Unit 16: Inventions - Read

Exercise 1: Choose the word (a, b, c, or d) that best fits each of the blank spaces. An American called Thomas Alva Edison (1)___the first man (2)___sound. In 1878, he invented a machine (3)____a phonograph. The phonograph was a bit (4)___a record player, but it used metal cylinders (5)____discs. Flat discs (records) appeared ten years (6)____. Tape recorders first appeared (7)_____the 1930s, but they were large and expensive. Then, in 1963, the Philips Company developed the first cassette. Cassettes are still very popular all (8)_____the world.

Exercise 2: Read the following passage and choose the item (a, b, c, or d) that best answers each of the questions about it. John Logie Baird, who is called ‘the father of television’, was born in Scotland in 1888. He became an inventor at the age of 26. His first inventions were electrically-heated socks and air-filled shoes, but these were not very successful. However, in 1923, he became interested in the idea of pictures by radio. He worked for several months, and the following year he succeeded in transmitting the first ‘television’ picture a few meters across the room.  Baird’s ‘television’ was not very clear, but people were very interested and he tried to make it better. In 1926, he showed it to the public at the Royal Society. In 1928, he transmitted the first picture across the Atlantic and in 1929, the BBC and the German post office began to broadcast TV with his system.