Перевод текста , пожалуйста *
The
lifestyle which we enjoy today is a result of countless ideas and inventions,
which have taken many centuries of man’s history to develop.
1. The
first great idea which started man on the road to his great achievements was
when a caveman picked up a heavy stone to help him. The use of fire was another
step without which no subsequent development would have been possible. But once
man had learned to make and use fire, it was only a short step to discovering
the use of metals. Another great move towards modern technolo­gy was the
invention of the wheel by some unknown prehistoric genius.2. Man
had efficient metal weapons and was able to hunt large animals for food.
Gradually, he learned to cap­ture and tame some of the creatures, so that he
could keep his food nearby until it was needed. Man also discovered how to
plant crops, gathering seed from wild plants, which he knew to be useful. Once farming was established, it did not take
man long to make special tools for breaking up the ground, and later he began
to use the help of domes­tic animals in pulling his primitive plough.3. Another important invention which has con­tributed
greatly to our modern knowledge was writing. At first, writing was a special
form of drawing, and was usually very simple. But gradually these primitive
drawings turned into letters. From the counting of days and months, man went on
to count cattle and sheep and the earliest forms of arithmetic appeared. The
Greeks were the first people to use writing to record language as spoken by
contemporary men; and their works are still widely read today, for information
and for pleasure.4. After
the time of the Romans, the speed of dis­covery slowed down, and indeed many
earlier discov­eries were lost for hundreds of years. It was not until the
fifteenth century, with the coming of the Renaissance, that discoveries were
again made on a large scale. Europe was suddenly filled with a wish to explore
the world. No less important was the invention of printing, giving many men an
opportunity to read and to own books which before had been available to only
the wealthy few. The spread of ideas was rapid, and led in its turn to the
writing of more books. The voyagers of the Renaissance discovered the existence
of many new and strange lands, and in these lands were all sorts of unknown
animals and plants.5. The
seventeenth century saw a development of science. The eighteenth century is
associated with many inventions and culminated in the Industrial Revolution.
The invention of the steam engine, the condenser and piston made possible
modern manufacturing processes. The nineteenth century was the age of the
machine when man realized that many previously hard tasks could be done more
easily and cheaply by machinery. Farm machinery was invented, and production of
larg­er food-crops became possible. The nineteenth century also saw the
invention of electricity, which revolution­ized life and made many other things
possible. The man­ufacture of cars began a new era in transport, and led to the
appearance of lorries and buses, without which our cities would not have grown
to their present size.6. The
previous century was the one to see immense changes and various inventions. The
airplane was constructed. During the Second World War man became aware of
atomic energy and nuclear weapons. The second half of the twentieth century was
characterized by the inven­tions of television, computers, spacecraft, genet­ic
engineering and many others.7. All our discoveries today are based on the ideas of men
who lived before us; and without their groundwork, modern inventions would have
been impossible. With so many wonderful achievements behind him, modern
man can go into an era of even greater discoveries, and all nations can benefit
from the knowledge left to us by earlier generations.