| 阅读理解。 |
| Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be "like a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag". Then he paused:"But you'll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel." It was a rare-indeed unique-occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout's Wonderful Bag, a leather case. Grout's aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn't that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout's day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn't do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated (充气的) tyre. So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse (椭圆). Throughout, the tyre remains inflated. Will the young Fitzsimons's folding wheel make it into production? I haven't the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It's as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there's plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than ￡1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane-minus wheels, of course-as hand baggage. Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie's imagination? No. But it's progress. |
| 1. We can infer from Paragraph 1 that the Brompton folding bike _____. |
| A. was portable B. had a folding wheel C. could be put in a pocket D. looked like a magic carpet |
| 2. We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable _____. |
| A. were difficult to separate B. could be split into 6 pieces C. were fitted with solid tyres D. were hard to carry on a train |
| 3. We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons's invention _____. |
| A. kept the tyre as a whole piece B. was made into production soon C. left little room for improvement D. changed our views on bag design |
| 4. Which of the following would be the best title for the text? |
| A. Three folding bike inventors B. The making of a folding bike C. Progress in folding bike design D. Ways of separating a bike wheel |