◎a game or a business ◎a computer programme ◎a new animal or plant variety
Nor will you receive a patent until a search has been made to find out that your product really
is different from everyone else's. There are a large number of patent examiners, too, whose only job is to examine whether your claim is valid or not. If it passes all the tests, your application for a patent will be published 18 months from the date you apply. So I have filled in the form and filed my patent application with the Patent Office. Now it's a matter of waiting and hoping. You'll know if I succeed by the size of my bank balance! Wish me luck!
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Scotland, but when he was young his family moved to Boston, USA. His mother was almost entirely deaf, so Alexander became interested in helping deaf people communicate and in deaf education. This interest led him to invent the microphone. He found that by pressing his lips against his mother's forehead, he could make his mother understand what he was saying.
He believed that one should always be curious and his most famous saying was: \be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the result of thought.\exploring around problems and his dynamic spirit that led to his most famous invention - the telephone in 1876. Bell never set out to invent the telephone and what he was trying to design was a multiple telegraph. This original telegraph sent a message over distances
using Morse code (a series of dots tapped out along a wire in a particular order. But only one message could go at a time. Bell wanted to improve it so that it could send several messages at the same time. He designed a machine that would separate different sound waves and allow different conversations to be held at the same time. But he found the problem difficult to solve. One day as he was experimenting with one end of a straw joined to a deaf man's ear drum and the other to a piece of smoked glass, Bell noticed that when he spoke into the ear, the straw drew sound waves on the glass. Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration. If sound waves could be reproduced in a moving electrical current, they could be sent along a wire. In searching to improve the telegraph,
Bell had invented the first telephone!
Bell was fully aware of the importance of his invention and wrote to his father: \day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas – and friends will talk to each other without leaving home.\
The patent was given in 1876, but it was not until five days later that Bell sent his first telephone message to his assistant Watson. The words have now become famous: \
Alexander Graham Bell was not a man to rest and he interested himself in many other
areas of invention. He experimented with helicopter designs and flying machines. While searching for a kite strong enough to carry a man into the air, Bell experimented putting triangles together and discovered the tetrahedron shape. Being very stable, it has proved invaluable in the design of bridges.
Bell was an inventor all his life. He made his first invention at eleven and his last at seventy- five. Although he is most often associated with the invention of the telephone,
he was indeed a continuing searcher after practical solutions to improve the quality of everybody's life.
选修8 Unit 4 Pygmalion-Reading PYGMALION MAIN CHARACTERS:
Eliza Doolittle (E: a poor flower girl who is ambitious to improve herself Professor Higgins (H: an expert in phonetics, convinced that the quality of a person's English decides his/her position in society
Colonel Pickering (CP: an officer in the army and later a friend of Higgins' who sets him a task
Act One FATEFUL MEETINGS
11 :15 pm in London, England in 1914 outside a theatre. It is pouring with rain and cab whistles are blowing in all directions. A man is hiding from the rain listening to people's language and watching their reactions. While watching, he makes notes. Nearby a flower girl wearing dark garments and a woollen scarf is also sheltering from the rain. A gentleman (G passes and hesitates for a moment.
E: Come over’ere, cap’in, and buy me flowers off a poor girl. G: I'm sorry but I haven't any change. E: I can giv’ou change, cap’in.
G: (surprised For a pound? I'm afraid I've got nothing less.
E: (hopefully Oah! Oh, do buy a flower off me, Captain. Take this for three pence. (holds up some dead flowers
G: (uncomfortably Now don't be troublesome, there's a good girl. (looks in his wallet and sounds more friendly But, wait, here's some small change. Will that be of any use to you? It's raining heavily now, isn't it? (leaves
E: (disappointed at the outcome, but thinking it is better than nothing Thank you, sir. (sees a man taking notes and feels worried Hey! I ain’t done nothing wrong by speaking to that gentleman. I've a right to s ell flowers, I have. I ain’t no thief. I'm an honest girl I am! (begins to cry
H: (kindly There! There! Who's hurting you, you silly girl? What do you take me for? (gives her a handkerchief
E: I thought maybe you was a policeman in disguise. H: Do I look like a policeman?
E: (still worried Then why did 'ou take down my words for? How do I know whether 'ou took me down right? 'ou just show me what 'ou've wrote about me!
H: Here you are. (hands over the paper covered in writing
E: What's that? That ain't proper writing. I can't read that. (pushes it back at him H: I can. (reads imitating Eliza \poor girl.\
in Lisson Grove if I'm not mistaken.
E: (looking confused What if I was? What's it to you?
CP: (has been watching the girl and now speaks to Higgins That's quite brilliant! How did you do that, may I ask?
H: Simply phonetics studied and classified from people's own speech. That's my profession and also my hobby. You can place a man by just a few remarks. I can place any spoken conversation within six miles, and even within two streets in London sometimes.
CP: Let me congratulate you! But is there an income to be made in that? H: Yes, indeed. Quite a good one. This is the age of the newly rich. People begin their working life in a poor neighbourhood of London with 80 pounds a year and end in a rich one with 100 thousand. But they betray themselves every time they open their mouths. Now once taught by me, she'd become an upper class lady ...
CP: Is that so? Extraordinary!
H: (rudely Look at this girl with her terrible English: the English that will condemn her to the gutter to the end of her days. But, sir, (proudly once educated to speak properly, that girl could pass herself off in three months as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. Perhaps I could even find her a place as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.
E: What's that you say? A shop assistant? Now that's sommat I want, that is! H: (ignores her Can you believe that?
CP: Of course! I study many Indian dialects myself and ... H: Do you indeed? Do you know Colonel Pickering? CP: Indeed I do, for that is me. Who are you?
H: I'm Henry Higgins and I was going to India to meet you. CP: And I came to England to make your acquaintance!