Exercise 9. Read the text “Engineering and Technology” and explain the words in bold. Fill in the blanks using the words from the list below.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 622.

1. advancements, 2. airplane, 3. aluminum, 4. appliances, 5. asteroids, 6. automobiles, 7. CD, 8. DVDs, 9. Internet, 10. Moon, 11. personal computer, 12. radios, 13. space race, 14. spaceflight, 15. technology, 16. TV

In contrast with the earlier centuries, one of the most prominent traitsof the worldduring the 20th century was the drastic growth of a) ……. Organized research and practice of science led to advancement in the fields of communication, engineering, travel, medicine, and war.

- The number and types of home appliances increased dramatically due to b) ……in technology, electricity availability, and increases in wealth and leisure time. Such basic c) ……as washing machines, clothes dryers, furnaces, exercise machines, refrigerators, freezers, electric stoves, and vacuum cleaners all became popular from the 1920s through the 1950s. The microwave oven became popular during the 1980s. d) …… were popularized as a form of entertainment during the 1920s, which extended to television during the 1950s. Cable television spread rapidly during the 1980s. Personal computers began to enter the home during the 1970s–1980s as well. The age of the portable music player grew during the 1960s with the development of 8-track and cassette tapes, which slowly began to replace record players. These were in turn replaced by the e) ……during the late 1980s and 1990s. The proliferation of the f) ……in the mid-to-late 1990s made digital

distribution of music (mp3s) possible. VCRs (video recorder) were popularized in the 1970s, but by the end of the millennium, g) …… were beginning to replace them. - The first h) ……was flown in 1903. With the engineering of the faster jet engine in the 1940s, mass air travel became commercially viable. - The assembly line made mass production of the automobile viable. By the end of the 20th

century, billions of people had i) ……for personal transportation. The combination of the automobile, motor boats and air travel allowed for unprecedented personal mobility. In western nations, motor vehicle accidents became the greatest cause of death for young people. However, expansion of divided highways reduced the death rate.

- The triode tube (Audion), transistor and integrated circuit revolutionized computers, leading to the proliferation of the j) ……in the 1980s and cell phones and the public-use Internet in the 1990s.

- New materials, most notably stainless steel, plastics, polyethylene, Velcro, and teflon, came into widespread use for many various applications.

- k) ……became an inexpensive metal and became second only to iron in use. Semiconductors were put to use in electronic objects.

- Thousands of chemicals were developed for industrial processing and home use.

- The l) ……between the United States and the Soviet Union gave a peaceful outlet to the political and military tensions of the Cold War, leading to the first human spaceflight with the Soviet Union's Vostok 1 mission in 1961, and man's first landing on the m) ……with America's Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Later, the first space station was launched by the Soviet space program. The United States developed the first reusable spacecraft system with the Space Shuttle program, first launched in 1981. As the century ended, a permanent manned presence in space was being founded with the construction of the International Space Station. - In addition to Human n) ……, unmanned space probes became a practical and relatively inexpensive form of exploration. The first orbiting space probe, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Over time, a massive system of artificialsatellites was placed into orbit around Earth. These satellites greatly advanced

navigation, communications, military intelligence, geology, climate, and numerous other fields. Also, by the end of the 20th century, unmanned probes had visited the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and various o) ……and comets. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, greatly expanded our understanding of the Universe and brought brilliant images to p) ……and computer screens around the world.