Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
When it comes to singling out those who have made a difference in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A historian a century from now might well conclude that it was Ford who most influenced all manufacturing, everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to make cars — one, strange to say, that originated in slaughterhouses.
Back in the early 1900’s, slaughterhouses used what could have been called a “disassembly line”. Ford reversed this process to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a magneto (磁发电机). Rather than have each worker completely assemble a magneto, one of its elements was placed on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another component to it, the same one each time. Professor David Hounshell of the University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development, tells what happened:
“The previous day, workers carrying out the entire process averaged one assembly every 20 minutes. But on that day, on the line, the assembly team averaged one every 13 minutes and 10 seconds per person.”
Within a year, the time had been reduced to five minutes. In 1913, Ford went all the way. Hooked together by ropes, partially assembled vehicles were towed past workers who completed them one piece at a time. It wasn’t long before Ford was turning out several hundred thousand cars a year, a remarkable achievement then. And so efficient and economical was this new system that he cut the price of his cars in half, to $260, putting them within reach of all those who, up until that time, could not afford them. Soon, auto makers all over the world copied him. In fact, he encouraged them to do so by writing a book about all of his innovations, entitled Today and Tomorrow. The Age of the Automobile had arrived. Today, aided by robots and other forms of automation, everything from toasters to perfumes is made on assembly lines.
26. In Paragraph 1, the author gives a historian’s statement about Henry Ford to show _________.
A) Henry Ford is quite popular with historians
B) historians are quite interested in Henry Ford
C) Henry Ford’s influence on history can hardly be ignored
D) manufacturing is among the subjects of historians’ study
27. The underlined word “disassembly” in Paragraph 2 most probably means ______.
A) putting together B) establishing C) manufacturing D) taking apart
28. All of the following statements are true, EXCEPT that ________.
A) the invention of the assembly line has changed our lives
B) Henry Ford influenced virtually all manufacturing
C) Henry Ford’s experiment on the magneto was an immediate success
D) cars were originally manufactured in slaughterhouses
29. It can be inferred from this passage that _________.
A) more people could afford a car thanks to the assembly line
B) Henry Ford was forced to cut the price of the cars because of market competition
C) Henry Ford cut the production of his cars by 50% to reduce costs
D) Henry Ford was reluctant to share his invention with others
30. This passage mainly tells us ________.
A) the history of car manufacturing
B) the origin and influence of the assembly line on all manufacturing
C) the process of car manufacturing
D) the role of technology in raising production
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