Farnsworth’s ownership of his work. Explaining his invention to the Times in 1930, Farnsworth said it would work with existing broadcast technology, which was central to its appeal and also made TV commercially viable. But that also got the attention of RCA, which had a near monopoly on radio broadcast technology and which sued him for patent infringement. Eventually RCA lost. The court declared Farnsworth the inventor of electronic television That left RCA no real choice if it wanted to begin selling televisions; RCA was forced to pay patent royalties to Farnsworth. Their battle had similar parallels to the modern-day case between Bill Gates and Netscape, a tiny Silicon Valley startup.

Also like the tech innovators of Silicon Valley, Farnsworth thought his invention had utopian prospects. “If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings?” he asked. “War would be a thing of the past.”

1. By the phrase “the parallel to modern-day Silicon Valley” in paragraph 5 line 1, the Writer is referring to ….

2. In order to position itself as the leader in commercial television, RCA…….

3. The word “viable” in paragraph 5 line 4 is closest in meaning to….

4. Farnsworth’s newly invented television system was appealing because……..

5. Farnsworth thought that television would do all of the following EXCEPT……

6. It can be inferred from paragraph 6 that……..

7. The most suitable title for this passage is ……

8. The image-transmission system used in the mechanical television……..

9. Farnsworth’s inspiration for the electronic television came from….

10. The word “itself” in paragraph 3 line 7 refers to …….

Passage 2

of the many systems of personality description and prediction that predate modern psychology, the most popular by far, is astrology. The basic hypothesis underlying astrology is quite straightforward: it is based on the notion that the positions and movements of celestial bodies, including sun and moon as well as the stars and planets, at the moment of birth exert a profound influence on personality and the course of one’s life. This idea dates to the early days of astronomical observation, a time when nothing was known of interstellar distances or of the actual nature of the stars. The recorded history of astrological forecasting dates back at least 3,000 years to the Chaldeans and Assyrians. The twelve-sign zodiac, known as sun-sign astrology and so familiar to modern newspaper readers, was already in use in Babylon by about 450 BCE.

As one of the many objections that can be made to astrology, perhaps basic astronomy and physics are the best place to start. As every junior-high science student knows, the universe is in constant motion, with celestial bodies forever moving further apart from each other. The resulting changes in bodies’ positions relative to each other are slow and subtle, but they add up over time. Because of a phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes, for example, key elements of the position of the constellations in the sky have moved westward approximately 30 degrees in the last two millennia. What this means in layman’s terms is that the constellations of the zodiac no longer correspond to the regions of the map named for them. Thus, an ancient Babylonian born on the same day of the year as the reader of this text was born under a different sign, but basic sun-sign astrology has not changed to reflect this. Some astrologers are, of course, aware of this and draw their charts according to the sidereal year rather than the solar year, which takes these changes into account.

A further problem arises when other changes in astrological knowledge are considered. By the twenty-first century man had discovered several more planets in the solar system that were unknown to the ancient Babylonians, including Pluto, one that was discovered more than two thousand years after the sun s astrologers have come to include Pluto in their calculations, but they still fail to take into signs were designated. Some account the many other celestial phenomena that have been discovered in the intervening millennia.

Physics is no more likely to support the basic premises of astrology: gravitational pull, the only logical way for a star to exert an influence on other bodies, decreases proportionally with distance. It is a matter of fairly simple calculation to demonstrate that smaller objects, including the people present at the birth, would exert a gravitational pull on the newborn child several orders of magnitude greater than that provided by even the nearest stars.

Despite the fact that there is scarcely a piece of scientific evidence in its favor, astrology continues to be enormously popular. Nowhere was the gap between evidence and practice clearer than in the Reagan White House, where, apparently, Ronald Reagan’s schedule was partly determined via the First Lady’s consultations with an astrologer

11. In order to compensated for the changes caused by the precession of the equinoxes, some astrologers perform their calculations using…..

12. According to paragraph 3, one problem with the sun-sign astrology is that it does NOT.

13. The basic principle of astrology is that astronomical bodies influence our personality though

………

14. It can be concluded from paragraph 4 that the gravitational pull of

15. The writer refers to “the Reagan White House” in paragraph 5 line 3 in order to show that

astrology ….

16. The writer’s attitude toward astrology is……

17. Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?

18. It can be inferred from paragraph 1 that astrology was basically created based on …

19. All of the following are true about astrology and its principles EXCEPT……..

20. As a result of the precession of the equinoxes, ……..