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II. READING:
AIR CONDITIONING
The history of an invention that makes life more pleasant
Willis Carrier designed the first air-conditioning unit in 1902, just a year after graduating from
Cornell University with a Masters in Engineering. At a Brooklyn printing plant, fluctuations in
heat and moisture were causing the size of the printing paper to keep changing slightly, making it
hard to align different colours. Carrier’s invention made it possible to control temperature and
humidity levels and so align the colours. The invention also allowed industries such as film,
processed food, textiles and pharmaceuticals to improve the quality of their products.
In 1914, the first air-conditioning device was installed in a private house. However, its size,
similar to that of an early computer, meant it took up too much space to come into widespread
use, and later models, such as the Weathermaker, which Carrier brought out in the 1920s, cost
too much for most people. Cooling for human comfort, rather than industrial need, really took off
when three air conditioners were installed in the J.L. Hudson Department Store in Detroit,
Michigan. People crowded into the shop to experience the new invention. The fashion spread
from department stores to cinemas, whose income rose steeply as a result of the comfort they
provided.
To start with, money-conscious employers regarded air conditioning as a luxury. They
considered that if they were paying people to work, they should not be paying for them to be
comfortable as well. So in the 1940s and ’50s, the industry started putting out a different
message about its product: according to their research, installing air conditioning increased
productivity amongst employees. They found that typists increased their output by 24% when
transferred from a regular office to a cooled one. Another study into office working conditions,
which was carried out in the late ’50s, showed that the majority of companies cited air
conditioning as the single most important contributor to efficiency in offices.
However, air conditioning has its critics. Jed Brown, an environmentalist, complains that air
conditioning is a factor in global warming. Unfortunately, he adds, because air conditioning
leads to higher temperatures, people have to use it even more. However, he admits that it
provides a healthier environment for many people in the heat of summer.
Questions 1-5:
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

1. When Willis Carrier invented air conditioning, his aim was to

A. make workers feel cooler.

B. produce more attractive paper.
C. set up a new business.
D. solve problems in a factory.

2. Home air conditioners were not popular at first because they were

A. too big and expensive.

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 B. not considered necessary.
C. too inefficient.
D. complicated to use.

3. Employers refused to put air conditioning in workplaces at first because they

A. could not afford to pay for it.

B. thought it was more suitable for cinemas.
C. did not want to spend money improving working conditions.
D. thought people would not work so hard in comfortable conditions.

4. What was the purpose of the research done in the 1940s and ’50s?

A. to make office workers produce more

B. to compare different types of air conditioner
C. to persuade businesses to buy air conditioners
D. to encourage employees to change offices

5. What does Jed Brown say about air conditioning?

A. It will appear in every household in the world prospectively.

B. Turning it off will not bring about diminution in the severity of global warming.
C. It can seriously do harm to people’s health.
D. It is beneficial for human, but adversely affect the environment.

Read the passage below and answer Question 1-10.

GREAT INVENTIONS
There are some things we use every day. Can you imagine a world without zippers to fasten
clothing? Have you ever wondered about the layout of the keyboard of a typewriter, which we
see every day on the computer? These are just two of the many inventions which have made our
lives easier. Maybe that’s why we don’t think about them very much!

The Zipper
Whatever did we do before the invention of the zipper?

In 1893 the world’s first zipper was produced in Chicago. Although the inventor claimed that it
was a reliable fastening for clothing, this was not the case. The Chicago zipper sprang open
without warning, or jammed shut, and it swiftly lost popularity. Twenty years later a Swedish-

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born engineer called Sundback solved the problem. He attached tiny cups to the backs of the
interlocking teeth, and this meant that the teeth could be enmeshed more firmly and reliably.

At first, zippers were made of metal. They were heavy, and if they got stuck it was difficult to
free them. Then came nylon zippers which were lighter and easier to use, and had smaller teeth.
The fashion industry liked the new zippers far better because they did not distort the line of the
garment or weigh down light fabrics. They were also easier for the machinists to fit into the
garment.

Meanwhile, a new fastening agent made its appearance at the end of the twentieth century:
velcro. Velcro is another product made from nylon. Nylon is a very tough synthetic fibre first
developed in the 1930s, and bearing a name to remind the hearer of the two places where it was
developed: NY for New York and LON for London. Velcro is made with very small nylon hooks
on one side of the fastening which catch tiny looped whiskers on the other side of the fastening.
It is strong and durable.

Velcro is used on clothing, luggage and footwear. It is quick and easy to fasten and unfasten, and
has taken a large part of the zipper’s share of the market. It is also used in ways a zipper cannot
be used – for instance as an easily changed fastening on plaster casts, and to hold furnishing
fabrics in position.

The Typewriter and the Keyboard

The keyboard of the modern typewriter is laid out in a most odd fashion. Why would anyone
place the letters on the left side of the top row of the keyboard in the order QWERTY? The
answer is simple: to slow the typist down. But first, let’s consider the history of the typewriter
itself.

In the 1860’s a newspaper editor called Christopher Sholes lived in Milwaukee, USA. Sholes
invented the first of the modern typewriters, although there had been patents for typewriter-like
machines as early as 1714, when Queen Anne of England granted a patent to a man called Henry
Mill for a machine which would make marks on paper “so neat and exact as not to be
distinguished from print“. In 1829, across the Atlantic in Detroit USA, William Austin Burt took
out a patent on a typewriter-like machine, four years before the French inventor Xavier Projean
produced his machine designed to record words at a speed comparable to someone writing with a
pen.

So the typewriter was not a new idea, although there had not been a successful realisation of the
idea before Christopher Sholes’ machine. His typewriter became very popular, and soon people
learned to type very quickly – so quickly, in fact, that the keys became tangled. On manual
typewriters, the characters were set on the end of bars which rose to strike the paper when the
key was pressed. In the first models, the keys were set alphabetically. When a quick typist tapped
out a word like federal, it was very likely the adjacent e and d keys would become entangled.

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Sholes, therefore, set about finding ways to slow the typist down. He looked for the letters which
were most often used in English, and then placed them far away from each other. For instance, q
and u, which are almost always used together in English, are separated by five intervening
letters. The plan worked, and the typist was slowed down a little.

When computers came into use in the latter part of the twentieth century it was suggested that the
keyboard should be rationalised. After all, there was no longer any need to avoid clashing
manual typewriter keys. One new board included keys which produced letters which frequently
occur together in English, like 'ing' and 'th' and 'ed', so the word thing would take two strokes to
write instead of five. Although this made perfect sense, people found it very hard to learn to use
a new keyboard, and the idea was dropped. It is unlikely that the keyboard will ever be changed:
as we approach the twenty-first century the voice-activated computer, already in an advanced
state of development, is becoming more and more accessible. It is very likely that we will soon
have machines which take dictation as we speak to them, and the keyboard will be used for
corrections.

Question 1 - 6
From the information in the reading passage, classify the following events as occurring:

A. before the nineteenth century

B. during the nineteenth century
C. in the first half of the twentieth century
D. at the end of the twentieth century

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

1. Sundback’s zipper
2. the development of nylon
3. the development of velcro
4. the development of the first typewriter-like machine
5. The first appearance of Sholes’ typewriter
6. the development of the voice-activated computer
Question 7-10
Read the passage about 'Great Inventions' and look at the statements below.
In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

7. The first zipper though reliable was unpopular as a fastener.

8. The clothing industry welcomed the new zip fasteners because they easily weighed down
lightweight material.

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9. The nylon zipper lost a significant portion of its market share to the new fastening agent.
10. Typewriter-like machines began to be mass produced after they were patented.
Frequently used letters were positioned away from each other on the typewriter to reduce the
typist’s speed.

(IELTS General Training Volume 7 Reading Practice Test 2)

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